Where will Paris Saint-Germain play in the future? This is the question that continues to agitate Parisian news in recent weeks. Engaged in a standoff with the Paris town hall, refusing to cede the Paris region to the upper echelons of the capital club, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi did not hesitate to drop a bomb on February 8. “It’s too easy to say now that the stadium is no longer for sale. We know what we want, we wasted years trying to buy the Park. It’s over now. We want to move from the Park”. An unequivocal media release pushing the president of the Île-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, to survey the Ile-de-France mayors to find out if a project outside Paris could be proposed to PSG. Quickly, Aulnay-sous-Bois, a town located in the North-East of Paris, but also Gonesse (Val-d’Oise) then offered to host this future stadium…
First deputy of the Paris town hall, Emmanuel Grégoire, tried to calm this very tense climate. “What we want is to no longer interact with PSG through the press. The rest is in-between and I don’t want to comment through the press. PSG will never leave the Parc des Princes”. However, these statements do not prevent the Parisian club from accelerating, behind the scenes, to find a viable and satisfactory project. An ambition which could also be largely facilitated by Arctos Partners, new shareholder of Paris Saint-Germain since December 7. As a reminder, the Qatari owners have decided to sell 12.5% of the shares of the red and blue club in exchange for a little over €500 million. This Thursday, the American investment fund, through its managing director, Alastair Seaman, spoke at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London.
The new shareholder of PSG is pushing for a new stadium!
The opportunity for the new ally of the Qataris to clarify its objectives. “They spent €150 million on a new training center which will have no equivalent. The club enjoys a huge population base which provides the most talent in the world. These two data combined with the desire to invest in having a younger and more French team make the project financially interesting”declared the director of Arctos with this in mind before returning to the heated issue mentioned previously: the future Parisians enclosure. “There is a strong possibility of seeing PSG develop a new modern stadium in the suburbs. It’s in progress, we’re working on it with them.”then blurted out Alastair Seaman before specifying: “There are too many unsatisfied demands today and this project can solve the problem. It’s simple, actually: there is only one club in a city like Paris, which is one of the most visited in the world. This allowed their brand to become bigger than the local championship. Very few clubs are capable of achieving this..
A clear message confirming the desire of PSG and its new shareholder to leave the Parc des Princes in the coming months. Lately, The Team also detailed Arctos’ ambitions on the subject. The idea would, in fact, be to develop a stadium at the heart of a real estate project where there would be “hotels, restaurants, sports halls, offices, parks, a fan zone on match days, a shopping center”. An XXL project – reminiscent of that currently undertaken by Real Madrid with its Santiago Bernabéu – where other important events such as concerts, trade fairs or US sports meetings could also see the light of day. One thing is certain, Arctos Partners – with its experience within several American sports franchises (in the NBA: Utah Jazz, Sacramento Kings, Golden State Warriors, in the NHL: New Jersey Devils, Pittsburgh Penguins and in the MLB: Houston Astros , LA Dodgers, Boston Red Sox) – wants to have a say in this matter. It now remains to be seen whether this pressure for the construction of a new stadium will lead to significant new progress in the hours to come…
