Europe’s most successful women’s soccer team has a new name and a new look.
On Monday, May 20, majority owner Michele Kang announced that the team formerly known as Olympique Lyonnais Féminin would rebrand as OL Lyonnes going forward. A new crest accompanied the new name, featuring a red lioness with gold and blue accents and a gold crown inside a white shield with a blue outline.
The name, Kang said, is a combination of lionne, the French word for “lioness,” and the name of the city they’ve called home for decades: Lyon.
“I hope all French [speakers] forgive us for changing the French word, but we decided that it’s appropriate to make sure that everyone globally and in this country know that we are part of Lyon,” Kang is quoted as saying at the unveiling on ESPN.com.
The club started as FC Lyon in 1970, but was brought under the Olympique Lyonnais branding in 2004. in May 2023, Kang and OL Groupe reached a deal under which Kang — an American businesswoman who is the CEO and founder of Kynsica Sports International — would acquire majority control. Kang also owns the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States and the London City Lionesses, who will be promoted to England’s Women’s Super League for the 2025-26 season. She told ESPN recently that she was about to purchase a fourth women’s team on a new continent.
As Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, the team has won the Division 1 Féminine title 18 times in the last 19 seasons, the Coupe de France Féminine a record 10 times and the UEFA Women’s Champions League a record eight times.
Along with the rebranding, Kang announced on Monday that OL Lyonnes would swap training facilities with the club’s boys’ academy and renovate it into a performance center by July 2026 that is “100% intentionally designed for female athletes.” OL Lyonnes will also play all its games in the 59,000-seat Groupama Stadium going forward, a venue they previously only played in a few times a season.
“That was one of the most surprising things when I first came,” Kang told the Associated Press. “The best team in the world, I was surprised they [Lyon] were playing the majority of games at a training center. It is unfitting. We want our fans to be part of our journey, part of our community and you can’t achieve fan engagement by constantly switching back and forth.”
In 2020, OL Groupe purchased Seattle Reign FC of the NWSL and rebranded them as OL Reign. The team played under that name until 2023, when they were sold to avoid conflicts of interest for Kang. Now known once again as Seattle Reign FC, the team is owned by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, and Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer.
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