While the French public authorities have never been so heavily involved in the construction of sports venues, particularly for Euro 2016 (Allianz Riviera, Stade Atlantique Bordeaux Métropole) and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (adidas arena, Stade Bauer, etc.), clubs and venue operators are increasingly recognizing the importance of bringing their facilities to life beyond two event dates per month. The stadium of tomorrow will be a place for everyday life — or it will not be.*
Today, sports facilities such as the stadiums of France’s largest clubs represent enormous investments that are extremely difficult to make profitable. Long supported by public authorities, the development of public-private partnerships to build stadiums ahead of Euro 2016 changed the landscape. Private stakeholders now need to generate a return on investments in stadiums that are sometimes oversized (Matmut Atlantique), often located away from city centers (Allianz Riviera), but above all, used far too infrequently.
Diversifying these venues has long involved developing activities alongside the sport for which they were originally built. Some stadiums are used by several teams from the same city when schedules allow, such as FC Grenoble Rugby and GRENOBLE FOOT 38 at the Stade des Alpes. This model already exists abroad, such as in Italy, where the two legendary clubs FC Internazionale Milano and AC Milan share San Siro. The largest stadiums are also occasionally used to host major concerts, adding a few dates to an otherwise very sparse operating calendar that is a long way from that of concert venues. Others try to leverage their structural characteristics to differentiate themselves. This can mean occasionally hosting matches involving other clubs from the area, such as Paris Basketball at Stade Roland-Garros or Metropolitans 92 at Plenitude Arena. Equipped with a state-of-the-art screen and connectivity infrastructure, the San Jose Earthquakes Soccer stadium in MLS, for its part, broadcast the biggest matches of the 2018 World Cup live to several thousand people who came to experience the stadium atmosphere. Alternatively, many stadiums offer seminar packages to local businesses, providing a unique experience outside matchdays, or host trade shows, such as Sportem at Stade Jean Bouin last month. Every type of event can help offset the costs of facilities that are otherwise used far too infrequently. Once the financial opportunities for monetizing the infrastructure have been exhausted, public authorities — often stakeholders in these venues — then use them to host regional amateur sporting competitions.
The challenge for private operators is therefore to find ways of bringing their stadiums to life on more than twenty dates per year. To do so, many are beginning to draw inspiration from the American model. Some venues are attempting to become places for everyday life — in other words, entertainment and consumption destinations at the heart of the life of the “city,” becoming part of the daily life of the neighborhood in which they are located. Turning a stadium into a place that generates emotion every day serves several objectives: monetizing the real estate asset through additional revenue streams, increasing attendance at the stadium on event days, and diversifying the revenues of clubs or operators, which are too often dependent on the sporting performance of the team.
When it comes to transforming a stadium into a place for everyday life, approaches differ from one venue to another. For some, the stadium should be the place where the community surrounding the resident club comes together. Stade Marcel Michelin in Clermont is simultaneously the home of ASM Clermont Auvergne, the location of its museum and club shop, a brasserie bearing the colors of the “Jaunards,” and a fine-dining restaurant dedicated to the world of rugby. It also sits alongside the club’s professional players’ training ground. In short, the stadium is a place for anyone who wants to live their passion for the Auvergne club on a daily basis. While this approach obviously ensures consistency with the club’s identity and reinforces the passion and symbolism attached to the stadium, diversification remains only partial, as the venue’s revenue-generating activities are still dependent on the team’s sporting results.
Conversely, other stadiums seek to distance themselves from their resident club and embark on a diversification process that makes them less dependent on the sporting results of the team that plays there. For some, the stadium is primarily an entertainment destination capable of generating emotion. Casinos, cinemas, esports arenas, shopping centers and even luxury hotels — stadiums around the world are not short of ideas in this regard. For others, diversification means becoming a key part of the surrounding neighborhood, particularly when the venue is located in an urban area. The new Stade Bauer in Saint-Ouen is a perfect example, bringing together retail, housing, healthcare facilities and more. The stadium no longer wants to stand apart from its surroundings, but rather to blend into the urban landscape. Others also choose to leverage their real estate footprint to accommodate businesses by creating coworking spaces or hosting permanent facilities, such as the Team Vitality esports team’s training center located at the heart of the Stade de France®.
The third major approach to the stadium as a place for everyday life follows naturally from the previous one. Sometimes, the stadium sees itself as an asset serving society and does not seek to generate additional revenue, but rather to provide a public service. Some stadiums are therefore integrated into sports facilities open to everyone, such as the future adidas arena, which will include gyms, outdoor basketball courts and bouldering facilities within its surrounding spaces. But this is not limited to publicly owned venues. Plenitude Arena, for example, was converted into a vaccination center during the Covid-19 pandemic and regularly hosts charitable events.
The challenges of turning a sports venue into a place for everyday life are therefore threefold: profitability, visibility and responsibility toward the community. But if we are talking about the profitability of such a strategy, what does this actually look like in practice? It is certainly difficult for a club to expand into business sectors it does not know, such as running a restaurant or climbing gym. But that is precisely why the value of a place for everyday life does not lie solely in the profitability of these individual activities. Venues most often operate through concession agreements, allowing them to receive a percentage of the operator’s turnover as rent. But new activities primarily mean new products to sell.
On the one hand, at a time when stadium naming rights are increasingly common, increasing the number of people visiting the stadium and its media visibility is an excellent way for operators to increase the value of naming-rights agreements, which can sometimes be worth several million euros per year. Naming can also apply to specific stadium spaces that are operated under concession agreements, such as a bar or restaurant. This provides a good way to offer partners additional day-to-day visibility in exchange for higher sponsorship revenues. The proposition can go even further, allowing a sponsor to operate part of the stadium itself. Automotive manufacturer Cupra, a partner of Racing 92 and Plenitude Arena, has taken its partnership as far as opening a dealership within the sports venue, alongside a daycare center and healthcare facility.
But beyond the B2B offering, the customer experience is also enhanced. And a satisfied customer is a customer who spends. What better way to attract new supporters than to bring them into the proximity of a place where collective passion and togetherness are experienced? Once attracted, supporters will also consume more: they are likely to spend more time within the stadium ecosystem on matchdays, while a better overall experience will increase their willingness to pay more for tickets or club products. The synergies are also clearly visible here. After visiting the ASM Clermont Auvergne club museum, a supporter may head to the club shop to buy a jersey and tickets for the next home game before having a meal or a drink at the club’s restaurant or bar just a few meters away.
That said, stadiums are not the only assets that clubs can leverage in this way. Although smaller and less prominent, some clubs operate their training facilities according to the same principles. The Rugby Club Toulonnais and its Campus RCT are a good example. Recently renovated, the Campus RCT is used to its full potential: hosting corporate seminars, welcoming foreign teams looking for a state-of-the-art high-performance training facility for their European fixtures, and hosting numerous charitable events. But it is through its new Club House that Toulon is taking the next step in diversification, with a bar, restaurant and several seminar rooms. This strategy is all the more relevant as real estate is becoming a key driver of club valuation, as illustrated by Paris Saint-Germain‘s efforts to acquire the Parc des Princes.
In short, stadiums have enormous operating potential. When owned by local authorities, they tend to be underutilized and made profitable through hosting local amateur competitions, which can sometimes have a detrimental impact on pitch quality for professional clubs. Conversely, clubs that own or control their own venues — whether through a public-private partnership, a concession agreement or direct ownership — have every incentive to maximize their value.
Creating places for everyday life is an essential component of growing a club’s revenues by bringing potential consumers into an environment designed to integrate them into the club’s broader consumption ecosystem. By diversifying its revenue streams, a club can therefore find numerous ways to grow them and, even better, further improve the customer experience.