Paris (AFP)

At a standstill, the Stade de France sees its raison d'être, large gatherings, threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the most optimistic scenario, its 2020 turnover will be cut by several million euros. If the crisis continues, it will be a plunge into the unknown.

We had to give up on two friendly matches of the French football team, in March and June. The finals of the Coupe de la Ligue and the Coupe de France in football could be held behind closed doors, just like that of Top 14 rugby. Compromise also, the Lady Gaga concert, scheduled for July 24 but incompatible with the ban on gatherings of more than 5,000 people.

On a total of twenty to thirty events per year, this weighs heavily for the vessel of Saint-Denis, lair of the 1998 world champions Blues erected for more than two decades between two motorways and a Seine canal, north of Paris.

Hosting of business seminars, shops, office rentals, tours, everything has stopped since March 16, date on which 75% of the hundred employees of the Stade de France consortium, a subsidiary of Vinci and Bouygues which operates the state-owned precinct is partially unemployed.

"Perhaps we will be able to resume by the end of the year, perhaps not. In both cases, we are talking about several million euros (loss of turnover). In the second case, the impact will be a double-digit number ", out of an annual total of around 60 million euros, explains AFP Alexandra Boutelier, the director general of the consortium. And if the ban on large gatherings continues during the year 2021, "we will enter unknown territory", she warns.

- OJ of 2024 -

For now, the consortium claims to have proposed to the State to make the stadium available in the context of the health crisis, while the Maracana, in Rio de Janeiro, has been transformed into a field hospital, and that the Santiago -Bernabeu, the lair of Real Madrid, was used to store medical equipment.

In the longer term, the future of the Stade de France is marked by two major events, the Rugby World Cup 2023 and the Paris-2024 Olympic Games. Until then, renovations to the lighting, restoration parts and the media gallery in particular, are scheduled, at a forecast cost of 50 million euros (2016 value), borne by the State and the Ile-de-France region.

Further on, the thorny question of the enclosure's economic model still looms, the concession by which the State entrusted the construction and operation of the stadium, which expired in 2025, to the consortium. This model has been criticized as costly for public finances. In addition, relations have long been strained between the football (FFF) and rugby (FFR) federations and the consortium, around the sharing of match revenues.

For many players, the ideal model would see the federations integrate the future entity operating the stadium to interest them more in its operation, and move from the rank of "client" to that of "partner", as AFP explains. Senator Eric Jeansannetas, author of a report on the subject in 2019.

It is necessary "that each and everyone has an interest in making, for example, as many matches as possible at the Stade de France", also pleads Alexandra Boutelier.

- Renovation in sight -

But negotiations are also taking place when the stadium will have to be thoroughly renovated after 2025, with needs estimated at EUR 200 million in the report by Mr Jeansannetas.

For Alexandra Boutelier, the crisis must "convince us to cooperate, to collaborate, to reconcile our constraints".

In the meantime, does the consortium plan to ask the state to compensate part of its operating losses due to the health crisis?

Too early to answer, we slip into the consortium. But "if you are prevented from operating for 18 months, everyone will have to sit around the table, because no one has imagined this scenario," said its director general.

"From this crisis can be born of inventiveness to no longer confine the stadium to major events and make it more a place of life, inside and outside", also thinks Eric Jeansannetas. With the construction of a new aquatic center opposite the stadium and the nearby athletes' village, "the Olympic Games will be an opportunity," concluded the senator.

© 2020 AFP