The financial gendarme of the National Basketball League considers that the club, which evolves in Proa, does not present a sufficient financial guarantee “as for the continuity of exploitation”.
Le Monde with AFP
Elan Béarnais, the Pau-Orthez basketball club, will be administratively demoted. His commitment to the 2022-2023 season in the French Proa championship, as well as at the lower level, the PROB, was refused for financial reasons, announced Thursday, June 22, the National Basketball League.
In a press release, the body evokes “the absence of a [financial] guarantee as to the continuity of exploitation of the club”, while adding that he had “the possibility of formulating a request for graceful appeal before the Superior management board to contest this decision “.
If the decision should be confirmed, the club would thus be forced to leave the national professional level and would be close to the federal amateur level.
The Béarnais momentum is a historic club of French basketball with nine titles of champion of France and a European cup in 1984. He won the Coupe de France this year and summer semi-finalist of the French Proa Championship.
Club control had been sold a year ago by the Pau-Pyrénées Agglomeration Community, the City of Pau and the community of Lacq-Orthez communes at the US investment fund Counterpointe Sports Group, now majority shareholder.
According to the National Directorate of Council and Management Control, the financial gendarme of the National League, the club displays a highly deficit operating result. The daily “La République des Pyrénées” had mentioned, in mid-May, an operating deficit of more than 2 million euros on a budget of 7.8 million. “We asked that the net situation be at least at the ‘Balance, “said Team Philippe Ausseur at the start of the week, the president of the DNCG.