The company specializing in events has definitively turned the dark page of the Covid years and achieved a turnover of 820.6 million euros over the first six months of 2024, an increase of 19%.
Event specialist GL Events earned 360 million euros from the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, for which it provided stands, electrified venues and even fitted out the Palace of Versailles, its chairman Olivier Ginon announced on Wednesday. Paris was “a crazy playground”as we don’t see “only once in his career”declared Olivier Ginon, on the sidelines of the publication of the half-year results of the company, based in Lyon and present in more than 20 countries.
GL Events has definitively turned the dark page of the Covid years and achieved a turnover of 820.6 million euros over the first six months of 2024, up 19%, and recorded a net profit of 45 million euros (+11%). These good results are partly driven by the contracts linked to the Paris Games, which are spread over several financial years: 50 million collected from 2023, 150 million in the first half of this year and the rest expected at the end of 2024 and the 2025 financial year, specified Sylvain Bechet, Finance and Investment Director.
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The “know-how”
GL Events, which, including subcontractors, employed 4,500 people for the occasion, had several contracts with the Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop), as well as with private partners for the pavilion. «House of America» or the athletes’ restaurant. The amount of these contracts had not been made public until now, the president of Cojop, Tony Estanguet, having refused to reveal them on behalf of the “business law”This had fueled speculation, Olivier Ginon being considered by some to be close to President Emmanuel Macron.
“Gossip exists, let’s let it speak”brushed aside the person concerned, emphasizing that he had picked up “contracts under call for tender” thanks to the “know-how” of his company, which has already participated in several Olympic Games, COP climate conferences and the Football World Cup in Qatar. Now, he is pleading to maintain the “Grand Palais ephemeral” (GPE) in Paris, a structure installed by GL Events on the Champ-de-Mars to house exhibitions during the renovation work at the Grand Palais and which must be dismantled by November 30.
“We have a 10,000 m2 building, designed by a great architect (Jean-Michel Wilmotte) who became iconic during the Olympic Games.”which cost 60 million euros, Mr. Ginon stressed. “We are arguing to keep it for three or four more years.”particularly during the work on the Beaubourg Museum, he added. Like other associations of defenders of the neighborhood, “Friends of the Champ-de-Mars” believe on the contrary that“a commercial structure like the GPE has no place” on this “garden and major historical site”and ask the Paris city hall not to change the agreement.
