This has been the soap opera of the summer, and it is far from over. The administrative demotion of the Girondins de Bordeaux to National 2 (fourth division) by the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), has stirred up the world of football and the local political sphere. As the start of the school year approaches, a new episode begins, that of the Matmut Atlantique stadium.
What will Bordeaux Métropole do with the 42,000-seat sports arena, the largest stadium in western France? The question is now on everyone’s lips, and no one has an answer yet. Built in 2015 as part of a thirty-year PPP (Public-Private Partnership), the stadium is owned by the Bordeaux metropolitan area, but is operated by SBA, a subsidiary of the construction groups Vinci and Fayat.
An unprofitable model
The operator’s income is therefore not directly linked to the Girondins: the resident club pays rent of 4.7 million euros per year to the Métropole, which then pays an annual fee of 11 million euros to SBA. The latter then retrocedes 4.5 million euros per year to the Métropole, for its commercial activities. By also reimbursing the operator for the taxes and duties it owes (1.1 million per year), the Métropole pays out a “residual cost” of around three million euros each year, or just under 90 million euros over the entire duration of the partnership, before becoming the full owner of the structure in 2045.
But that was before the Girondins’ collapse. Because in the event of the resident club’s rent being stopped, which is the case, the club no longer having the means to assume this charge, this arrangement forces Bordeaux Métropole, and therefore the taxpayer, to compensate for the net loss. Here are the cards completely reshuffled, even if the economic model had already not been profitable for several years, with SBA’s cumulative losses being estimated at around twenty million euros since 2015.
“Matmut Atlantique has fulfilled all the objectives assigned by the community”
In a press release published at the beginning of August, the operator does not consider itself responsible for the situation.
“The Matmut Atlantique has fulfilled all the objectives assigned by the community in terms of major sporting and cultural events, of national and international scope,” he wrote. “It will have allowed the region to benefit from the spin-offs of Euro 2016 football, the 2023 Rugby World Cup, the European Rugby Cup, the 2024 Olympic Games, the Top 14 semi-finals (three times), the final of the Football League Cup, the French football and rugby teams and the greatest national and international artists in concerts.”
It has also become “one of the leading places for organizing seminars and business conventions in Bordeaux.” Each year, Matmut Atlantique represents “around 150 jobs (full-time equivalents) for the region and financial spinoffs of several tens of millions of euros for local economic players.”
“Critical situation”
Today, SBA is calling on Bordeaux Métropole “to quickly bring together the stakeholders in the operation of the stadium in order to analyse, together, the consequences of this critical situation and to consider the solutions which can, if necessary, be proposed to respond to it.”
The first question that will need to be addressed will be that concerning the Girondins. Will they continue to play there? For SBA, the club, by giving up its professional status, “is giving up, at the same time, its status as a resident club of Matmut Atlantique” which leads “to the end of all agreements linking the professional club to SBA”. The club believes for its part that its “sporting project necessarily involves continuing matches at Matmut Atlantique”. Even if it means playing in a setting that risks ringing, often, very, very hollow…