Toulouse FC finished ninth in Ligue 1 this season, and club president Olivier Cloarec said on Tuesday that the result marked the club’s best league campaign since RedBird Capital Partners took over in 2020. He paired the sporting progress with a reminder that the club is being forced to do more with less, as the money coming in from television rights continues to shrink.
Cloarec said the wage bill has fallen by 20 percent compared with the previous year, while Toulouse is preparing for rights revenue to drop from 20 million euros to 4.5 million euros. “On fait mieux avec moins de moyens,” he said in French, adding that the club will have to adapt to the new reality. Toulouse’s budget stands at about 50 million euros, which Cloarec described as the 12th budget in Ligue 1, a level that helps explain why the club is leaning so heavily on tighter spending and infrastructure.
That push is clearest at the new performance centre the club is building near the Stadium on the Île du Ramier. Toulouse bought the site in 2022 and work began on 4 January 2024, with the project initially due to open in July 2025. Cloarec said the club is now on schedule and should enter the building in December 2026. The centre will replace the former Daniel-Faucher university restaurant, abandoned since 2001 and covered in tags, and will rise over five levels across 3,300 square metres.
The facility is meant to serve both the men’s squad and the women’s team, who were promoted to D1 in spring 2026. It will include a hydrotherapy complex and a hypoxic chamber, underscoring how much Toulouse is trying to modernise every part of daily training. Viktor Bezhani said the club will lean on the new centre for “entraînement invisible,” recovery and athletic development, while Cloarec called it an important tool for persuading players to stay or come to the club.
There is, however, a gap between the polished timetable and the reality that delayed the build in the first place. Damien Comolli paused work on 3 September 2024 because of the financial crisis hitting French football and Toulouse itself, after the sharp fall in TV income made the project harder to carry. Comolli left Toulouse in May 2025 and later joined Juventus in Turin, before RedBird Capital Partners announced its forthcoming takeover on 2 July 2025, a move that became effective a few weeks later. The club is now trying to prove that careful spending, a modest budget and a new training base can keep it moving forward even as the wider league economy contracts.
