John Textor is weighing a direct listing of Olympique Lyonnais in New York, people familiar with the matter said, as the US businessman explores a range of options for his stable of football investments.
(Bloomberg) — John Textor is weighing a direct listing of Olympique Lyonnais in New York, people familiar with the matter said, as the US businessman explores a range of options for his stable of football investments.
Florida-based Textor agreed to acquire a majority stake in Paris-listed Lyon last year and is planning a tender offer in the coming days to buy out the French Ligue 1 club’s remaining shareholders. As part of that process, he will raise the possibility to investors of a separate direct listing of Lyon shares on either the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, according to the people.
Any such move would see Lyon become only the second major football club to have a main listing in New York — which has deeper and more liquid capital markets — behind the NYSE-traded English Premier League team Manchester United Plc.
Textor took control of Lyon through his Eagle Football Holdings LLC vehicle, which houses his other football investments in Premier League club Crystal Palace FC, Botafogo in Brazil and Belgium’s RWD Molenbeek.
A digital entrepreneur, Textor has moved quickly to assemble one of the biggest so-called multiclub groups in world football. Last year, he told Bloomberg News he was open to bringing more partners into the fold at Eagle Football.
The Lyon deal was backed by investors including Jean-Pierre Conte, chairman of private equity firm Genstar Capital, and an affiliate of special purpose acquisition company Iconic Sports Acquisition Corp.
Listing Options
As part of his broader plans for the future of Eagle Football, Textor has also been mulling taking the vehicle public through a merger with Iconic Sports. But the market for such deals has cooled significantly from the SPAC boom of 2020 and 2021, with many blank-check firms now facing deadlines to make acquisitions or return cash to investors.
As such, Textor has been exploring an alternative option of taking Eagle Football public by combining it with Lyon, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions have been taken about if, or how, to list Eagle Football or Lyon in New York, they said.
Lyon is projecting sales of as much as €420 million ($460 million) for 2025/26, one of the people said, buoyed by revenue from a new entertainment arena close to the club’s Groupama Stadium. Lyon finished last season in seventh place in Ligue 1, missing out on qualification to the lucrative UEFA Champions League tournament.
Spokespeople for Eagle Football and Iconic Sports declined to comment.
The multiclub model is favored by other US-based investors looking to bring down the costs of football ownership. They believe that by sharing players across teams, the need for spending millions of dollars on pricey transfers, wages and agents’ fees is largely eradicated. Critics of the model say it creates farm teams with the sole purpose of serving a trophy asset within a group.
–With assistance from Irene García Pérez.
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