Paris town hall wants to give “guarantees” to PSG so that it stays at the Parc des Princes

“We want to give guarantees to PSG, including for very long periods,” declared the first deputy of the mayor (PS) Anne Hidalgo, Emmanuel Grégoire, during a press point at City Hall.

PSG, engaged until the end of 2043 in a thirty-year long lease with the town hall, owner, considers the acquisition of the stadium essential to carry out its expansion project to 60.000 seats - compared to around 48.000 seats currently.

“We can make working hypotheses,” said Emmanuel Grégoire, referring to “legal variants” of “long-term rental”.

On the other hand, "the sale is not possible" because it would be "a choice for eternity" to remove the stadium from the "common heritage", he explained.

A week earlier in an interview with Le Parisien, Mr. Grégoire had nevertheless once again mentioned, among the "major options", the sale of the stadium, ruled out since January 2023 by Anne Hidalgo.

It was so that Nasser al-Khelaïfi, the president of PSG, "returned to the discussion table", he explained, deploring having "lost this link" with the club since the departure of general manager Jean-Claude White.

PSG says it wants to buy the stadium to take its economic model to the next level, following the example of several major European clubs, owners of their venue.

But the London club West Ham, resident of the Olympic stadium since 2016, "and other clubs (...) are not owners, and that does not prevent their development", argued the sports assistant Pierre Rabadan.

"PSG has already made investments in 2015" in the Park, "which means that the rent is very low", he recalled, evaluating it at "between 2 and 2,5 million per year".

Emmanuel Grégoire also took the example of the French Tennis Federation (FFT), "which invested (nearly) 500 million in Roland-Garros" without being the owner, for an "almost symbolic rent" in return.