The Girondins de Bordeaux should receive a new boost from Bordeaux Métropole. This Friday, a deliberation aimed at exempting the club from the rent of the Matmut Atlantique for this season will be proposed by Brigitte Bloch, Green Vice-President in charge of metropolitan facilities. It should be voted on almost unanimously, as in the last similar votesThis deliberation, which France Bleu Gironde was able to consult, will propose to “suspend the payment due date of 10/15/2024 for the 2024 – 2025 sports season (…) and postpone payment (…) until 10/15/2026”, when the club has emerged from the commercial court’s observation period, which lasts until January 31, 2025 and can be extended by six months.
This rent had already been considerably reduced by the metropolis in June 2023, going from around 5 million euros to 615,000 euros”. But even this sum “is no longer, under these conditions, financially sustainable for the club”, which presents “a net budget of 7 to 8 million euros”, as the president and owner Gérard Lopez said in an interview with France Bleu Gironde on September 16. The Girondins will therefore not pay rent, but will only pay SBA, the stadium manager, for the costs of organising National 2 matches.
22.2 million euros in late payment
Since October 15, 2020, the club has no longer paid its rent according to the originally planned schedule. With in addition rent exemptions in 2021, 2022 and 2024, this represents approximately 22.2 million euros that the Girondins have not paid to the community. A sum that Bordeaux Métropole intends to recover, by increasing the next rents by 2045, the date of the end of the club-Bordeaux Métropole agreement. Over the next 20 years, the Girondins will therefore owe approximately 140 million euros to Bordeaux Métropole (an average of 7 million euros per year).
It is not “not a waiver of debts, but deferrals”, said this Thursday on France Bleu Gironde, the socialist mayor of Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, Stéphane Delpeyrat-Vincent. “We are a bit against the wall, because if the club is liquidated, we lose everything. So we are a bit on a tightrope, this forces us to push back these rents and do everything to be able to bring the club back to the highest level.”
