Groupama Arena: the profitable stadium

Could a football stadium be profitable in Hungary? It seems to be entirely possible, reports mfor.hu. The growing income this year at the Groupama Arena seems to prove that.

In Hungary, building football stadiums is a very controversial matter, mostly because the government is spending billions from the public fund to build or renew several stadiums, and somehow the costs are always rising, without any explanation. Read more about this in our article: Hungary is a rich country, stadiums are built for 1 billion euros. 

Although it has become harder than ever to find a facility operator, there is still one football stadium in the country that is very profitable: the Groupama Arena.

The Groupama Arena is home to the most famous Hungarian football club, the Ferencvárosi TC. The stadium was inaugurated in 2014 and received the best venue award a year after that. It is located in Budapest and has a capacity of over 23,000 people.

In 2016, only two years after it was opened, the stadium was already profitable, with 10 million euros in sales returns. Last year’s profits were even higher, thanks to the facility operator, Lagardere Sports Hungary Ltd. Of course, just the football matches would not be enough to make this happen. The Groupama Arena can hold many other events, like concerts, weddings or conferences.

In 2017 the proceeds reached almost 11 million euros, but personnel and material costs were rising too. They spent 9.7 million euros on materials and services, 4.7 million on maintenance, 200,000 on consulting, 170,000 on marketing and 2.7 million on other expenses.

The facility operator managed to reach these results with fewer employees than the year before that. They lowered the number of employees from 19 to 15, but raised their salaries.

The salaries have grown by 54%, from the previous 519,000 Ft/month (1,600 euros) to 799,000Ft/month (2,500 euros). This is even more impressive than the 46% growth seen at the Puskás Academy.

Overall, Lagardere’s profit has risen to 140,000 euros, from last year’s 117,000 euros.

Featured image: commons.wikimedia.org

Source: mfor.hu