“The partnership between urban France and the French Basketball Federation reflects the new governance of sport”

Localtis – Why an agreement between Urban France and the FFBB?
Roselyne Welcome – For urban France, this is the second agreement signed with a sports federation, after that concluded with the French Athletics Federation. It is a concrete translation of the new governance of sport. Our desire and that of the FFBB consist in combining our political strategies, so we are going to strengthen equipment in metropolitan and urban areas, but this also concerns peri-urban or even rural areas, because, in a metropolis, half of the municipalities are in makes villages.

The agreement relates in particular to the development of three-on-three (3×3) basketball. Why this particular axis?
The 3×3 is a derivative of the practice of the 5×5 and truly corresponds to the expectations of young populations, with a free practice on open spaces, but despite everything attached to the public service. The 3×3 will integrate the Olympic Games in 2024 and we want to offer it to the inhabitants of this great playground that is the city.

Concretely, how are you going to go about getting these lands out of the way?
The idea is to identify former outdoor basketball courts, for example, or abandoned tennis courts. All in connection with the National Sports Agency (ANS) which provides financial support for this type of new equipment. In Paris, on the occasion of the signing of this partnership, we visited a rehabilitated site in a space that was open but did not meet expectations in terms of practice. The 3×3 pitches will remain in the spirit of the city-stadium, open, but they will be managed and maintained by the community. These will be quality equipment.

You mention co-funding from the ANS, but this almost exclusively targets urban policy priority neighborhoods (QPV) and rural revitalization zones (ZRR). Is it compatible with your ambition?
Urban France pays particular attention to QPVs, which are under-equipped and for which there is a significant expectation of free-access equipment. The ANS will also process files for equipment located in the ZRR but also near the QPV, either one or two kilometers away, because we believe that the city’s policy involves a fixed territory while certain insufficiently equipped areas are not located in QPV. We have therefore succeeded in getting the 5,000 local sports facilities plan to go a little beyond the priority districts.

The equipment covered by your agreement will therefore be part of the 5,000 local sports equipment plan?
Yes, the financing of this land through this plan is one of the axes of the signed agreement. The FFBB will finance part of the equipment, jointly with the ANS and the local authorities. In addition, within the framework of the new governance, still, the federation will be able to group together requests for a quantity of equipment instead of letting each community carry out its own file. Once the funding has been accepted by the ANS, the equipment will be installed in the territories through discussions between the communities that have applied and the FFBB. It is interesting to have these concordant and concerted strategies and normally optimized efficiency.

What are the quantified objectives of this agreement and can we mention an average cost for this type of equipment?
The convention wants to be alive and evolving. However, we want to build around fifty pieces of equipment over three years. As for the budget, on the site visited in the XIX^e arrondissement of Paris, to build three 3×3 pitches, it cost 50,000 euros with rehabilitation of the ground and basement as well as a design by local artists selected via a call for projects. If we were to build a gymnasium in Paris, it would cost several million euros. We therefore take back abandoned spaces, this makes it possible to recover concrete platforms, which is also interesting in the context of the “zero net artificialisation” made necessary by the ecological transition.