You Don’t Need a Visa to Go to Paris Olympics, Unless You Actually Want to Eat Something

PARIS—The Paris Olympics have been a joy to watch. On television, I mean—actually going to Paris 2024, it turns out after a couple of days in the French capital, is a bizarrely frustrating experience seemingly designed to annoy spectators as much as possible.

Take, for example, the experience of paying for stuff. Visa, a global Olympic sponsor, is the only type of payment card accepted at Olympic venues. That means if you want to buy something to eat or drink while you’re watching an event but you’ve only got a Mastercard or American Express with you, you’ll need to either have cash or buy a Visa prepaid card sold at kiosks around the venues.

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If you missed that irritating experience this summer, don’t worry: Visa reassures us it will be “the only card accepted at the Olympic and Paralympic Games through 2032.”

Even once you’ve cleared the payment hurdles in Paris, you can forget about buying a nice French beer or glass of wine. That’s because none of the stadiums offer any kind of alcohol for sale to attendees with regular tickets—though VIPs can still get booze. Those who aren’t watching from a hospitality suite have to make do with alcohol-free lager, which is being sold for around $8.70.

The strange drinking double-standard stems from a 1991 law that prohibits the sale of alcohol to the general public in stadiums in France, to which the Games’ organizers didn’t seek an exemption. A Paris 2024 spokesperson told Reuters last year a change in the law would be required for booze to be available to regular ticket holders.

“It is the strict application of French law that allows catering services that include the provision of alcohol to operate in hospitality areas as they are governed by a separate law on catering,” the spokesperson said.

The upshot is that those of us attending the Stade de France north of Paris to watch the U.S. women winning their first medal in Olympic rugby sevens on Tuesday couldn’t get a beer in the same stadium which, just eight months ago, was serving plentiful alcohol to fans attending the Rugby World Cup final (that tournament’s organizers did negotiate an exemption from the French booze ban).

Obviously you don’t need to have alcohol—or the ability to pay with a non-Visa bank card—to have a good time at the Olympics. But is it really too much to ask?

Or maybe it’s just easier to watch it on TV.