Tenants
The Stade de France has no regular tenant other than the French national football and rugby teams. Repeated attempts to convince a professional football or rugby team to move there have failed so far. Paris Saint-Germain has remained at Parc des Princes under pressure from its parent company (pay-TV network Canal Plus) and the Paris city government.
However, the Paris rugby club Stade Français have now established themselves as a semi-regular tenant. They started by gambling on scheduling their Top 14 home fixture on 15 October 2005 against Toulouse at Stade de France. Stade Français's president, Max Guazzini, publicly said that the club would have to sell 25,000 to 30,000 tickets to break even. Three weeks before the match, 61,000 tickets had been sold, setting a French record for tickets sold to a league match for any sport, including football. The final attendance was 79,454, smashing the national attendance record for a league match in any sport by more than 20,000. Five minutes before the end of the Toulouse match, Guazzini announced to the crowd that Stade Français's scheduled home fixture against Biarritz in March 2006 would also be held at Stade de France. The Stade-Biarritz match broke the attendance record from earlier in the season, with 79,604 present.
Guazzini then booked the Stade de France for the same two league fixtures in 2006–07. The Biarritz match on 16 October 2006 drew 79,619, making this the third consecutive Stade Français fixture at the Stade de France to set an all-time French attendance record. The record was broken yet again at a match against Toulouse match on 27 January 2007, with 79,741 filling the stands. Stade Français went on to schedule three home matches at Stade de France in the 2007–08 season. For the 2008–09 season, they booked Stade de France for three home league matches and a Heineken Cup pool match. The number of Stade Français home matches at Stade de France increased again for 2009–10, with five Top 14 fixtures already announced for the stadium.
Even with the lack of a regular league tenant, the stadium's revenue increased greatly in 2007, as it was used extensively during the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France, where it hosted numerous pool matches, a quarterfinal match, both of the semi finals and the final.
The Lille OSC football team played all its "home" games in European competition during the 2005–06 season, both in the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Cup, at the Stade de France because its own stadium was then under renovation, and the only nearer alternative on French soil, Stade Félix-Bollaert, was not available as that ground's occupant, Lille's local rival Lens, was also participating in the UEFA Cup. Stade de France has hosted the Champions League final on two occasions: 2000 (Real Madrid 3 Valencia 0), and 2006 (Barcelona 2 Arsenal 1).
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