The American Sports Owners Feuding Over a French Soccer Team

On June 30, 2025, John Textor stepped down from leading Olympique Lyonnais, handing operational control of the men’s French soccer club to Washington Spirit owner Michele Kang. 

The transition took place after French soccer regulator DNCG relegated Lyon over financial issues (that decision was successfully appealed). Publicly, Textor and Kang appeared cordial. He called her a “perfect choice” to lead the club moving forward, while Kang thanked Textor for his “commitment and vision.” 

Behind the scenes, Textor claims Kang had already entered into a “secret” side agreement with Ares Management, a private credit firm that lent millions to Eagle Football Holdings—the entity that holds Textor’s stakes in several soccer clubs, including Lyon in France and Botafogo in Brazil. (Kang owns a majority stake in the Lyon women’s team and already sat on the board of directors for Eagle Football, which also owns a minority stake in the women’s team.)

Textor says that when he resigned from the Lyon board and Kang was installed, he thought everyone was on the same page—he would run Botafogo, she would run Lyon, and centrally they would run all soccer decisions collaboratively through Eagle. 

Instead, he says she made “one hell of a power play” by taking full control of Lyon and setting up a “shadow board,” the existence of which Textor discovered only after he stepped down and had already entrusted her to manage the club. Through a representative, Kang declined to comment.

“I really thought we were friends,” Textor tells Front Office Sports.

Textor’s net worth is not clear, although estimates put it somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He sold his stake in Premier League club Crystal Palace last year for around $254 million (£190 million). In addition to sports, the 60-year-old is known for investing in technology companies. He is the former executive chairman of Fubo and was once that company’s largest shareholder, and he has also invested in visual effects company Digital Domain.

Kang, 66, has a net worth of about $1.2 billion, according to Forbes. She built her fortune off her health-care technology company, Cognosante, and her venture capital firm, Cognosante Ventures. She first joined the NWSL’s Spirit with a 35% stake in 2020 and bought majority ownership of the team for $35 million in 2022. She is also part of the group that bought MLB’s Orioles in 2024.

The Deterioration

The relationship between Textor and Ares has deteriorated. Ares has been trying to recoup roughly $250 million in outstanding loans to Eagle, Bloomberg reported earlier this month. The firm subsequently made a filing with the U.K.’s Companies House removing Textor as a director of Eagle Football, as first reported by Bloomberg, something Textor disputes it has the right to do.

In turn, Textor issued a lengthy statement laying out the timeline, including linking to a Jan. 29 filing with Companies House in which he reappointed himself to the company’s board of directors.

Textor claims the actions taken by Ares to effectively seize control of Lyon will put it in hot water with Autorité des marchés financiers, the markets regulator in France.

“They took over the club without due process,” Textor tells FOS. “They concealed it.”

Textor sent a letter to the AMF on Jan. 28 outlining his claims, according to documents viewed by FOS. Ares has not been contacted by the AMF, according to a person familiar with the matter. The AMF did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Ares said the firm “notes the highly misleading and inaccurate statements by John Textor and will defend its position through the proper legal channels.”

The Backstory

In December 2022, Eagle Football announced it had acquired a “significant controlling stake” in Lyon. As part of the deal, “funds managed by” Ares invested in Eagle Football. 

Since then, things haven’t been completely smooth for Textor’s company. Eagle Football is not publicly traded, although Textor has been trying to take it public in the U.S.—first, through a special purpose acquisition company merger that fell apart and resulted in lawsuits that remain ongoing (Ares was involved in that deal as well), and now through a proposed initial public offering in the U.S. 

Last year, Textor was forced to sell his stake in Crystal Palace to Jets owner Woody Johnson because he ran afoul of the UEFA’s multiclub ownership rules—which stipulate that clubs with common shareholders cannot play in the same European competition in the same season. Both Crystal Palace and Lyon had qualified for the 2025–26 UEFA Europa League tournament. 

The deal did not appease the UEFA, which determined it was too late and kicked the club out of the Europa League. 

The Secret ‘Shadow Board’

Textor says the “shadow board” could “not be more illegal.”

The five-person committee, set up without Textor’s knowledge, operated outside Lyon’s official governance structures, Textor says, and effectively controlled Lyon’s operations, including player budgets and executive decisions.

He argues that Ares, as a lender to Eagle Football—not Lyon directly—had no right to form this committee or assert control over the club.

According to a copy of the side agreement viewed by FOS, the initial committee members were Kang and Mark Affolter of Ares, plus JP Conte, who works for private-equity firm Genstar Capital, according to LinkedIn, Chris Mallon of board advisory firm Fulcrum Partners, and Alexander Sugarman (there were no identifying details about Sugarman).

Was Eagle in Default?

Textor says that Ares has tried to justify its actions by claiming his leadership caused Eagle Football to default on its loans. 

“They use the word default with a capital D, as if you missed a payment,” he says. “The default they’re alleging is that we didn’t file Companies House returns. But our position is that we didn’t have to.”

An October filing with Companies House states that as of June 30, 2023, Eagle Football “was in breach of certain of its obligations over the provision of financial information” to Ares “on a timely basis,” something a source familiar with the matter says could be viewed as an admission that there was a technical default. (A “technical default” doesn’t necessarily mean a missed payment. It can refer to any contractual breach.) 

In January, Ares executive Juan Arciniegas sent an email to Textor and others saying the side agreement with Kang was instituted because of Eagle Football’s “severe financial distress,” and that the firm’s aim was to safeguard its investment.

Ares As a Sports Investor

Eagle Football is just one of many sports investments Ares has made. As of Jan. 31, the firm’s sports and entertainment business boasted 28 core sports-related investments and total assets of almost $670 million. 

In 2024, it acquired a 10% stake in the Miami Dolphins. It also owns a significant equity stake in MLS team Inter Miami and is invested in League One Volleyball. 

It previously invested in Atlético de Madrid, which plays in Spain’s LaLiga—in November, Apollo acquired a majority stake in that team, a deal which the Financial Times reported was “set to crystallise a healthy return for Ares.” In 2023, Ares provided $500 million in debt financing to Premier League club Chelsea.

The firm closed its debut sports-focused fund in 2022 with $3.7 billion in available capital to deploy.