Waldemar Kita, the president of FC Nantes and Frédéric Longuépée, the CEO of the Girondins. – LOIC VENANCE – SYLVAIN THOMAS / AFP
- FC Nantes (18th) welcomes the Girondins de Bordeaux (15th) this Saturday (1pm) on the occasion of the 36th day of Ligue 1 for a crucial match in the race to maintain.
- For several months, local actors have been moving to try to restore their former glory to these two monuments of French football. But the difficulties to be overcome are often very numerous.
- The projects of local buyers must most of the time be associated with foreign investors, which raises the question of the governance of the club.
All the supporters of France and Navarre love to hate him. Yet they all dream of having their own Jean-Michel Aulas. Having this local entrepreneur, crazy about his club and capable of anything for him to the point of making him a real institution and one of the biggest French clubs. All this far from petrodollars and other foreign investment funds. At the moment, in Nantes and Bordeaux, two clubs in the midst of a sporting and institutional crisis, we still dream of it a little more than elsewhere.
The supporters, but also the local authorities, in order to alleviate as much as possible the tensions around these two monuments of French football in danger. Before meeting at Beaujoire this Saturday (1 p.m.) for a crucial match in the race to maintain, the Girondins (15th) are five points ahead of the Canaries, play-offs, three days from the end of the championship. While waiting for the outcome of this season, the Bordeaux institutions have already gone from words to actions on the subject after the announcement of the withdrawal of King Street, the investment fund owner of the club, two weeks ago .
Since the town hall and the metropolis are in fact doing everything possible to influence the choice of the future buyer. “We would like to have a local guy,” says someone close to the environmentalist councilor Pierre Hurmic, it would be easier because he would know the whole environment. But the latter, if he gets out of the hat, would also have to face a number of obstacles.
A financial surface that is often far too fair
The first data to take into account is of course economic. Buying and then supporting a football club the size of Nantes or Bordeaux in 2021 is extremely expensive. We are talking here of several tens of millions of euros just for the purchase, even before running it on a daily basis. In the city of the Dukes, some of the club’s sponsors, who are local players, have federated for several weeks to prepare for the aftermath of Kita. The one who has been president of the club since 2007 has even been warned from the mouth of one of them, Philippe Plantive, so that he does not feel betrayed. Accompanied by other people including the former Nantes goalkeeper
Mickaël Landreau, the manager of the company Proginov (sponsor of the FCN) is working to find other investors in the region.
Large regional companies were surveyed. None has yet followed up, the uncertainties concerning the TV rights and the sporting sport of FC Nantes do not really help the risk-taking. “I broke my nose to find a major regional investor,” Plantive confided to West France in March. Those involved in this “project” of takeover, who have already met several times with the town hall of Nantes, quickly realized that relying solely on local investors would not be enough. “By pooling our savings, we could raise 10-15 million, but it is not enough to buy a club like the
FC Nantes [dont le déficit serait de l’ordre d’au moins 40 millions en fin de saison] », Always admitted Philippe Plantive in Le Courier from the Pays de Retz At the beginning of April. To date, a pool of local companies (still headed by Philippe Plantive) would have succeeded in raising funds (between 10 and 20 million euros).
A little further south, so-called “local” files have flourished since the announced departure of King Street. But big doubts remain about the financial standing of most of these candidates knowing that the Girondins have to deal with a deficit of nearly 100 million euros. So you have to have strong backs, very strong. In the past, takeovers by locals, for example, often took place after a bankruptcy situation, as in Strasbourg. Before you get to that point where the takeover costs next to nothing, it’s much rarer to see local investors take over a club.
For Luc Dayan, French leader having participated in several takeovers, “it is possible with medium-sized clubs [Nicollin à Montpellier, Delcourt à Dijon, Chabane à Angers, Romeyer avec Caïazzo à Saint-Etienne…] or Ligue 2, but much more complicated with very large clubs. “” In France, those who went there alone often lost a lot of money. I am thinking for example of Robert-Louis Dreyfus [Marseille] or François Pinault [Rennes] He adds. Today, the observation is also clear: PSG, OM, AS Monaco, OGC Nice or even the Girondins are the property of foreign investors.
A local beachhead with foreign funds?
However, in France, there are very large fortunes and sometimes well established locally as in wine in Gironde (Bernard Arnault or the Dassault and Rothschild families). But they “will not take this risk given the context, the instability of the football economy and the cost of the club. Afterwards, the call for the gathering of a François Pinault has the merit of existing, ”explains one of the candidates for the acquisition of the Girondins. Luc Dayan, him, points to another difficulty not to be overlooked:
In France, there is a big problem with the banking system which is afraid of football. He has a very bad image. There have been so many scams. Even if you are very, very rich, the banker or your advisers will answer you: “But you are crazy to invest in this!” “
A former leader of the Navy and White also adds that it is “often far too difficult to take on the political and media side alone”. On the other hand, “seeing local entrepreneurs get involved in a consortium is quite possible”.
Failing to have 100% local shareholders, the wish of the Bordeaux town hall would be to see this kind of mixed team between locals and foreigners take over the club. And it is for this reason that it closely monitors certain cases which it considers serious, such as that of Pascal Rigo, “the regional stage” as described by those close to Pierre Hurmic. This French businessman, who made his fortune in the United States, wishes to rely on local personalities in his project like Stéphane Martin (former president of the Girondins), while bringing together around the table of foreign investors.
The same goes for the Canaries where Philippe Plantive and his acolytes now have in mind this idea of governance shared with a majority shareholder from a foreign fund, which would have a much larger financial surface and who would agree to join forces with local sponsors. already federated and to supporters. They have also taken the language with many international funds, especially American but according to information from 20 minutes, none has (yet) given their consent to join, no doubt cooled by the vagueness that surrounds football in general and the FCN in particular. The quest continues …
Governance, the danger
Another major difficulty to overcome for a local buyer, if it is associated with other investors (local or not), is governance. For all the actors questioned on this subject, this is the key. “The whole question of the proper functioning of a club lies in this, recalls Luc Dayan, the shareholders must know how to stay in their place. It’s primordial. And we are not even talking about the integration of a popular shareholder base with members, as advocated by certain candidates for the acquisition of the Girondins de Bordeaux. It would be yet another difficulty to resolve. For example, if Pascal Rigo thinks about it, he insists on the fact that this can only be done in a second step as he confided to South West.
Girondins de Bordeaux: What does the withdrawal from King Street mean and what possible scenarios? https://t.co/f6iQcZZy46 via @ 20minutesBord pic.twitter.com/3wUyO6aKuF
– 20minutesbordeaux (@ 20minutesbord) April 23, 2021
For one of the potential buyers of the Navy and White, “it is possible to succeed in governing” but “it depends a lot on the profile of the investors who support you because each one must immediately understand what their place in the project is. »As he underlines,« the risk is indeed that everyone gives their opinion on everything and on the composition of Sunday to caricature the thing! For me, it is above all a question of organization so it is not unmanageable in the end. »Not unmanageable but much more complex than if you are alone at the helm.