We want your cookies to provide you with the most productive reading experience imaginable and to offer you articles tailored to where you live and advertisements based on your interests, with maximum site security.
They contribute to our company’s business style and enable our newsroom journalists, deployed throughout the region, to continue to produce reliable, quality information, close to you.
OL Groupe announced on Monday morning the sale of its American women’s soccer club, Seattle Reign FC, for $58 million (€53. 6 million), the result of an agreement with an organization that includes the Seattle Sounders (MLS) and the investment company Carlyle.
Purchased for €3. 1 million in 2019
OLG will sell its entire stake, or 97% of Seattle Reign FC’s share capital, according to a press release from the company, which also oversees the Olympique Lyonnais club. Soccer League (NWSL) and Men’s Professional League (MLS), to which the Seattle Sounders belong.
OL Groupe is expected to obtain a capital gain from the sale of the 2023-2024 financial year, after “deducting the advances from existing accounts committed for the club’s progression and the cumulative effect since the acquisition of the American franchise in January 2020”.
The American women’s club was acquired through the Lyon organization in 2019, under the presidency of Jean-Michel Aulas, for €3. 1 million. Temporarily renamed OL Reign, it became Seattle Reign FC, its original name, in January.
This transaction is part of the strategy of the OL group, now chaired by the American John Textor, to reorient its activities towards men’s football, announced on 25 October on the occasion of the publication of its annual accounts.
READ ALSO. Who is Michele Kang, American billionaire and new boss of Olympique Lyonnais féminin?
With this in mind, Olympique Lyonnais Women sold in early February to American businesswoman Michele Kang through her company YMK Holdings, who became president and majority shareholder of the club. Kang already owns a women’s club in the United States, the Washington Spirit, and, as such, cannot own a single one under U. S. law.