Why some French esports clubs' accounts stay private

A French esports club that trades as a company leaves an official record of its finances every year. Commercial companies in France must file their annual accounts with the registry of the commercial court, the greffe, and the registry publishes what it receives. Yet a reader who looks up a club's filing may find no figures at all, because French law lets micro and small companies keep all or part of their accounts out of public view.

That option is the confidentiality declaration. A company that meets the size tests for a micro or small company can attach it to its filing, and the registry then does not publish what the declaration covers. For a reader trying to understand a French club, the result can be a filing that exists, was delivered on time, and still shows nothing of its revenue or its costs.

This guide explains how a French company approves its accounts, what it files and when, the size categories that decide what it may keep private, which companies cannot use the option, and what happens to a company that does not file. It relies on the French government's official guidance for businesses, verified in June 2025, and on the guidance published by Infogreffe, the national service of the commercial court registries, updated in June 2026. How the rules apply to one company depends on its legal form, its size and its structure.

The legal forms clubs use

French company law offers several legal forms, and the filing rules are written for each of them. The French government's guidance covers the forms most commercial businesses use:

• the SAS, a simplified joint-stock company, and its single-shareholder version, the SASU;
• the SA, a joint-stock company with a board of directors, or with a management board and a supervisory board;
• the SARL, a limited liability company, and its single-member version, the EURL.

Infogreffe's list of companies that must file is wider. It adds partnerships whose partners are all limited companies or joint-stock companies, partnerships limited by shares, professional practice companies, certain agricultural cooperatives, and foreign commercial companies that have one or more establishments in France. A foreign company in that position files a copy of the accounts drawn up, audited and published in the country of its registered office, according to the French government.

The legal form matters because the approval deadline depends on it. An esports organization that is set up as an association, the French non-profit form, follows different rules and is not covered by this guide.

Approval comes before filing

Accounts are not filed the day the financial year closes. They are first approved by the company's members, and the filing deadline runs from that approval.

For an SA, an SARL or an EURL, the French government's guidance states that the accounts must be approved within six months of the end of the financial year. For an SAS or an SASU, the members set the deadline themselves, freely, from the end of the financial year. The same guidance notes that a six-month period is the one most often used, because any dividend must be paid within nine months of the year-end. Infogreffe adds that a company can ask the president of the commercial court, by application, to extend the deadline for holding the members' meeting.

Once the accounts are approved, the filing clock starts. According to the French government, the documents must be filed within one month of approval when they are delivered to the registry in person or by post, and within two months when they are filed online. Infogreffe gives the common case: for a financial year closing on December 31, the accounts are filed before July 31 of the following year.

The same rules give a longer path for a company that files online. Take an SAS, again with a year closing on December 31, whose members approve the accounts on June 30: filed through the online portal, the documents are due within two months, by August 30.

The timetable explains why the most recent accounts on file can describe a year that ended many months earlier. A club with a calendar financial year can show its figures for one year only in the summer of the next.

What goes into the filing

The documents a company files depend on its size. The French government's guidance lists them by category.

A micro company files its balance sheet, which sets out what it owns and owes at the year-end, and its income statement, which shows what it earned and spent during the year. Micro companies are generally exempt from preparing the notes to the accounts, the annex, except those whose activity is managing equity holdings and securities. They also file the minutes of the members' meeting with the proposed and approved allocation of the result, meaning what is done with the profit or loss, and the report of the statutory auditor, the commissaire aux comptes, if the company has one.

A small company files the balance sheet, the income statement, the annex, the minutes with the allocation of the result, and the auditor's report where there is one. Where a small company has a management report, the guidance states that it need not be filed but must be kept at the registered office. A medium company files the same documents and adds its management report, the directors' written account of the year.

A company that heads a group files more. The French government lists the consolidated accounts, which combine the figures of the parent and its subsidiaries, the group management report and the auditor's report on the consolidated accounts. Infogreffe adds that the documents are filed as one copy certified as true by the company's legal representative.

How the documents are delivered

The French government's guidance gives three ways to file.

Online, the filing goes through the Guichet des formalités des entreprises, the single government portal for company formalities. It can be made by the company's manager or by an authorized agent, such as a chartered accountant or a lawyer. Each document must be a PDF file of no more than 10 MB. The person filing signs either with a paid electronic signature or through FranceConnect+, the government's free strengthened identity service.

In person, the documents go to the registry of the commercial court of the company's registered office. In Alsace-Moselle, the region in eastern France with its own local law, the judicial court handles these filings instead.

By post, the documents are sent by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt to the same registry or court.

Infogreffe's guidance on confidentiality describes the same choice from the registry's side: a filing online through the single portal, or on paper at the registry. The company delivers its complete accounts, the confidentiality declaration if it uses one, and the registry fees.

The size tests

Whether a company may keep its accounts private depends on its size category. French law sorts companies into micro, small and medium categories, and a company belongs to a category when it does not exceed two of the three thresholds.

Both sources give the same figures. The two-of-three rule means one threshold can be exceeded without changing the category. A club with more than 10 employees on average, for instance, can still be a micro company if both its balance sheet total and its net revenue stay within the micro limits.

A worked example, with illustrative figures, shows how the test reads. Take a club with net revenue of €1.2 million, a balance sheet total of €300,000 and 8 employees on average. Its revenue exceeds the micro threshold of €900,000, but its balance sheet and its headcount stay within the micro limits. With two of the three tests met, it counts as a micro company. Had its balance sheet total also exceeded €450,000, it would have been a small company, since it stays far inside every small-company limit.

The balance sheet total and net revenue measure size, not success. A loss-making club and a profitable one can sit in the same category. What the category decides is how much of the accounts the company may keep from the public.

What the confidentiality declaration covers

The confidentiality declaration is a short document attached to the filing. Infogreffe states that it must be duly completed and signed in original by the company's legal representative, and offers it for download. The company still files its complete accounts: the declaration does not reduce what the registry receives, only what it publishes.

For a micro company, the French government's guidance states that a company that does not want its annual accounts published must attach a confidentiality declaration to its filing, and that the auditor's report is then not published either. Infogreffe describes this as full confidentiality of the balance sheet, the income statement and the annex.

For a small company, the option is narrower. Infogreffe describes it as confidentiality of the income statement alone. The French government's guidance uses the same wording for a small SAS, SASU, SA, SARL or EURL: a company that does not want its income statement published attaches a confidentiality declaration. Infogreffe's guidance makes no distinction between legal forms. The balance sheet of a small company therefore stays on the public record.

A medium company has no confidentiality declaration at all. According to both sources, it may only ask that a simplified presentation of its balance sheet and its annex be published. The French government adds that, in that case, the auditor's report need not be attached. For an SA with a board of directors, the registry publishes a notice of the filing in the BODACC, France's official bulletin of civil and commercial announcements, and that notice states when the presentation is simplified.

Who cannot use it

The option is not open to every company that meets the size tests. Infogreffe lists two sets of companies that are excluded, even when they are micro companies.

The first is the set of companies named in article L123-16-2 of the French Commercial Code. Infogreffe cites among them credit institutions, financing companies, insurance and reinsurance companies, companies whose activity is managing equity holdings and securities, and entities whose securities are traded on a regulated market, the official stock exchange markets.

The second concerns companies that belong to a group, as defined by article L233-16 of the Commercial Code, the article that sets out when one company controls another for the purpose of consolidated accounts. Infogreffe states that they cannot use the option either, in its section on micro companies.

For esports, the group rule is the one most likely to matter. An organization that holds its teams, its content business or its merchandise through separate companies under one parent, or that is itself owned by a larger company, may be a group in the legal sense. Whether a given structure meets the definition is a question of the article's own terms and of the facts of each case.

When accounts are not filed

The French government's guidance sets out two kinds of consequence for a company that does not file.

The first is criminal. The company's director faces a fine of €1,500, rising to €3,000 for a repeat offense, according to the guidance. The offense can be prosecuted for one year from the date on which the accounts should have been filed.

The second is a court order. The president of the commercial court can order the director to file the accounts within one month. Any interested person, such as an employee or a former employee, and the public prosecutor may ask the court for this order, according to the guidance. The order is often accompanied by a daily penalty, a sum due for each day of delay, called an astreinte. If the company still does not comply, the penalty can be enforced. The president of the court may also look into the company's economic and financial situation and summon its director to an interview.

A missing filing is therefore not a neutral state. It exposes the director personally, and it can be raised by people outside the company, including its own staff. A filing with a confidentiality declaration is different: the accounts have been delivered, and the law allows part of them to stay unpublished.

Accounts the ministry asks for

Confidentiality on the register is not the only route by which a French esports company's figures reach the authorities. A company that employs salaried professional video game players under the dedicated French player contract must hold an approval, granted by the minister in charge of digital affairs. The ministry's page on the status, dated November 2024, lists what a company sends with its application: its current statutes with its identification number, and its balance sheets and operating accounts for the last three financial years, or since its creation if it is younger. An association sends its annual accounts for the last three years.

The approval is valid for three years and renewable, with a renewal request due at least three months before it expires, according to the same page. Those documents go to the Directorate General for Enterprise, the ministry department that handles the file. They belong to an administrative procedure with the ministry, not to the filing at the registry.

Reading a French club's filing

A French filing says more than it first appears to, even when a declaration has been attached. The size categories set boundaries: a micro company whose accounts are confidential has represented that it stayed within two of the three micro thresholds, a balance sheet total of €450,000, net revenue of €900,000 and 10 employees on average. A small company that keeps its income statement private still publishes its balance sheet, so its assets, debts and equity can be read and compared from one year to the next.

The absence of a declaration is informative too. Infogreffe excludes companies that belong to a group from the option, so a club that is a micro company inside a group structure cannot keep its whole accounts off the record through a declaration. A medium company may simplify its balance sheet and annex, but has no way to keep its income statement private.

What a filing never shows is anything the company was not required to file. Revenue from sponsors, prize money, merchandise or a league's revenue share appears only as far as the income statement is published, and in the categories that may withhold it, it may not be published at all.

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