YOU COULD MAKE a long bucket list of rugby hotbeds to visit based purely in France, never mind the rest of the world.
But if pressed to choose only a select few, Bordeaux would have to make the cut.
It’s a wonderful city, with its population of over 1 million people enjoying the world-leading cuisine and wine. It’s an architecturally beautiful place with fascinating history, and the Bordeaux city centre is a nice size. Not too big, not too small.
Joey Carbery has had his injury travails over the past two seasons with the rugby club, but you’d have to be a little jealous of him getting to live in Bordeaux with his young family for a couple of years. La belle vie.
And les Bordelais love their rugby.
The Stade Chaban-Delmas, where l’Union Bordeaux Bègles [UBB] play, is a wonderful, historic venue. It’s always full to its 32,930 capacity when the rugby team is there, which has been the case for years now, even before UBB took a place at the top table.
Indeed, Bordeaux’s average attendance is the highest in world club rugby, although Leinster – their opponents in Saturday’s Champions Cup final in Bilbao – come close.
UBB are currently on a run of 30 consecutive sold-out matches.
And as the Ulster and Munster fans who visited the Chaban-Delmas in the Champions Cup last year can attest, it is home to a frenetic, loud group of supporters. The UBB fans gather in a huge crowd at Place Johnston just outside the stadium before every game, forming a tunnel to clap and sing their team in upon arrival.
It sets the tone for a party atmosphere, with pints sold at reduced prices for the first 30 minutes after the stadium opens to fans, an hour and 45 minutes before kick-off. Anyone who checks in on the official UBB app gets points that accumulate and earn you rewards in the stadium.
Groups of supporters are involved in player contract announcements in the stadium before games or at half time, creating even more connection.
The UBB Village behind the north stand is always buzzing before games, with a DJ playing there after matches to keep people in the venue. The ‘Bodega’ area of the venue attracts lots of student and fans in their early 20s.
James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Leinster fans will be horrified to learn that Bordeaux’s mascot is called Léo and he is a lion. The ‘UBB Girls’ cheerleading squad are another popular presence at home games.
Even when they can’t be there to watch their team, UBB fans are thoroughly engaged. When the club played in the Champions Cup final in Cardiff last season, the authorities back in Bordeaux built a huge fan zone in the city centre with giant screens. The 20,000 free tickets were all snapped up within an hour of going online.
This year, the fan zone will be at Stade Chaban-Delmas, with 20,000 more free tickets. Again, giant screens will show the Champions Cup final against Leinster live, with music before and after the game, while supporters can buy food, drink, and merchandise.
Everyone wants to be at Chaban-Delmas these days. When UBB put their season tickets on sale for the current campaign, all 20,000 of them were sold within a day.
Despite the demand, ticket prices at the Chaban-Delmas remain very fair. You can attend a home game for as little as €7, even for the biggest games. The cost ranges up to €75 per ticket.
The art deco-style Stade Chaban-Delmas was previously best known as a football stadium, hosting World Cup games and also being home to FC Girondins de Bordeaux, but it is now regarded just as much as a rugby ground.
“The €10 seats in the corners attract young people, students,” says Yoan Leshauriès, a journalist with Bordeaux-based publication Sud Ouest. “These low prices help the club to fill the stadium every weekend.”
Sébastien Cailly, UBB’s head of media, brand, and corporate social responsibility, explains that the club believes this “strategic and identity-driven” ticketing policy is important in creating the cracking atmosphere at the stadium.
Club president Laurent Marti continues to see it as key to UBB being accessible to everyone.
“We welcome an extremely broad, diverse crowd,” says Cailly. “We get many families, sometimes spanning three or four generations, as well as an increasing number of women and young supporters.”
There are four giant screens inside the bowl of the stadium, meaning everyone can see replays, which can be an issue in other grounds.
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Marti has been the central figure in UBB’s rise. It is a young club, having formed in 2006 when Stade Bordelais, the seven-times French champions, merged with Club Athlètique Bordeaux Bègles Gironde [CABBG], who won two top-flight French championships.
Léo the Lion. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
Both of those clubs still exist as separate entities, running amateur and youth teams. UBB are proud of the history, but when Marti joined as president in 2007, he wanted the new club to create its own identity.
It helped that the clunkily-named Union Stade Bordelais-CA Bordeaux Bègles [USBCABBG] soon became Union Bordeaux Bègles [UBB].
Marti’s vision was that Bordeaux would play entertaining attacking rugby, and that has never changed. UBB fans are very proud of how their team continues to play under current head coach Yannick Bru. Their rugby is thrilling to watch.
That identity has been key to UBB continuing their growth in recent years.
“For the last few seasons, the backline made up of French national team players has attracted a bigger audience who may not have followed rugby before,” says Leshauriès.
Marti enjoyed success in business before linking up with UBB, earning his millions in the distribution of textiles, with that acumen key in the rugby club developing itself financially over the past 20 years.
UBB now has a network of around 850 partner companies that contribute financially.
“Most of them are local businesses,” says Cailly.
Everyone chips in, helping towards UBB’s declared budget of €39 million for this season, which is the fifth highest in France. This figure, which clubs report to the Ligue Nationale de Rugby, is for the entire limited company, so it covers every single thing it takes to run UBB. €10.7 million is the current Top 14 salary cap, although it will rise to €11 million next season. It is also worth noting that French clubs can exceed the base cap thanks to allowances for French internationals. UBB have a fair few of those.
Bordeaux are not short of a few bob, and they are one of the few rugby clubs in the world with positive recent results on the financial front.
UBB posted a profit of €1.5 million for the 2024/25 season, as revealed in the most recently published French rugby financial report.
The club has been increasingly ambitious in developing revenues in recent seasons, particularly through merchandising. The club’s branding is slick and their purple jerseys are very popular. Indeed, jersey sales doubled from 2023 to 2025.
There is a club shop at the Chaban Delmas, as well as six other outlets dotted around the stadium. UBB also has a big official store located on the Bordeaux riverfront in the city, as well as an online shop. The range of merch has expanded to 450 different items, including a ‘lifestyle and casual’ line.
UBB president Laurent Marti. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
UBB has also focused heavily on developing what Cailly calls its “B2B events business,” with the club’s events department organising seminars, corporate events and private events at Stade Chaban-Delmas, as well as Bordeaux’s training centre, the Ceva Campus, which was opened in 2018.
More important than anything has been Bordeaux getting good on the pitch. No one wants to support or invest in a bad team.
After the merger, they had crowds of only around 5,000 at the Stade André-Moga. They finished fifth in the Pro D2 regular-season table in 2011 but managed to win the play-offs and earn a place in the glamorous Top 14.
Leshauriès recalls how a team including foreign players like Heini Adams – still with the club as skills coach – Matthew Clarkin, and Blair Connor built a strong rapport with locals.
Cailly adds that, “The wider Gironde area already had a real rugby culture that was just waiting to reawaken.”
That proved to be the case. Marti moved most of the club’s games into Stade Chaban-Delmas, where they quickly drew attendances of more than 20,000. UBB survived in their first season in the Top 14 and then spent several years consolidating.
It was 2019/20 when they first began to emerge as a contender, and Bordeaux were actually leading the Top 14 when that season was cancelled due to the pandemic.
They were semi-finalists for the following three seasons, then reached the Top 14 decider in 2024, only to be hammered 59-3 by the great aristocrats of French rugby, Toulouse.
Last season, Toulouse needed extra time to shake Bordeaux off in the Top 14 final, but Bru’s men realised the emergence of their love affair with the Champions Cup by beating Northampton in the final, therefore claiming UBB’s first-ever trophy.
While all of this was happening, the hugely popular local football side, FC Girondins de Bordeaux, was unravelling. The club where Zinedine Zidane first announced his genius to the world, Bordeaux have won six French titles, with the most recent in 2009.
Leshauriès says they were “the long-standing emblem of Bordeaux sport,” but they fell on financial hard times and were relegated from Ligue 1 in 2024.
These days, Girondins de Bordeaux play in Championnat National 2, which is the fourth tier of French football.
Leshauriès says this has played “a significant role” in UBB’s ever-growing popularity, although Cailly believes that “there is definitely enough room for several elite clubs in a city like Bordeaux,” even more so given that the département of Gironde has a population of 1.7 million people.
UBB fans before the semi-final against Bath. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
He says that UBB actually want to see Girondins de Bordeaux back in Ligue 1 as soon as possible, creating more appetite for live sport in the area.
“And even though they are currently playing in the fourth division, they are still able to attract more than 25,000 supporters to the stadium, which is remarkable,” says Cailly.
But there is no doubt that the sporting stars of Bordeaux these days are the likes of Maxime Lucu, Matthieu Jalibert, Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Cameron Woki, Ben Tameifuna, Damian Penaud, and Nicolas Depoortère.
As highlighted by the 2011 promotion, Bordeaux have always leaned strongly on recruits from outside the area and outside France to make a big impact. The likes of Tamiefuna, Adam Coleman, Salesi Rayasi, and Carlu Sadie are important to the current side.
There have been a few foreign signings at UBB which go into the ‘dud’ category over the past decade, but this side of the organisation has certainly become more accurate. English number eight Tom Willis is another cracking signing ahead of next season.
UBB put a major focus on making sure that non-local players feel integrated and build strong attachments to Bordeaux.
Paris native Cameron Woki showed his promise with Massy before UBB lured him to the club in 2017. Now in his second spell with Bordeaux after a stint at Racing 92, Woki is clearly a UBB man through and through.
Louis Bielle-Biarrey was part of the Grenoble system until Bordeaux pounced for him in 2021, before he had made his professional debut. Marko Gazzotti had actually debuted for Grenoble before switching to UBB in 2023. Yoram Moefana made a few appearances for Colomiers before Bordeaux picked him up in 2019. The list goes on.
And even when Bordeaux sign French players who are already well established, they seem to become part of the furniture quickly.
Current skipper Lucu is a good example. He is Basque and became a stalwart for Biarritz before joining UBB in 2019. Now he’s something of a local legend in Bordeaux.
Brive native Penaud made his name in Clermont but has become synonymous with UBB since joining in 2023.
Yet it is also a point of pride for UBB that a handful of their own homegrown players have key roles in the team now.
Out-half Jalibert, who is in sensational form, is chief among them. Classy outside centre Depoortère, combative hooker Maxime Lamothe, and fellow front row Connor Sa are the four first-team players who have come through UBB’s academy to star in the pro game.
Bordeaux supporters are heavily engaged. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
France U20 centre Adrien Drault has played six times in the Top 14 this season, adding another homegrown player to the ranks.
This is, of course, a very far cry from a club with as strong a homegrown cohort as Leinster’s, but it’s important to UBB to have this representation of their own pipeline. Jalibert, Lamothe, and Depoortère are all French internationals.
“It’s always a source of pride for the Bordeaux fans,” says Leshauriès.
Marti and co. hope to see plenty more academy players breaking through in the coming years, with UBB’s current success and the increased popularity of rugby over football sure to result in more local youngsters chasing the dream.
It’s fair to say that things are going well for UBB, all the more so in the wake of last season’s Champions Cup success.
That trophy might have been seen as the culmination of a rise, but Bordeaux don’t see it that way themselves. They’re back in the final against Leinster this weekend, while there is major local appetite for a first-ever Top 14 title too.
There is no sense that this is a club ready to sit still after an impressive rise. UBB are looking up.
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€7 tickets, the fan experience, and thrilling rugby - Bordeaux's impressive rise
YOU COULD MAKE a long bucket list of rugby hotbeds to visit based purely in France, never mind the rest of the world.
But if pressed to choose only a select few, Bordeaux would have to make the cut.
It’s a wonderful city, with its population of over 1 million people enjoying the world-leading cuisine and wine. It’s an architecturally beautiful place with fascinating history, and the Bordeaux city centre is a nice size. Not too big, not too small.
Joey Carbery has had his injury travails over the past two seasons with the rugby club, but you’d have to be a little jealous of him getting to live in Bordeaux with his young family for a couple of years. La belle vie.
And les Bordelais love their rugby.
The Stade Chaban-Delmas, where l’Union Bordeaux Bègles [UBB] play, is a wonderful, historic venue. It’s always full to its 32,930 capacity when the rugby team is there, which has been the case for years now, even before UBB took a place at the top table.
Indeed, Bordeaux’s average attendance is the highest in world club rugby, although Leinster – their opponents in Saturday’s Champions Cup final in Bilbao – come close.
UBB are currently on a run of 30 consecutive sold-out matches.
And as the Ulster and Munster fans who visited the Chaban-Delmas in the Champions Cup last year can attest, it is home to a frenetic, loud group of supporters. The UBB fans gather in a huge crowd at Place Johnston just outside the stadium before every game, forming a tunnel to clap and sing their team in upon arrival.
It sets the tone for a party atmosphere, with pints sold at reduced prices for the first 30 minutes after the stadium opens to fans, an hour and 45 minutes before kick-off. Anyone who checks in on the official UBB app gets points that accumulate and earn you rewards in the stadium.
Groups of supporters are involved in player contract announcements in the stadium before games or at half time, creating even more connection.
The UBB Village behind the north stand is always buzzing before games, with a DJ playing there after matches to keep people in the venue. The ‘Bodega’ area of the venue attracts lots of student and fans in their early 20s.
Leinster fans will be horrified to learn that Bordeaux’s mascot is called Léo and he is a lion. The ‘UBB Girls’ cheerleading squad are another popular presence at home games.
Even when they can’t be there to watch their team, UBB fans are thoroughly engaged. When the club played in the Champions Cup final in Cardiff last season, the authorities back in Bordeaux built a huge fan zone in the city centre with giant screens. The 20,000 free tickets were all snapped up within an hour of going online.
This year, the fan zone will be at Stade Chaban-Delmas, with 20,000 more free tickets. Again, giant screens will show the Champions Cup final against Leinster live, with music before and after the game, while supporters can buy food, drink, and merchandise.
Everyone wants to be at Chaban-Delmas these days. When UBB put their season tickets on sale for the current campaign, all 20,000 of them were sold within a day.
Despite the demand, ticket prices at the Chaban-Delmas remain very fair. You can attend a home game for as little as €7, even for the biggest games. The cost ranges up to €75 per ticket.
The art deco-style Stade Chaban-Delmas was previously best known as a football stadium, hosting World Cup games and also being home to FC Girondins de Bordeaux, but it is now regarded just as much as a rugby ground.
“The €10 seats in the corners attract young people, students,” says Yoan Leshauriès, a journalist with Bordeaux-based publication Sud Ouest. “These low prices help the club to fill the stadium every weekend.”
Sébastien Cailly, UBB’s head of media, brand, and corporate social responsibility, explains that the club believes this “strategic and identity-driven” ticketing policy is important in creating the cracking atmosphere at the stadium.
Club president Laurent Marti continues to see it as key to UBB being accessible to everyone.
“We welcome an extremely broad, diverse crowd,” says Cailly. “We get many families, sometimes spanning three or four generations, as well as an increasing number of women and young supporters.”
There are four giant screens inside the bowl of the stadium, meaning everyone can see replays, which can be an issue in other grounds.
Marti has been the central figure in UBB’s rise. It is a young club, having formed in 2006 when Stade Bordelais, the seven-times French champions, merged with Club Athlètique Bordeaux Bègles Gironde [CABBG], who won two top-flight French championships.
Both of those clubs still exist as separate entities, running amateur and youth teams. UBB are proud of the history, but when Marti joined as president in 2007, he wanted the new club to create its own identity.
It helped that the clunkily-named Union Stade Bordelais-CA Bordeaux Bègles [USBCABBG] soon became Union Bordeaux Bègles [UBB].
Marti’s vision was that Bordeaux would play entertaining attacking rugby, and that has never changed. UBB fans are very proud of how their team continues to play under current head coach Yannick Bru. Their rugby is thrilling to watch.
That identity has been key to UBB continuing their growth in recent years.
“For the last few seasons, the backline made up of French national team players has attracted a bigger audience who may not have followed rugby before,” says Leshauriès.
Marti enjoyed success in business before linking up with UBB, earning his millions in the distribution of textiles, with that acumen key in the rugby club developing itself financially over the past 20 years.
UBB now has a network of around 850 partner companies that contribute financially.
“Most of them are local businesses,” says Cailly.
Everyone chips in, helping towards UBB’s declared budget of €39 million for this season, which is the fifth highest in France. This figure, which clubs report to the Ligue Nationale de Rugby, is for the entire limited company, so it covers every single thing it takes to run UBB. €10.7 million is the current Top 14 salary cap, although it will rise to €11 million next season. It is also worth noting that French clubs can exceed the base cap thanks to allowances for French internationals. UBB have a fair few of those.
Bordeaux are not short of a few bob, and they are one of the few rugby clubs in the world with positive recent results on the financial front.
UBB posted a profit of €1.5 million for the 2024/25 season, as revealed in the most recently published French rugby financial report.
The club has been increasingly ambitious in developing revenues in recent seasons, particularly through merchandising. The club’s branding is slick and their purple jerseys are very popular. Indeed, jersey sales doubled from 2023 to 2025.
There is a club shop at the Chaban Delmas, as well as six other outlets dotted around the stadium. UBB also has a big official store located on the Bordeaux riverfront in the city, as well as an online shop. The range of merch has expanded to 450 different items, including a ‘lifestyle and casual’ line.
UBB has also focused heavily on developing what Cailly calls its “B2B events business,” with the club’s events department organising seminars, corporate events and private events at Stade Chaban-Delmas, as well as Bordeaux’s training centre, the Ceva Campus, which was opened in 2018.
More important than anything has been Bordeaux getting good on the pitch. No one wants to support or invest in a bad team.
After the merger, they had crowds of only around 5,000 at the Stade André-Moga. They finished fifth in the Pro D2 regular-season table in 2011 but managed to win the play-offs and earn a place in the glamorous Top 14.
Leshauriès recalls how a team including foreign players like Heini Adams – still with the club as skills coach – Matthew Clarkin, and Blair Connor built a strong rapport with locals.
Cailly adds that, “The wider Gironde area already had a real rugby culture that was just waiting to reawaken.”
That proved to be the case. Marti moved most of the club’s games into Stade Chaban-Delmas, where they quickly drew attendances of more than 20,000. UBB survived in their first season in the Top 14 and then spent several years consolidating.
It was 2019/20 when they first began to emerge as a contender, and Bordeaux were actually leading the Top 14 when that season was cancelled due to the pandemic.
They were semi-finalists for the following three seasons, then reached the Top 14 decider in 2024, only to be hammered 59-3 by the great aristocrats of French rugby, Toulouse.
Last season, Toulouse needed extra time to shake Bordeaux off in the Top 14 final, but Bru’s men realised the emergence of their love affair with the Champions Cup by beating Northampton in the final, therefore claiming UBB’s first-ever trophy.
While all of this was happening, the hugely popular local football side, FC Girondins de Bordeaux, was unravelling. The club where Zinedine Zidane first announced his genius to the world, Bordeaux have won six French titles, with the most recent in 2009.
Leshauriès says they were “the long-standing emblem of Bordeaux sport,” but they fell on financial hard times and were relegated from Ligue 1 in 2024.
These days, Girondins de Bordeaux play in Championnat National 2, which is the fourth tier of French football.
Leshauriès says this has played “a significant role” in UBB’s ever-growing popularity, although Cailly believes that “there is definitely enough room for several elite clubs in a city like Bordeaux,” even more so given that the département of Gironde has a population of 1.7 million people.
He says that UBB actually want to see Girondins de Bordeaux back in Ligue 1 as soon as possible, creating more appetite for live sport in the area.
“And even though they are currently playing in the fourth division, they are still able to attract more than 25,000 supporters to the stadium, which is remarkable,” says Cailly.
But there is no doubt that the sporting stars of Bordeaux these days are the likes of Maxime Lucu, Matthieu Jalibert, Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Cameron Woki, Ben Tameifuna, Damian Penaud, and Nicolas Depoortère.
As highlighted by the 2011 promotion, Bordeaux have always leaned strongly on recruits from outside the area and outside France to make a big impact. The likes of Tamiefuna, Adam Coleman, Salesi Rayasi, and Carlu Sadie are important to the current side.
There have been a few foreign signings at UBB which go into the ‘dud’ category over the past decade, but this side of the organisation has certainly become more accurate. English number eight Tom Willis is another cracking signing ahead of next season.
UBB put a major focus on making sure that non-local players feel integrated and build strong attachments to Bordeaux.
Paris native Cameron Woki showed his promise with Massy before UBB lured him to the club in 2017. Now in his second spell with Bordeaux after a stint at Racing 92, Woki is clearly a UBB man through and through.
Louis Bielle-Biarrey was part of the Grenoble system until Bordeaux pounced for him in 2021, before he had made his professional debut. Marko Gazzotti had actually debuted for Grenoble before switching to UBB in 2023. Yoram Moefana made a few appearances for Colomiers before Bordeaux picked him up in 2019. The list goes on.
And even when Bordeaux sign French players who are already well established, they seem to become part of the furniture quickly.
Current skipper Lucu is a good example. He is Basque and became a stalwart for Biarritz before joining UBB in 2019. Now he’s something of a local legend in Bordeaux.
Brive native Penaud made his name in Clermont but has become synonymous with UBB since joining in 2023.
Yet it is also a point of pride for UBB that a handful of their own homegrown players have key roles in the team now.
Out-half Jalibert, who is in sensational form, is chief among them. Classy outside centre Depoortère, combative hooker Maxime Lamothe, and fellow front row Connor Sa are the four first-team players who have come through UBB’s academy to star in the pro game.
France U20 centre Adrien Drault has played six times in the Top 14 this season, adding another homegrown player to the ranks.
This is, of course, a very far cry from a club with as strong a homegrown cohort as Leinster’s, but it’s important to UBB to have this representation of their own pipeline. Jalibert, Lamothe, and Depoortère are all French internationals.
“It’s always a source of pride for the Bordeaux fans,” says Leshauriès.
Marti and co. hope to see plenty more academy players breaking through in the coming years, with UBB’s current success and the increased popularity of rugby over football sure to result in more local youngsters chasing the dream.
It’s fair to say that things are going well for UBB, all the more so in the wake of last season’s Champions Cup success.
That trophy might have been seen as the culmination of a rise, but Bordeaux don’t see it that way themselves. They’re back in the final against Leinster this weekend, while there is major local appetite for a first-ever Top 14 title too.
There is no sense that this is a club ready to sit still after an impressive rise. UBB are looking up.
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Bordeaux Champions Cup L'UBB Leinster Top 14 UBB