Source L'Equipe | Régis Testelin | October 19, 2018
"In 2012, our player assets were estimated between 7 and 8M€, today two companies have estimated them at around 160M€"
The true value of Ligue 1 clubs: "Our stars have a relative impact" (Jean-Pierre Rivère, president of OGC Nice)
Estimated value: €130M - The Gym has multiplied its assets by five since 2012. But, according to its president, Jean-Pierre Rivère, the exposure of players like Hatem Ben Arfa or Mario Balotelli has not had much impact on its valuation.
NICE - In July 2011, Jean-Pierre Rivère invested €12 million in OGC Nice to buy 51% of the club's shares, which at the time valued the Gym at €24 million. Today, according to our study, the club is worth 130 million euros, a figure that seems close to reality in the eyes of the current management. In seven years, OGCN has multiplied its assets by five. This is the result of our work," said Jean-Pierre Rivère, still president, but no longer majority shareholder of a club that passed into the hands of a group of Chinese-American investors in 2016. The first year, we ate the €12 million I had put in, and the second year we left with zero cash flow. In 2012, our player assets were estimated at €7-8M, Today two companies have estimated it at around 160 M€. ", he continues. A figure that should be taken with caution, too.
"It was the sportsmanship that guided us, the marketing side came far behind."
With its players' assets, its brand new training center, its store at Place Masséna, its population pool, its history and its new stadium (the Allianz Riviera, which does not belong to it, but enhances the whole), the Gym has everything it takes to be an attractive club. Its personal touch is this way of attracting names, since 2012: Claude Puel, Lucien Favre and Patrick Vieira on the bench; Hatem Ben Arfa, Mario Balotelli or Wesley Sneijder, on the field. Has this influx of names helped to enhance the club's value, at least a little? " We never took any of the people you mentioned because they were names. Puel was the man to carry out our project, Favre his best successor and Vieira is in the lineage. We have always aimed as high as possible in our coaches, and they happen to have a name. But it was the sporting side that guided us, the marketing side came far behind." Despite this, Ben Arfa's 2015-2016 season (18 goals, 7 assists) has exposed the Gym as never before.
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And Balotelli is a brand. Balotelli gives the club an international image that is quite new," agrees Rivère. He even opens doors for us in the United States. But we never took him for that. When we take Ben Arfa or Balotelli, it's because we think we'll get them back on track, thanks to our coaches and our environment. We don't think marketing." The Gym remains the only mid-level club to afford stars in this way. " We have opened a way, it's true," adds the president of Nice. And has this benefited the club's value? " When a buyer is interested in a club, he looks at all its components and the stars under contract are part of the whole. But it has never been a motivation for the club to increase in value. And then, if it has an impact, it is relative."
