Stade de France concession: Vinci-Bouygues consortium's appeal rejected

The State, owner of the Stade de France, had in fact announced at the beginning of December that it had chosen the Lyon company GL Events for exclusive negotiations with a view to awarding it the concession for the stadium located in Saint-Denis for thirty years.

Dissatisfied, the current dealer, who must return the keys at the beginning of August, had decided to refer the matter to an administrative judge for interim relief to challenge the procedure launched in March 2023, considering in particular that there had been unequal treatment between the candidates.

In its order, the Montreuil administrative court rejects one by one the arguments of the current concessionaire, both those on the insufficient economic capacity in its eyes of its rival and those of failings attributed to the State in the conduct of the procedure.

"Given this level of activity in the management of event venues, it was without committing a manifest error of judgment that the granting authority was able to consider that the group had sufficient economic and financial capacity to operate the Stade de France", write the administrative judges, for example.

"The State did not make a manifest error in assessing the technical and financial capabilities of GL Events Venues," according to the court. GL Events has won several contracts in the context of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The State's specifications prescribe in particular work to renovate this venue which needs to be modernised, and which will have to continue to host matches of the French football and rugby teams.

"The interim relief judge dismisses all the arguments by which the Consortium argued that the State had failed in its obligations of publicity and competition," the court wrote in the press release explaining its decision.

The current consortium, two-thirds owned by the construction group Vinci and one-third by Bouygues, was granted a 30-year term in a hurry between the two rounds of the 1995 presidential election. Numerous disputes followed, costing a lot of public money.

In 2023, the State had initially launched two procedures in parallel: one to sell the stadium and the other to renew the concession. Due to the lack of a candidate for the purchase, the sale procedure was abandoned.