French Newspaper Accuses LA2024 of Buying Facebook Likes, LA Denies

LA2024 is popular on social media, particularly on Facebook.  And by most standards, Paris 2024 is also pretty popular on social media, but not nearly as popular as LA.  At the time of this writing (5 April 2017), LA2024 boasts an impressive 1,051,665 likes on Facebook, whereas Paris 2024 has 236,630.  So does that mean LA is just much more popular than Paris in the bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games?  Well, not according to French newspaper Le Figaro.

On Monday LA2024 cheerfully announced it had surpassed 1 million likes, only to have the large majority of those likes called into question by French newspaper Le Figaro.  LA2024’s page, which has gained more than 800,000 likes over the past three months alone, attributes its success to an in-house social media team which has driven the productive campaign and attracted fans from around the globe.  Additionally, LA2024 claims its bid and the city of Los Angeles is simply very captivating to young people–the primary audience of social media–and that the team promoting LA2024 has leveraged LA’s cultural and industrial strengths to draw in its audience.  Le Figaro, however, remains skeptical.

According to digital experts at Le Figaro, the majority of the likes LA2024 has gained over the past three months have come from the Middle East and Africa.  Likes from Bangladesh increased from 83 in January to 104,165 in April, and likes in Pakistan skyrocketed to 92,104 from in April, despite only boasting 56 in January.  Additionally, likes in Nepal rose from 71 in January to 78,515 over the same three-month period.  LA2024 also gained approximately 27,000 followers on Twitter in March of 2017 alone.  However, engagement on Twitter and Facebook did not swell as dramatically as the number of likes might indicate that it would.

Thank you to one million Facebook fans!

Thank you to the ONE MILLION fans who are ready to #FollowTheSun to LA for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games!

Posted by LA28 on Monday, April 3, 2017

 

Of all the likes and follows on Facebook, 79 percent of LA2024’s fan base are under the age of 34.  LA2024 claims it has attracted a younger demographic so successfully due to the creative and high-tech bid it has put forth, alongside its efforts to engage with young people from around the globe.

Paris 2024 has stepped up its game to engage the people of France with a new app that released on Monday, the same day LA2024 celebrated cracking the 1-million-likes barrier.  The app called “Objectif Paris 2024” works with the health tracking tools on users’ smartphones  to measure their activity, challenging them to accomplish fitness goals such as running 5 kilometers, in order to unlock new levels.  Paris 2024 co-chairman Tony Estanguet said of the app: “Paris 2024 is a passion project bringing together the French people behind the idea that sport must sit at the heart of society,” and that “[t]he Objectif Paris 2024 app is a perfect illustration of this.”

Los Angeles and Paris will continue bidding on the 2024 Games until September 13th when the IOC will formally make its decision and award the Games to one of the two cities.

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Festus
7 years ago

I’m in Bangladesh now, and the locals are going nuts over the LA 2024 Olympic bid. Lol…maybe a little suspicious.

MR2F2BE
7 years ago

(((Fake news)))

CBswims
7 years ago

The big jump in ‘likes’ from countries known for click farming seems suspicious, but who actually cares? Likes are meaningless in the scope of Olympic bids. And hopefully these 2 good countries will not stoop to bribes as has happened in the past.

_TJ_
7 years ago

It does seem a little suspicious though… doesn’t it? Is there any indication of why the page would have that sort of growth from such random countries besides such ambiguous statements like “creative and high-tech bid”? This is disregarding how insecure Paris must be to look into this so deeply.

Don
7 years ago

The French have too much free time.

Admin
7 years ago

I’ve gotta say, while I think this particular accusation is a little ridiculous…I love the narrative of the mano e mano bid from two cities that are in approximately an equal tier of esteem internationally. When there’s for or 5 cities, you don’t really get this sort of direct competitiveness.

coachymccoachface
Reply to  Braden Keith
7 years ago

They should host some sort of athletic competition to see who gets to host. The Prelympics.

ERVINFORTHEWIN
Reply to  coachymccoachface
7 years ago

we know who would get the most golds …..

Steve Nolan
Reply to  Braden Keith
7 years ago

And they can just slap-fight about who has more retweets. It’s great drama.

bobo gigi
7 years ago

Le Figaro 😆 😆 😆 😆
As credible as Fox News or Trump. 😆 😆 😆 😆

And honestly who cares about the number of likes? If now we judge the qualify of someone by the number of his/her followers or likes then I’m worried about the state of our societies.

not tony the tiger
7 years ago

someone is jealous….lol

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Reid Carlson

Reid Carlson originally hails from Clay Center, Kansas, where he began swimming at age six with the Clay Center Tiger Sharks, a summer league team. At age 14 he began swimming club year-round with the Manhattan Marlins (Manhattan, KS), which took some convincing from his mother as he was very …

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