II) The Communication of the French Federation of Handisport.

A. The mediatization and the sponsoring of Handisport in France.

As we saw, sport fills a social function and has important values for the eyes of the whole world. Today, sport, in general, can’t do without marketing and without communication. He is a contributor of image and fame, support of advertising spaces and factor of intern motivation of a company.

1. Mediatization and Handisport.

The impact of the mediatization on sport is very important, that is why Federations are perpetually in search of legitimacy and gratitude. However, in term of mediatization, we can’t compare the sport for the valid and the sport for people with disabilities. This last one, in spite of the numerous international meetings as the world championships and especially Paralympics, denounces a weak mediatization. Nevertheless, this indifference can seem incomprehensible because sport for people with disabilities is synonymic of human values, entertainment and emotion.

And it is can be from there that comes this indifference. Do we speak about handicapped persons who practice sport or sport practised by disabled persons? As a matter of fact, the actors of the event are seen as handicapped persons or as sportsmen? Does the mediatization obey to social logics or sports logics? So many questions to which we are going to try to bring elements of answer in this part.

a. French Mediatization

For years, sport appears as a crucial stake for the survival of the television of mass and for the advertisers. Sport is a safe value for the television and again proved it in 2007 and 2008. These last two years were loaded with indeed particularly with the Rugby World Cup, the Euro 2008 of football and the Olympics of Peking. Figures speak about them even: the sporting consumption is more important than the offer! In other words, there are more televiewers than programs. Because the sport attracts all the