Stade de la Méditerranée
Béziers, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Stade de la Méditerranée, Béziers, France — opened 1989, 4 rugby league games hosted, home of Association Sportive Béziers Hérault (rugby union), since 1989; also home to Avenir Sportif Béziers (football) since 2018; no rugby league club has ever been a tenant — four widely-spaced one-off fixtures.
Sourcing caveat: The 1949 match's venue identity is unresolved, as explained above — readers researching this specific fixture should treat the venue attribution with caution. The 1994 match's attendance is disputed between Rugby League Project (5,000) and Wikipedia (8,000), with no way found to adjudicate between them.
Ground facts
| Opened | 1989 (A genuine, unresolved anomaly: our directory (following Rugby League Project) records a rugby league match at this venue dated 8 January 1949 — four decades before every independent source's account of the modern stadium's 1989/1990 construction. No source was found establishing an earlier Béziers ground also called "Stade de la Méditerranée." The most likely explanation, by analogy with a similar case already resolved on this site (Stade des Alpes/Stade Charles-Berty, Grenoble), is that Rugby League Project has retroactively applied the modern venue's name to a match actually played at an earlier, since-demolished or renamed Béziers ground — but unlike that Grenoble case, no source names what that predecessor ground might have been, so this remains an open question rather than a resolved one.) |
| Home club | Association Sportive Béziers Hérault (rugby union), since 1989; also home to Avenir Sportif Béziers (football) since 2018; no rugby league club has ever been a tenant — four widely-spaced one-off fixtures |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 4 |
| Top recorded crowd | 9,800 |
| Capacity | 18,555 (16,110 seated), per most sources — a close but not identical figure of 18,255 appears in one other source |
| Test matches hosted | 2 |
| Surface | grass |
| First rugby league match | 8 January 1949 — Languedoc 0-38 Australia, 1948-49 Kangaroos tour (attendance 2,300) — see the opening-date caveat above regarding this match's venue identity |
| Years used | 1949–2009 |
| Location | Béziers, Languedoc-Roussillon |
Name history
- Stade de la Méditerranée — 1989/1990–2019, named for hosting Mediterranean Games-related events
- Stade Raoul-Barrière — since May 2019, honouring the Béziers rugby union coach who died two months earlier
Rugby league history
Béziers is primarily famous as a rugby union stronghold — ASBH won multiple French union championships in the 1970s — making its handful of widely-spaced rugby league internationals a genuine crossover footnote rather than any sustained rugby league presence. The 1994 France vs Australia Test was a heavy 74-0 defeat; the 2009 date paired an international Euro-Med Challenge fixture with a Catalans Dragons Super League "home" game on the same day.
The long-standing home of ASBH (rugby union); also hosted the 1997 European Challenge Cup Final — a rugby UNION fixture (Bourgoin vs Castres Olympique) unrelated to rugby league's own, differently-run Challenge Cup, despite the coincidental name overlap.
Historic Test matches, Cup & Grand Finals hosted
- 4 December 1994 — France 0-74 Australia, full international Test (attendance 5,000, though Wikipedia separately gives 8,000 for the same match — an unresolved discrepancy)
- 15 August 2009 — Morocco 46-12 Belgium, Euro-Med Challenge, and the same day Catalans Dragons 18-6 Hull FC, Super League Round 24, an apparent doubleheader sharing an identical recorded gate (attendance 9,800, our recorded top crowd)
Pre-dates the site's structured match-by-match records for these competitions, so listed here as sourced facts rather than linked match pages.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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