French soccer’s FFF governing body has announced that the Stade Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille will host the final of its 2023-24 Coupe de France knockout cup competition for the very first time.
It marks the first time in the competition's history that its showpiece final has been held away from the wider Paris area, with the Stade Pierre-Mauroy situated in Lille, in the Nord department of France’s Northernmost Hauts-de-France region.
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The cup final was originally set to be staged at Paris’ Stade de France on May 25, however, it necessitated relocation due to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Paris 2024 is set to begin on July 26 but will require extensive usage of the Stade de France and preparatory work will be carried out on the stadium coinciding with the Coupe de France final date.
The 50,186-capacity Stade Pierre-Mauroy, home of six-time Coup de France and four-time Ligue 1 winners Lille OSC, has been known as the Decathlon Arena for sponsorship reasons since the beginning of the 2022-23 season.
Decathlon agreed a five-year naming rights deal for the stadium in June 2022, with the stadium owners (the European Metropolis of Lille) having first launched the tendering process for a naming rights partner for the stadium in 2019.
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By GlobalDataThe Stade Pierre-Mauroy is one of the newest in France’s top-tier Ligue 1, having opened in 2012, but the reported value of the naming rights deal ($1.3 million per year) is much less than the going rate of between $2million and $3million for a similar stadium in France, owing to the “political compromise” of removing former French prime minister Pierre Mauroy’s name from the ground.
Other stadia considered by the FFF reportedly included the 59,186-capacity Parc Olympique Lyonnais, however unlike its owners, Olympique Lyonnais, Lille OSC has already been knocked out of the Coupe de France and as such no side will benefit from playing on familiar territory in the final.
Since the opening of the Stade de France in 1998 every edition of the Coupe de France final has been staged there, while Parc des Princes, also in Paris, had hosted the finals from 1972 through 1997.
Before this, the Stade Yves-du-Manoir in Colombes (a Paris suburb), and the Parc des Princes had held practically every edition of the 107-year-old competition, signifying the dominance the French capital has always held over soccer event hosting in the country.
