That Saturday in the locker room, the Dragonnes of Emmanuel Mayonnade were preparing to face the Croats of Zagreb. But for the club’s president, Thierry Weizman, another summit meeting was being played out behind the scenes. Many of the department’s industrialists and entrepreneurs were gathered in a room in its complex, invited by BPIFrance to take part in the Les Leaders round table, its flagship program for promoting innovation in the regions.
If the investment bank multiplies the appointments, 16,000 companies having today joined its program Les Leaders, this stage in Metz had a particular flavor. Les Dragonnes is the oldest sports partner of the BPI. For thirteen years, the bank has been displayed on its jersey and it is therefore quite natural that Metz joined the Leaders, a program launched in 2013 as “a locomotive that brings together clubs and local communities beyond sporting exploits”, explained its creator, Patrice Bégay, the executive director of communication for BPI France.
The “inno generation”
Today, the event celebrates the “inno generation”, the entrepreneurial spirit to be transmitted to the youngest. But it is also an opportunity to unite the club with its current or future partners. “My role is to constantly look for money, confirms Thierry Weizman on stage. We make sure that our employees have no other worries than playing handball. The car, we manage. The apartment, we manage. Keeping the dog, we know how to manage. When they get on the field, they have no other worries than to give the maximum. »
Hence the importance for his club of this kind of operation. “Yesterday Thierry [Weizman] tells me I have a budget of 3.5 million. I tell him “it’s not enough”, we have to triple it, relaunches Patrice Bégay. But it’s not that simple, so we have to help him. It’s not a helping hand that we need, it’s a real metamorphosis. And so we put together a lot of events…”
To achieve this, the Metz club thinks of itself as a spectacle company, forced to innovate to obtain some of the media attention so disputed today. “Every time we can, we try to create a buzz because it’s difficult to get people talking about women’s sport. We had a presentation of the team in skorts, it was the first time. We had a fashion show with Courrèges. And this year, we did it at the Cathedral and it got people talking because fundamentalist Catholics wanted to cause us problems but in the end it was a real success: what a team in France, has 1,000 people who attend its presentation? “To support a few hours later the Dragonnes, they were four times more. Against the Croats, the French champions recited their handball and won a landslide victory (38-13). A good habit that the most successful club in France (24 national titles) does not want to lose. We cannot innovate in all areas.