Paris (AFP)
The state, owner of the Stade de France, does not intend to extend the exploitation concession with the consortium formed by Vinci and Bouygues after 2025, and wishes a better involvement of the federations of football and rugby, announced Friday the ministry of Sports.
"The current concession of the Stade de France will not be extended after the contractual deadline (June 30, 2025)," the ministry said in a summary of the 2020 budget.
Concluded on 29 April 1995, between the two rounds of the presidential election, the contract between the State and the Stade de France Consortium, formed by Vinci and Bouygues, provided for the latter to build the compound in exchange for a 30-year concession. . A model that proved to be costly for public finances: not only did the State invest 191 million euros out of the 361 that the stadium cost, but it also paid the equivalent of 115 million euros consortium, as compensation for the absence of a resident club.
The Ministry also indicated that "competition" would "probably" be launched in 2022, but the future management model is not decided, and in November 2018 the government promised to rule on the "main principles" of the model. economic by the end of 2019.
"We are not in a hurry," said Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu at a press briefing on the 2020 budget.
Thus, an outright sale of the stadium of 80,000 seats, located in Saint-Denis, where France had won its first football World Cup in 1998, is still not excluded "if a serious proposal was formulated d 'here,' says the ministry. "For now, there has been no offer," said a source in the cabinet of Roxana Maracineanu.
"Like the other European stadiums, the economic optimization of the Stade de France will in the future go through a better involvement of the organizers of sporting events in the management of the Stade de France, the French federations of football and rugby. ", who use the speaker for the meetings of the Blues, also notes the ministry.
The choice of the future model arises while the Stade de France will be at the heart of the Olympic Games in Paris-2024. In this perspective, the consortium had proposed to the State a vast plan for the renovation of the enclosure, up to 450 million euros, proposing to finance part of it as part of a continuation of the concession. The government had already declined this offer.
© 2019 AFP