The adventure was rich, the path long and demanding, the journey full of surprises. But the end is near. Barring a miracle, FrancsJeux will cease publication at the end of the year. Launched in February 2013, the French-speaking site will not see 2020 and the Tokyo Games. It will disappear from the landscape.
The reason ? Economic. Money, quite simply. Since the beginning of 2019, the resources of FrancsJeux have become too insufficient to continue to provide exhaustive coverage of news about the Olympic movement, five days a week, 52 weeks a year, twelve months a year.
In the digital age, the costs of quality, reliable and precise information remain much lower than the economy of the paper press. But the survival of a site covering international news, with the ambition to provide a different perspective and a relevant approach to subjects, requires certain means. FrancsJeux got them. He doesn't have them anymore.
Repeated attempts to find support, in the form of advertising campaigns or partnerships, have been inconclusive. Potential advertisers or partners, institutional or private, did not respond to requests.
When it was launched at the beginning of 2013, FrancsJeux hoped to reach an audience – Olympic enthusiasts and players in the sports movement – lacking French-speaking information and in French. The figures prove that the site found it, beyond its expectations.
When it was created, a few months after the London 2012 Games, FrancsJeux wanted to contribute in its own way to the return of the French-speaking world to the international sporting scene, dominated by Anglo-Saxon influence. By establishing itself year after year in the media landscape, by reaching readers throughout the Olympic sphere on a daily basis, the site can today claim to have played a role.
With less than five years until the Paris 2024 Games, it may not seem appropriate to give up. FrancsJeux supported the French candidacy from its first steps, on the ground, in places and circumstances where it was sometimes the only French-speaking media. But the prospect of the first Summer Games in the French capital in a century has not, to date, aroused the interest or desire of potential partners.
While waiting for the curtain to come down, FrancJeux Over the next two months, it will continue to provide its readers, regular or occasional, with daily monitoring of news from the Olympic movement. It will continue its mission of providing information devoid of bias, treated with a different tone and a French-speaking approach. Like the first day. And until the last evening.
