PARIS (Reuters) – Agache, the holding company of French billionaire Bernard Arnault, owner of LVMH, announced on Thursday that it had entered into exclusive negotiations for the acquisition of a majority stake in the Paris FC football club, current leader of the League championship 2, with the support of the Austrian company Red Bull.
The agreement should allow the Parisian club, a sporting dwarf in the shadow of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), to benefit from solid financial support and the experience of Red Bull, which already manages several clubs.
“Agache intends to gradually bring the men’s team back to the elite of men’s football. The same ambition will drive the new majority shareholder for the women’s team,” Agache said in a press release.
LVMH has recently strengthened its investments in sport, notably by sponsoring the Paris Olympic Games and signing an agreement to become a global partner of Formula One for ten years from 2025.
Paris FC, founded in 1969, has not played in Ligue 1 since the 1978-79 season and gathered on average less than 5,500 spectators per match last season in Ligue 2 in its 19,000-seat enclosure at the Charléty stadium, in the south of the capital.
Red Bull, which markets the eponymous energy drink, owns two F1 teams and manages several football clubs in South America, the United States, Austria and Germany, including RB Leipzig, a regular in the Champions League.
The company last week appointed former Liverpool manager, Germany’s Jürgen Klopp, as global director of football.
(Written by Julien Prétot and Mimosa Spencer, Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the , edited by Blandine Hénault)
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