Olympique Lyon kickstarts own music festival at Groupama

Article posted by Coliseum, July 25^th, 2019

Image: Groupama Stadium

French top club Olympique Lyon have joined hands with Olympia Production and created OL Production in order to host an annual festival at the Groupama Stadium.

The Groupama Stadium in Lyon, popularly known as Parc OL, has a capacity of 60,000 people. Home to Olympique Lyonnais, the stadium has spread its wings in recent times. The club have not only sold the naming rights to the insurance group Groupama for a reported €5-7 million per season, but have also opened the stadium for various events in order to augment their revenue.

That appears to have worked well already, as record numbers show, yet, a plan is in place to host an annual music festival at the venue from 2020 on, according to a report by Spielmacher.io

Football clubs have become some kind of brands that you can get across anywhere. Whether it’s the odd march, like world travel adaptors with club branding from FC Everton or even lingerie, or the players appearing as ambassadors for a movie from their movie partner, the report pointed out.

Branding is an essential element for any football club, because they have to gain revenue, growing revenue, in order to be able to still compete with all the competitors in the league – unless they do have a billionaire owner. But even then the brand is at the center of attention for those owners, the Spielmacher report said.

Traditionalists will say a club needs to focus on the sporting integrity and that is more important than ever. Yet, it’s illusionary to regard those clubs as mere sports clubs. They are companies, huge companies, and will strive for growth in every aspect, it added.

That’s an explanation for the newest development at Olympique Lyon and their Groupama Stadium. According to several sources from France and SportsPro Media, the club have now teamed up with Olympia Production to create a distinct company called OL Productions. This very company will be in charge of a music festival, which for the first time shall take place in an around the Groupama in June 2020.

The festival shall develop into an annual highlight for music fans. Whilst the ownership is shared between the aforementioned companies, they will choose board members and a a chairman in the near future, before working on the line-up for next year’s inaugural festival. At the moment, there’s no name for the festival, which might follow later this year, when the line-up is announced; and when the tickets go on sale.

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