In March 2019, for the 29th day of Ligue 1, the Strasbourg team moved to Nîmes. A few days earlier, the prefect of Gard issued an order prohibiting Alsatian supporters from going to the city center. They can come to the stadium by car or bus, but without going through the center. The prefecture invokes “risks of incidents likely to disturb public order due to a political ideological antagonism between the ultra supporters of the Nîmes and Strasbourg clubs “.
88 Strasbourg ultras ignored it. Among them, Franck *, 25 years old. “We arrived by train, but the station is in the city center, explains the young man. An impressive number of police were waiting for us. They took us to the police station and we couldn’t watch the game. “
Some time later, the young man receives (as well as the other arrested supporters) an administrative ban on the stadium, signed by the prefect. For three months, he will no longer be able to go and support his team away from home. He must point to the gendarmerie at each half-time. “On my identity card, was the address of my parents, relates Franck. So I had to go every week to the gendarmerie in their village, which is 25 minutes from my home. “
During the Lille-Strasbourg match on September 25, 2019, Franck planned to come in at half-time, precisely as provided for in the prefect’s decision. That day, he should have done it at 7:45 p.m. since the match started at 7:00 p.m. But at 5.30 p.m., a phone call from the gendarmerie shook up his plans: “Can you come over right away? We’re going to close soon.” And Franck to go check in … before kick-off. One of his comrades, he says again, had to check in on Saturday because the gendarmerie was closed on Sunday.
“It’s completely ineffective”, judge the lawyer of the National Association of supporters, Pierre Barthélémy. The latter had almost all the administrative stadium bans issued against the Strasbourg ultras to be canceled. The judgment, which the Investigation Unit of Radio France was able to consult, considers that the supporters had committed “no serious act”. Nationwide, the number of cancellations is edifying. According to a newspaper count The team, 75% of supporters who challenge their administrative stadium ban, win their case in court, either for lack of evidence or because the acts are deemed insufficiently serious to justify such measures.
Apart from the prefect and the courts, clubs also have the possibility of banning certain supporters from the stadium, since the enactment of the Larrivé law in 2016. The subject has long been taboo, because refusing to sell a ticket to an individual, or to cancel a subscription, it is to run the risk of dissatisfying the associations of supporters, in particular the ultras, which the clubs need to ensure the spectacle and to bring the public. As a result, very few clubs so far have communicated on the stadium trade bans (ICS) except for club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), apparently anxious to show that they are taking action against violence. However, faced with the upsurge in incidents, some now agree to reveal their figures.
We were thus able to establish that PSG had issued 230 stadium commercial bans since the start of the season. The latest to date affect the Block Parisii ultras. In Marseille, the club told us that 27 of its supporters were subject to a stadium ban, all procedures combined (commercial, administrative and judicial bans). In Lyon, there are 10, as in Saint-Étienne. In Lens, several dozen, and in Bordeaux, two stadium commercial bans were pronounced in 2020.
The public authorities encourage the clubs to pronounce ICS but many interlocutors that we were able to reach judge them “ineffective”. “These measures are display”, told us on condition of anonymity the security manager of one of the big Ligue 1 clubs. “In fact, it is useless because we do not have the means to control them, he continues. Even if we have the buyer’s name on the ticket, there is no guarantee that this is the person who turns up. “ And for good reason: the stewards are not authorized to check identity documents, moreover the tickets are generally non-nominative.
A Lensois supporter that we will call Martial, thus saw his subscription to the Bollaert-Delelis stadium suspended following the Lens-Lille derby of September 18, 2021. With a hundred supporters, he invaded the lawn at half-time to go rub shoulders with Lille supporters. The latter had torn seats from the visitors’ stand and threw them at the Lensois.
The Racing Club de Lens suspended Martial’s subscription, as well as that of dozens of other supporters. “I can’t go to the stadium with my own pass, but I could very well go with a friend’s one who doesn’t want to go to this or that match”, remarks Martial. He claims not to have done so, although it is technically possible.
The more so as the stewards belong more and more often to private security companies. “They do not know about us, insists Martial. They couldn’t detect a fraudster among 40,000 supporters. ” A police source confirms it to us: “The clubs are unable to prevent their stadium bans from re-entering.” And to conclude “frauds exist much more than one thinks”.
* The first name has been changed