The capital club is studying several site projects where it could build a new stadium. It should designate one or more preferential options by the end of the first quarter.
“The dry sale of the Parc des Princes is no longer an option”. With these words, Pierre Rabadan reexpressed to franceinfo: sport, Thursday January 23, the clear intention of the Paris town hall not to cede the stadium, of which it is the owner, to Paris Saint-Germain. Negotiations have been at a standstill between the two parties in the matter for two years.
The club's position is clear: “If we want to be competitive with other European clubs, we have to have our own stadium.”said PSG president Nasser al-Khelaïfi on RMC in January 2024. Since the president announced last November, still on RMC, that “the town hall left no other choice” than starting from its historic lair, the capital club has stepped up its prospecting work in order to find the suitable site and “build as quickly as possible” its future stadium.
According to our information, a short-list of preferential sites will be revealed before the end of the first quarter of 2025. Originally, according to our information, PSG wanted to designate the winning project this January. But the number of applications submitted by towns and cities in the Ile-de-France region has increased and the club has extended the deadlines. Three official candidacies stand out as the most credible at present.
Previously embodied by Montigny-le-Bretonneux, the candidacy of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines is the oldest. Discussions are taking place “for almost two years”insists Jean-Michel Fourgous, president of the urban community, located about twenty kilometers west of the Parc des Princes. In Essonne, the towns of Ris-Orangis (around thirty kilometers south of the Park) and Massy (around twenty kilometers) formalized their candidacy more recently, but believe they have a good chance of believing in it. They are in any case more concrete than the hypotheses leading to Poissy (Yvelines, nearly 30 km from the Park), Aulnay-sous-Bois (Seine Saint-Denis, nearly 30 km from the Park), or to the Saint -Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine, less than 7 km from the Park).
PSG, which is pursuing its objective of establishing itself as a major European club, intends to play in a stadium more imposing than the Parc des Princes and its 48,000 seats. If a future venue emerges, it will be necessary to count on a capacity of between 60,000 and 90,000 places including 10,000 in boxes (compared to 5,000 currently), knowing that these are the ones which generate the most income. The starting point for the Parisian club's thinking is economic. Compared to its main rivals on the European scene, its current stadium is smaller. PSG is not the owner, even though it has the highest revenue per seat in Europe.
-“The key in this matter is Arctos”breathes a long-time observer of the file. The American investment fund, minority shareholder of the club since the end of 2023 (up to 12.5%), pushed Parisian leaders to accelerate the steps to own its stadium. A lot of thought has gone into establishing a sort of “PSG Land”, to use the term used by public observers. This project is designed so that the experience of coming to the stadium goes beyond sitting in the stands to watch a football match. A plot of land of at least 50 hectares is required for such a project.
Within the club, it is explained that once negotiations broke down with the Paris town hall, the possibility of imagining its dream stadium from A to Z had the effect of highlighting the constraints of the Parc des Princes. “It's a technically complex subject, recognizes Pierre Rabadan himself. It is a protected stadium, which has a unique architecture in the world with 52 sails fixed to each other, located above the ring road. Obviously it costs more than if you take any other stadium”.
Beyond the question of being the owner or not, the French champion club could not have extended the capacity beyond 57,000 seats. Despite the request made by the Collectif Ultras Paris, the main group of supporters of the club, not to leave the Parc des Princes, the club no longer hesitates to look several kilometers beyond the ring road.
PSG wants its stadium of the future and draws its inspiration from recent projects like that of Tottenham, which built its own hyper-modern enclosure and has been playing there since 2019. The idea is to “revolutionize the spectator experience”. A long road remains to be covered before seeing this new stadium emerge. Internally, we plan from here “seven to ten years”. The time has now come to identify the preferred site. Before starting a possible project, a whole work of in-depth studies must be initiated, which would take 12 to 18 months.
There is still a chance to see PSG continue its history at the Parc des Princes, where it has played since 1974 and from which it benefits from exclusive occupation and use until 2044. The capital club has not yet 100% ruled out the possibility of a purchase, but it is currently unlikely, with Anne Hidalgo categorically refusing the sale. PSG will then have to count on municipal elections in 2026 which would give a majority in favor of the sale of the Park, via a vote by the Paris Council. The latter voted for the heritage status of the stadium in February 2024 (no votes against). By then, PSG will have had time to make good progress on its new stadium project.
