The Eagle Football Group, formerly OL Groupe and majority shareholder of OL since the summer of 2023, communicates its annual financial report. The group’s debt increased from 458 to 505 million euros.
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The figures communicated by Eagle Football Group (formerly OL Groupe) do not reassure Lyon supporters. The majority shareholder company of Olympique Lyonnais announces a negative net result of -25.7 million euros and an increase in its debt from 458 to 505 million euros.
In detail, the income from John Textor’s company activities increased by 25% thanks to the increase in revenues linked to its branded products (+165%), the organization of events (+161% ) and the sale of players (+7%). Results also reinforced by the sale of OL Reign and that of the LDLC Arena.
But these good results are offset by expenses that the group had to incur to reduce its debt. Eagle Football Group, for example, acquired a partial stake in Holnest (Jean-Michel Aulas’s company), and then sold the LDLC Arena to him. This operation cost more than 30 million euros this year, but in the short term, should allow the group not to depend on the economic health of the new venue.
John Textor’s company also announces that it has had additional costs linked to the framework of its refinancing project approved in December 2023.
Ultimately, if Eagle Football Group fails to repay its debt, it could be forced to sell the club to other investors. Likewise, if the club does not manage each year to convince the DNGC, the financial policeman of football, of its ability to restructure its debt, the risk of sporting relegation exists.
Eagle Football Group has therefore announced a series of measures aimed at reducing its debt as quickly as possible:
- A contribution of 75 million euros, in the form of shareholders’ equity or the sale of player contracts held by clubs in the group (OL, Botafogo and Molenbeek) before December 2024.
- An undetermined amount linked to player transfers during the January 2025 transfer window
- A contribution of a maximum amount of 40 million euros, coming from the planned sale of the group’s interests in the Crystal Palace club in England
- A contribution of 100 million euros at the start of 2025, linked to the group’s entry on the New York Stock Exchange
We will have to expect sales of players rather than arrivals at OL in the next transfer windows to come, especially since the club already invested a lot last summer: 112.2 million euros spent nothing on transfers from Mangala, Niakhaté, Nuamah and Mikautadze.
At the same time, OL were only able to sell for just over 32 million euros.
If the group is not fundamentally pessimistic, it has reservations about the future. The company writes in its press release “although the Group considers that it is probable that all or part of these financing operations will be completed, any significant delay or any non-realization of these cash flows could call into question the principle of continuity of operation of the company and its subsidiaries.”
It adds that its auditors are considering issuing an impossibility of certifying on the corporate and consolidated accounts of Eagle Football Group. In other words, if these commissioners refuse to certify these accounts, the commercial court could be officially informed of the group’s difficulties, with the specter of judicial recovery or worse, liquidation, in the potential line of sight.
