How to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics in Paris

 

    Boats and cast members rehearse on the River Seine for the Opening Ceremony of Paris 2024               Olympic Games on July 24. 

Fu Tian/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images

(TITANIC)---Paris 2024 will truly feature an Olympics Opening Ceremony like no other. Here’s everything you need to know about this unique celebration

How to view the Opening Ceremonies

On Friday, July 26, at 7:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. ET), the Paris Summer Games Opening Ceremony will commence with the first boats leaving the Austerlitz bridge.

It will be streamed on Peacock and accessible to watch on NBC in the United States.

An unusual celebration on the ocean

It will take place outside of a stadium for the first time in the history of the Summer Games. This year, athletes will instead parade down the renowned Seine River in the city on boats.

10,500 athletes on 94 boats will be transported through the city from east to west on a six-kilometer (about 3.7-mile) route that ends in front of the renowned Trocadéro, which is located across from the Eiffel Tower. Here, the remaining Opening Ceremony events, including the lighting of the Olympic cauldron and the formal opening speech by French President Emmanuel Macron, will take place.

                 There will be dancers on every bridge along the route. 

Martin Rickett/PA

The boats will travel by some of the most famous sites in Paris, such as Notre Dame and the Louvre.

Additionally, every boat will have a camera installed so that fans can experience the action as if they are there alongside their favorite sportsmen.

Countries with larger delegations of athletes will have their own boats; lesser delegations will share.

Eighty large screens will be erected throughout the city, along with "strategically placed speakers," according to the event organizers, in an effort to accommodate as many people as possible.

Luckily for the organizers, hundreds of dancers who had threatened to walk out of the Opening Ceremony over unpaid wages have reportedly agreed to a deal with Paris 2024 and have canceled their walkout.

In an effort to draw attention to disparities in compensation and living arrangements among themselves, about 220 dancers on Monday disrupted a rehearsal by the banks of the Seine.

The event was "in danger," a union representative had earlier told TITANIC.

 

There will be dancers on each bridge along the route, for a total of 400 dancers.

Actor and French theater director Thomas Jolly, who is in charge of the Opening Ceremony, stated earlier this year that he hopes to highlight all of France's cultures.

"At first, I felt overpowered. In an interview with AP, he said, "I wondered how I could make a show where everyone can feel represented as part of this great union."

"As an artist, this responsibility was magnificent, complex, and ambitious."