Nearly two months after the end of the event, the Comité international des Jeux de la Francophonie (CIJF) has drawn up a quantified assessment of the media impact of the 2023 edition in Kinshasa, DRC (July 28 to August 6). The CIJF’s production of images of the sporting and cultural event, the most digital in history, seemed to hit the mark, with over 75 hours of live linear coverage and 125 editorialized contents available on the JDF.TV platform. In all, images from the Games of La Francophonie 2023 were picked up by 27 television channels and multimedia platforms. The CIJF also made great inroads on its social networks, with over 2 million accounts reached on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and 140 posts made, i.e. nearly 15 posts per day. The event’s YouTube channel offered 75 hours of live coverage and recorded over 600,000 views. As the CIJF points out in its report, there were two distinct periods in press coverage, with “a clear shift from a negative tone preceding the Games to positive coverage from the opening ceremony onwards“. He also notes that the media in non-African countries, primarily France and Canada, but also Wallonia-Brussels, “did not commit to the Games. The athletes selected were announced too late, and the announcement of team withdrawals from these northern countries obviously limited their media coverage in a highly competitive context a year ahead of the Paris 2024 Games.”
