Héritage Sport: support regional athletes and join the 2024 olympic movement in Marseille

An opportunity for companies to demonstrate their commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility by embracing the values of Olympic sports

As the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games approach and Marseille prepares to host sailing and football events, the Héritage Sport Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur endowment fund is attracting more and more companies to sponsor the Olympic athletes of the future. Supporting high-level regional athletes gives the business community an opportunity to get involved in the global excitement surrounding the Olympic Games. With the former Olympic swimming champion Fabien Gilot as its ambassador, the Héritage Sport fund encourages business leaders and athletes to come together around their shared values: performance, perseverance, and team spirit. Sponsoring world-class athletes is a fantastic way to get companies and employees excited about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects while giving them an extraordinary first-hand experience of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Marseille.

The Héritage Sport endowment fund was created in February 2019 at the initiative of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Olympic and Sports Committee (CROS). It quickly received support from the Région Sud and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Aix-Marseille-Provence, which became official partners in late 2020. The endowment fund welcomes all sizes of companies – small- and medium-sized businesses, large corporations – and offers them the opportunity to support the training of regional athletes in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

At a time when half of the people on the French Olympic team are living below the poverty line, the endowment fund serves the general interest by working to improve the daily lives of athletes and helping them prepare for their future athletic careers. “The business world also has a responsibility to the general interest, and we can see this as companies expand their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives,” says Hervé Liberman, the President of the Héritage Sport endowment fund and of the CROS Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Olympic Committee. “With the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the sailing events in Marseille just around the corner, associating a company’s image with a local athlete is a win-win-win situation for the company, the athlete, and the region!” he says.

Thanks to the sponsoring companies, athletes can receive financial aid in the form of a grant. Athletes can also benefit from performance support from HumanFab, an elite sport and innovation centre based in Aix-en-Provence, and human resources support from the ABM Groupe to develop both their sporting and professional projects.

"To date, the regional office for high-performance athletes has identified 122 regional athletes who are training to join the French Olympic team. Héritage Sports is also working on the long-term future by looking beyond the 2024 Olympic Games and supporting our athletes working towards the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles,” explains Nicolas Leccia, a partner at the Altius consultancy, which is assisting CROS in the development of the Héritage Sports endowment fund.

An innovative and tangible method to join the Olympic adventure

Taking a local approach to serving athletes and companies, Héritage Sport proposes three main levels of sponsorship: gold, silver, and bronze. There is also a “supporter” offer starting at €4000 per year after tax exemptions. The range of benefits for businesses includes the chance to support one or more athletes of the company’s choice, visibility across all or some of the communication platforms, use of the fund’s special logo to promote the company’s commitment to the fund, and participation in official events. There are also other advantages, such as using the partnership as the basis for organizing a conference on how sports can contribute to a company’s CSR objectives.

Each corporate sponsor also becomes a member of the AMP 24 club, which was launched in September 2022 under the impetus of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Aix-Marseille-Provence and several official partners of the Olympic Games (Orange, CEPAC, EDF, BBPC). Its objective is to unite companies around what will be a major marketing opportunity for the territory and to inform companies of business opportunities emerging from the Olympic Games.

One of the most recent partners to commit to the Héritage Sport fund is the renowned Les Terrasses du Port shopping centre, which has joined some of the fund’s earliest partners, such as the La Provence newspaper group and the Fidal business law firm. Other leading names across the region should soon announce their commitments to the fund.

“The Héritage Sport fund is a great opportunity for local companies to increase their visibility and to participate in the momentum of the Olympic Games,” says Jean-Luc Chauvin, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Aix-Marseille-Provence.  

French President Emmanuel Macron has officially declared sports to be one of the country’s national priorities for the year 2024 because of the key role it plays in our society. Thanks to its benefits for the health of citizens and companies, sport can be a key tool for creating meaningful CSR initiatives. A study conducted for the Medef employers’ federation, the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), and the AG2R LA MONDIALE insurance company has even shown that there are clear productivity gains for companies when employees practice sports.