Who to buy or operate the Stade de France from mid-2025? Since the launch of the procedure, only the Qatari owners of PSG have officially come forward to buy this state-owned stadium. Interested candidates have until Thursday noon to respond to a first offer. The State has launched two procedures in parallel: one relates to the sale of this 80,000-seat stadium, the other to the renewal of the concession granted in 1995 to the Vinci-Bouygues consortium (respectively 2/3 and 1/ 3), the two construction groups that built the stadium for the 1998 World Cup.
A maximum of four candidates per procedure are admitted. Serious candidates will be given a detailed “consultation file” and will have to submit a detailed offer in the fall. The only one to have come forward to date, against a background of open conflict with the town hall of Paris over the sale of the Parc des Princes, the owner of PSG, the Qatari fund QSI (Qatar Sports Investments), will submit its offer on Thursday, even if his number one option is to stay at the Park, we learned from an internal club source.
Asked about the possibility that this emblematic enclosure of French sport (the Blues of football won the first World Cup in their history there) goes under a foreign flag, the Minister of Sports and the Olympics, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, did not not excluded. If there “should be one who meets the protective conditions – which, in the context of a transfer, would be fixed by law anyway – or if this foreign investor were to participate in a group of operators, he there is no reason to dismiss it a priori and on principle,” she told the Senate. If the Stadium were to be sold, a law would indeed be necessary to regulate the sale.
For its part, the Vinci-Bouygues consortium, questioned by AFP, did not wish to comment on the current procedure. But several sources consider that it would be quite logical for him to apply. The state does not seem to have planned to say more about the identity of the possible suitors. Quoted for their part in the French press as being interested, the International Football Federation (Fifa) denied and UEFA did not comment. According to a source familiar with the matter, the Stade de France would be worth “between 400 and 600 million euros”.
The state has given no price indication, but the stadium is valued at 647 million (gross value) under tangible fixed assets in the 2021 state accounts. According to the consortium, its operation has generated since 2013 a “break-even or marginally profitable” result. Since the hasty signing of the initial concession contract, between the two rounds of the 1995 presidential election, this stadium has cost the State dearly (financial compensation for the absence of a resident club, work on the RER B , etc.). The Court of Auditors calculated in 2018 that the enclosure and associated infrastructure represented a total of some 778 million in public expenditure. Hence the transfer project.
The candidate who wins will have to carry out a major program of works, because the stadium needs a facelift. It was only “ripolined” for the 2024 Paris Olympics, including work on the lighting system. The preparation of the Games will also make the Stadium impractical from December 2023 (the home matches of the XV of France of the next Six Nations tournament will be relocated) and the amount of compensation is fiercely discussed, according to concordant sources. .
If PSG became the owner of the Stade de France, it would plan to “lower and bring the stands closer” to the ground, reducing its capacity from 80,000 to 70,000 seats, according to an internal source at the club. Roof work is also planned.
The State wants the Stadium to be able to host concerts and football and rugby matches, as it does today. Its new owner (or concessionaire) will also have to assume the burden of ancillary infrastructure such as “monitoring and maintenance” of the footbridge built over the A1 to connect the stadium to the Olympic Aquatics Center (OAC). The football and rugby federations, which consider that the contracts binding them to the consortium are unfavorable to them, seem for the moment to remain on the sidelines. They could join a project later.
In a report dedicated to the Olympics published in January, the Court of Auditors was moved that the State had not launched the procedure earlier. Faced with the hypothesis of a call for tenders in the spring, she estimated that “this calendar is the most unfavorable for the State which, as in 1995, will find itself under pressure from both candidates and sports federations”. The new owner or dealer will likely not be known until 2025.
