The Stade de France and the AccorArena will notably be requisitioned for the Olympics and will not be able to host shows. The smaller Parisian venues will also face difficulties. “What measures will be open to these companies which are prevented from working?” asks the musical and variety show union.
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With just over seven months until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Parisian performance halls are worried about financial losses: some will have to close during the events, others will have to scale back and will be affected by traffic restrictions. . Malika Seguineau, the general director of Prodiss, the national union for musical and variety shows, alerted Thursday December 7 on franceinfo about the risk of financial losses for concert halls, estimated at nearly “150 million euros” in the year 2024, because of the Olympic events.
franceinfo: Do you share the concerns of Parisian theaters about the risks of financial losses in the summer of 2024, due to the Paris Olympics?
Malika Seguineau: It is rather the show producers here who share this concern, since the so-called important venues for our activities such as the Stade de France, Paris-La Défense-Arena and the AccorArena will be closed since they will be available for sports competitions, when it is usually a period of very high activity. Our show producers are therefore unable to use these rooms and we have also estimated the loss of net revenue at nearly 150 million euros for the year 2024.
Aren’t there solutions to avoid too big losses?
There are a lot of international artists who will not come to France next year. We have reached the end of discussions with international and French artists to arrange tour dates as much as possible (earlier in the year or during the fall) but there is a risk of significant traffic jams at other existing venues in France, and with lower gauges… therefore resulting loss of turnover and higher costs.
What about smaller venues?
For the other Parisian theaters, we will have the same difficulties as our friends in private theaters because the difficulties of access, we will have them for everyone. So indeed, there are questions: how do we anticipate activity months in advance in these places which are intra muros? How do we make our teams work? What measures will be open to these companies which are prevented from working? Will we be able to benefit from partial activity schemes again? These are really the questions that remain open. We were all assured that these Olympic Games would be aimed at all economic sectors. In any case, we have noticed for several months now that it is going to be more complicated for the cultural sector.
