Flamengo stadium: rubro-negro home won’t be ready before 2034 | OneFootball

FLAMENGO PRESENTS TECHNICAL DIAGNOSIS AND NEW PROJECT FOR THE GASÔMETRO STADIUM In a CODE meeting, President Bap and FGV specialists detail inconsistencies of the previous plan and present a realistic proposal of costs, deadlines, and financing to make the stadium feasible. On the evening of this Wednesday (09/17), Flamengo President Luiz Eduardo Baptista, known as Bap, presented to the Deliberative Council, along with Alexandre Rangel, partner at RRA Consultoria, and Ricardo Simonsen, Henrique Castro, and Bauer Rachid from FGV Conhecimento, the conclusions of field studies on probing, arboreal, topography, historical heritage, and decontamination of the Gasômetro Stadium site, conducted by five contracted companies. The current management's work, initiated seven months ago, had as a fundamental premise to enable the construction of a proprietary stadium without the club needing to become a SAF and without compromising sports performance. Measures were adopted such as creating an exclusive project management team, re-hiring Arena — responsible for the initial project — for technical support, conducting a feasibility study by FGV, performing in-depth land analyses, resolving issues with AGU, City Hall, and Naturgy, and evaluating stadium alternatives. During this period, a team of specialists dedicated themselves to developing a viable project, correcting original distortions involving underestimated costs, unrealistic deadlines, overestimated revenues, and an unsustainable financing model. Ricardo Simonsen, technical director, and Henrique Castro, Economics professor at FGV EESP, detailed how costs were underestimated in the presented project. FGV calculated the final cost by updating inflation, contingencies, and inputs to R$ 2.66 billion. Including the cost of capital, the total value of the stadium is R$ 3.1 billion. The value presented by the previous management in the budget proposal was R$1.9 billion. Furthermore, the projected revenues were overestimated. According to FGV's analysis, the plan considered an average ticket price of R$ 195.44 — more than double the current average — with 30% of seats classified as VIP or Premium, double what currently exists at Maracanã. A complex and elitist stadium was planned. Sponsorships of R$ 60 million and the anticipation of Naming Rights revenue were also inflated. Additionally, the CPACs values, initially estimated at R$ 552 million, were recalculated by FGV to R$ 194 million. The deadlines were also revised. The original schedule ignored essential stages, such as the relocation of Naturgy, which currently occupies 55% of the land, with a gas pumping substation for the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area. According to Naturgy's communication sent to Flamengo on September 10, 2025, the estimated relocation time is four years, after obtaining a new address for the substation installation, under the responsibility of the City Hall. According to Aecom, the company contracted to plan decontamination strategies, there are 21 public studies demonstrating the complexity of the land contamination, making the five-month decontamination period proposed in the 2024 planning unrealistic. Additionally, FGV's preliminary report pointed to a decontamination period between 18 and 24 months, after Naturgy's departure. Without this stage, it is not possible to obtain the necessary licenses to start construction. In practice, this means that construction could not begin in less than six to seven years, to which another three years of construction would be added — projecting the stadium's delivery from 2034, making the December 2029 inauguration deadline predicted by the previous management completely unrealistic. To make the stadium feasible, FGV and Arena specialists presented a proposal for a new project, based on more realistic premises and with a more popular profile identified with Flamengo. • Optimized stadium with 72,000 seats, focusing on reducing premium seats • Revised cost of R$2.2 billion, including the stadium, contingencies, land, capital cost, and surrounding cost. • Minimum completion deadline in July 2036, depending on various external factors. • Viable financing strategy based on generating internal resources (savings). • Backed by increased budget revenues and profitability, without impacting sports performance. Before concluding the meeting, President Bap presented the next steps. In the short term, the focus will be on monitoring the Naturgy relocation process with the City Hall, the demolition and cleaning of the land under Flamengo's responsibility, monitoring the legislative approval of CPACs, and signing the Definitive Term with AGU, Caixa, and the City Hall. In the medium and long term, the priority will be structuring the executive project for the stadium construction.

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