Le Coq Sportif out of the game? The French equipment manufacturer is in receivership and must find a solution within the next six months to avoid bankruptcy. We felt it coming since before the Olympic Games, the Swiss company Airesis, parent company, had not published its results and had been suspended from the Zurich stock exchange.
The Olympics saved Le Coq Sportif and made it dive at the same time. The enchanted parenthesis of the Games is closed and now it is the Romilly-sur-Seine factory and its 330 employees which risks closing.
Everyone lent money to the brand so it could be ready for the Olympics. Paris 2024 could no longer be said and the company was loaded with loans like an over-indebted couple : a Guaranteed loan from the State of twenty million euros in 2020, then another ten million in 2023 to avoid filing for bankruptcy, a loan of 2.9 million from the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games in May 2024 to manufacture the outfits and a loan of 12.5 million from the Public Investment Bank in July 2024 because the federations still did not have their outfits.
Find a buyer… French
By becoming the official equipment supplier, it was necessary to manufacture in a few weeks 150,000 outfits for athletes, as well as 220,000 complete outfits for referees. Consumer sales did very wellwith more than a million outfits sold in recent months. But money was still needed to make them and the revenues arrived when the loss hole was already gaping.
The solution will be to find a buyer. Discussions take place in secretbut a French investor would be needed if possible to save the brand but also its establishment in France since a large part of the production has returned to the country, to Romilly-sur-Seine.
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