Stade Français
Stade Français Paris, commonly known as Stade Français, is a French professional rugby union club based in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The club plays in the Top 14 domestic league in France and is one of the most successful French clubs of the modern era. The original Stade Français was founded in 1883. In its current form, the club was founded in 1995 with the merger of the rugby sections of the Stade Français and Club Athlétique des Sports Généraux.
Its traditional home is Stade Jean-Bouin, though the club has recently played some home games at the 80,000-seat Stade de France, taking anywhere from two to five matches to the larger venue each season since 2005–06. From 2010 to 2013, the team played temporarily at the 20,000-capacity Stade Charléty in Paris to allow a new stadium to be built at the Jean-Bouin site.
The team participated in the first French championship final in 1892, and went on to win numerous titles during the early 1900s. Stade Français spent about 50 years in the lower divisions of French rugby, until entrepreneur Max Guazzini took over in 1992, overseeing a rise to prominence, which saw the team returning to the elite division in just five seasons, and capture four French championships in seven years. After a financial crisis plagued the club in 2011, Guazzini sold a majority stake and stepped down as club president.
From 2009 to 2015, the team struggled, failing to reach the final phases. In 2015 the team not only reached the knock-out stages, they won all three of their games and claimed the Top 14 championship.
History
Stade Français was established in 1883 by a group of students in Paris. On 20 March 1892 the USFSA organised the first ever French rugby union championship, a one-off game between Racing Club de France and Stade Français. The game was refereed by Pierre de Coubertin and saw Racing win 4–3.However the club were able to make up for the loss the next season when the two teams met again in the final, with Stade Français winning 7 points to 3. The team quickly became a powerful side in the competition, featuring in every championship in succession until 1899, successful in 1894, 1895, 1897 and 1898.
From 1899 through to the 1908 season Stade Français would contest the championship final on seven occasions against Stade Bordelais, winning in 1901 and again in 1908. Stade Français also defeated SOE Toulouse in the 1903 season in Toulouse. Following a vast amount of success during the early years of the domestic league, after 1908 Stade Français would not make another final appearance until the 1927 season, when they were defeated by Toulouse 19 points to 9 in Toulouse. Stade Français would then go on to spend over fifty years in the lower divisions of French rugby.
While in the third division of the French leagues, entrepreneur Max Guazzini took over the club in 1992 with the goal of bringing back top class rugby to the city of Paris. Stade Français CASG was born in 1995 through the merger of the existing Stade Français club and another Parisian side, Club Athlétique des Sports Généraux. The team returned to the top division in 1995 which coincided with the appointment of head coach Bernard Laporte. By 1998 the team had reached the championship final, and captured their first title since 1908, defeating Perpignan 34 points to 7 at Stade de France. Laporte left the club to coach the national team, he was replaced by Georges Coste who was in turn replaced by John Connolly in 2000.
Connolly took the club to their first Heineken Cup final in May 2001, where they were defeated by the Leicester Tigers 34 points to 30 at Parc des Princes. Connolly left in 2002 and was replaced by South African Nick Mallet. Stade Français won the domestic league again in both 2003 and 2004. During the 2004–05 season Stade Français went close to winning both the French league and the Heineken Cup, but lost both finals; beaten by Biarritz domestically and by Toulouse in the European Heineken Cup after extra time in Scotland. Mallett soon returned home to South Africa and former Stade Français player and national captain Fabien Galthié was appointed head coach. Stade won the 2006–07 championship, defeating Clermont 23 points to 18 at Stade de France.
The club faced serious financial issues during the 2010–11 season due to the failure of an affiliated advertising company. In early June 2011, Stade Français temporarily avoided an administrative relegation to the amateur Fédérale 1 league when Guazzini announced a deal by which an unnamed investor, working through a Canada-based foundation, would purchase a majority stake in the club. However, the deal collapsed in scandal, with at least three people linked to the deal arrested. On the deadline set by France's professional league for a resolution of the club's situation, Guazzini announced a new deal, in which Jean-Pierre Savare, chairman of French security systems company Oberthur Technologies, purchased a controlling stake in the club. Guazzini stepped down as president in favour of Savare's son Thomas, remaining with the club as honorary president.
After six years of presidency, Thomas Savare officially handed over the position to Hans-Peter Wild. The arrival of the Swiss businessman put an end to a long story in Paris marked by the aborted merger with rival Racing 92 in March 2017. Upon his arrival, Dr. Hans-Peter Wild presented a 5-year project to the media, with the training of young French players as a priority.
The modern era: fan support, stadiums and communication
The Max Guazzini era
With the understanding that Parisians are reluctant to show loyalty, Max Guazzini first tried a new pricing approach in order to draw in regular spectators. In 1996, while Stade were still in the Group A2, he opened up Jean-Bouin free of charge. 7,000 people attended matches against Lourdes and Valence-d’Agen. After that, women had free entry for some of the matches. At the time, he stated: "In Paris, no club has ever had so many spectators. Even when Racing were French Champions, or about to be. I'd rather have 7,000 happy punters in our stadium than 200 with a fistful of francs. It's a question of philosophy." "Île-de-France is where more than 20% of our rugby fans live, and I think it's abnormal that the stadiums are empty. It can't go on!".At the same time as the question of prices, Guazzini envisaged the match as the main event in a family outing, and worked on activities before, during and after the matches: cheerleaders, music, jingles when points were scored, bells signalling the end of each half, a remote-controlled car bringing the tee to the kicker, the club's anthem,, etc. A professional showman, he enrolled Mathilda May, Madonna and Naomi Campbell as sponsors. This strategy was openly aimed at women and families, and it worked, with the number of women and children attending the matches increasing.
The Dieux du Stade calendar, which had famous players posing nude for black-and-white photos, made the news when it first appeared in 2001. The club has promoted the Stade Français brand through a line of clothing and spin-off products.
Since 2005, the star of the collection has been the pink jersey, in a colour considered the opposite of rugby virility, somewhat disconcerting the rugby world in September 2005, when the club's first-team players donned it for a league match in Perpignan. Despite the on-pitch defeat, Stade Français had scored a phenomenal commercial success. 20,000 of the jerseys, manufactured by Adidas, were sold in 2005–06. The following year, two new designs by Adidas were added: one of them pink, the other navy blue decorated with pink lilies. The lily design was added to a mobile phone case. The club's objective for 2006–07 was to sell a total of 100,000 jerseys.
In response to criticism that he was perverting rugby with such "provocation" and against his insistence on communication, including to those who declared they were defending the traditional spirit of the sport, Guazzini replied that if rugby was to become a genuinely popular and national sport, it needed to look beyond its natural audience: "The communication campaign is not aimed at long-time fans. They're not the ones we're chatting up - it's the others. We need to get the attention of everyone who isn't familiar with rugby. Or only knows it a bit… Or not enough… So we need an outside perspective. Rugby is no longer an amateur sport. We have to be creative. Preaching to the converted doesn't really work for me. ”Speaking of post-match reception, he took a swipe in passing at the keepers of the South West France flame: "The eternal temple, with its fanfare, foie gras and saucisson, is a bit outdated. We can't restrict ourselves to the culture of the South West, which doesn't represent all of France."
Guazzini nonetheless remained attached to certain traditions. Thus, from his arrival in 1992, he required players to wear the club's official blazer and tie. "I won't tolerate any sloppiness. Rugby tradition is jacket-tie, and I think that's a good thing."»
It took about ten years for the club to finally establish itself with fans. Almost all of Stade's home matches were sold out. Faced with the size limits of Stade Jean-Bouin, and still wishing to develop the club's popularity until they could find a new, bigger home, Guazzini set his sights higher. In April 2005, he wanted to play the quarter-final match of the European Champions Cup, against Newcastle, at Parc des Princes, located across from Stade Jean-Bouin. It was a complete success: the match was sold out.
Logically, therefore, Guazzini sought to repeat the success for a league match against Toulouse and a European Champions Cup match against Leicester in the autumn. But this time, the directors of Paris Saint-Germain were against the idea, fearing the rugby players would damage the pitch. Guazzini, annoyed and shocked by the lack of solidarity on the part of Stade Français's neighbours, stated that he would fill Stade de France. Using an aggressive sales strategy and effective communication, he did: on 15 October 2005, Stade Français Paris beat the world attendance record for a regular season rugby union league match. He would repeat this feat three times: against Biarritz, then against Biarritz again and finally against Toulouse.
In addition to the pricing policy, there was additional entertainment on display at Stade de France: thousands of blue and pink flags placed on the seats, famous singers and musicians, circus performers, giant karaoke, a parade of children from rugby schools in the Paris region each time the ball would arrive in a different and spectacular way, once in a chariot drawn by two horses, once by Miss France 2006 emerging from a giant egg in the middle of the pitch, dancers from the Moulin Rouge, wrestling bouts, the Gipsy Kings, fireworks after the match, etc. Each match was an excuse to come up with new, original ideas.
Detractors observed that it isn't hard to fill Stade de France with such low ticket prices. Pierre Blayau, President of Paris Saint-Germain, which refused to loan out the Parc des Princes in 2005, stated: "I find their communication a bit excessive. I don't know how many people would have tried to buy tickets if we had sold them for a PSG-Lyon match at three, five or seven Euros. Maybe 400,000".
The new Paris Saint-Germain management nonetheless agreed to welcome Stade Français again, for a European Champions Cup match against the Sale Sharks, on 10 December 2006. And in the end, the European Champions Cup match against Leicester was played at Stade Charléty. Stade Roi-Baudouin in Brussels and Stade Félix-Bollaert in Lens had offered their services, but the Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, a close friend of Guazzini and one of the club's financial backers, vetoed the idea, stating that Stade Français was a Parisian club and therefore should play in Paris.
Since 2004–2005, Stade Français Paris played ten league matches outside of Jean-Bouin, including five times at Stade de France and four times at Parc des Princes, in addition to the 2010–2011 season, almost entirely played at Stade Charléty. Three more matches were to be played at Stade de France during the 2007–2008 season against Clermont, Toulouse and Biarritz. Nonetheless, these gala matches could only be organised two or three times per year and couldn't hide what Max Guazzini considers to be Stade Français Paris's main problem: the absence of a real stadium entirely devoted to rugby, which was indispensable if the club was to develop in a serious way; a stadium capable of receiving the public with reasonably comfortable conditions was needed. For years, Guazzini canvassed the city of Paris with this goal in mind, asserting that the club risked dropping down to the Pro D2 again and threatening to resign if the city didn't agree. After repeated discussions and submissions, the planned new stadium was finally accepted by Paris City Hall on 29 March 2010. The building permit was granted on 12 May and demolition of the former stadium began as soon as the 2009/2010 season came to an end. With a 20,000 seat capacity, the new Jean Bouin was inaugurated on 30 August 2013, hosting a comfortable victory over Biarritz Olympique.
In April 2011, the magazine Le 10 Sport announced that the owner, Max Guazzin, had put the club up for sale. The club was suffering from serious financial difficulty, in particular due to the liquidation of Sportys, its advertising manager and minority shareholder.