The explosion of registrations in clubs slowed down by budget cuts

Fabienne’s weekly routine, 70, has enough to leave us speechless. Freshly retired, this Normandy spends five to six hours a week to chain frenzied racket games to the Associate Pilgist of Ouistreham (Calvados). Table tennis entered his life during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, at the time when the French buried champions Alexis and Félix Lebrun, bronze medalists. “Knight in front of the TV, I commented live matches on the phone with my grandchildren,” she recalls.

At the start of the next school year, Fabienne pushes the local club door: the five -table room is already full to crack. The Olympic Games had the effect of a gust. Flight, the cheesy image of the gaming game that no one took seriously. The Pongist Association is crumbling under calls and registration requests. A new audience, older, is participating in evening and weekend competitions. “Arrived at 157 licensees, we even had to refuse people,” said his president, Didier Gérard. The French Table Tennis Federation has indeed seen its workforce jump by 23 % at the start of the 2024-2025*. The rebound effect also affects other federations, more modest than tennis or football, whose disciplines shone in the Olympic Games. In the leading peloton, fencing and badminton obtained 19 % of new registrants*.

In Rillieux-la-Pape (Rhône), near Lyon, we had almost forgotten that the Club Saber in the Clair had seen Manon Apithy-Brunet hatch. In 2024, the fencer won the gold in front of another French, Sara Balzer. Each Olympiad, fencing is one of the most medalist three -color sports. And every four years, the Federation is experiencing a new peak of inscriptions. “At the start of the 2023 school year, we counted 46 licensees, and for the 2024-2025 season, we went to 75,” said Pierrick Zerbino, president of the club.

Retain new affiliates

Science says it: our mirror neurons activate in moments of strong emotion. These cells, linked to social behavior, push us to imitate the exploits of the champions. And the more they look like us – by language, age, etc. -, the more identification works. But the collective momentum can quickly run out of steam. For the federation of fencing, which loses a large part of its licensees in the years following the Olympic Games, the challenge will be to keep its troops. A loss linked, once again, to our brain: dopamine, hormone of immediate pleasure, falls as soon as the excitement fades. And with it, motivation.

Saber in the light, in Rillieux-la-Pape, would however like to attract more young people in the popular district where it is installed. And break the image of “rich sport” that sticks to fencing. Because the Paris Games recalled that sport was accessible to everyone and made it possible to federate the company, beyond the competition. To encourage the French, the State then launched the plan “Generation 2024”, a generous envelope of 300 million euros to renovate thousands of sports facilities by 2026.

But on July 15, 2025, it was the cold shower. In the presentation of his savings plan for the 2026 budget, François Bayrou announces an upcoming effort of nearly 44 billion euros. Among the targets, youth and sport missions will be amputated by 18 % of their means. “Completely disproportionate”, Cingle the president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, and ex-Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castera.

Dreams of broken medals

With the sections envisaged, sport would represent less than 0.2 % of state spending. Sports associations therefore rely on private resources: membership fees, event revenues … The fragile system is largely based on volunteer energy and has only 10 to 20 % of public money. Sometimes you have to spend up to twenty hours a week looking for sponsors for equipment and competitions. “It is mainly the municipalities and inter -municipalities that support sports infrastructure,” notes Alexandre Morteau, study manager at the Center for Sports Law and Economy. However, they must invest more and more to renovate an aging park. The stroke of the plane will complicate the task. »»

Public money also allows athletes to go up in grade, thanks to regional or departmental subsidies. And when the tap closes, the dreams of medals break immediately. Thus, in the spring of 2025, the Table Table Tennis club (Charente-Maritime) had to give up the national championship, for lack of subsidies from the department. High -level sport sometimes only holds a thread … budgetary.

* According to the National Institute of Youth and Popular Education (INJEP).