French women’s soccer champions Olympique Lyonnais Feminin have been renamed OL Lyonnes and will be moved to a new training center specifically designed for female athletes as it looks to build on its on-pitch successes.
The announcement was made by club owner Michele Kang yesterday, who said the new name honors the club’s membership of the OL family and its roots in the city of Lyon.
Go deeper with GlobalData
The club will also debut a new logo next season to match their new name, with the traditional male lion dropped for an image of a lioness.
Kang said: “This new chapter for OL Lyonnes goes far beyond a simple change of name and logo – it's about redefining what's possible in women's football.
“Our ambition is to set a new global benchmark for excellence, ambition, and investment in women's football. This transformation fully embodies our commitment to offer the best to our players, staff, and supporters.”
Founded in 2004 as Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, OL Lyonnes is the most successful women’s soccer club, claiming a record 29 titles, including eight UEFA Champions League trophies and, most recently, its 18th league trophy.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataThe club was acquired by Kang last year and sits as part of Kynisca – the first women-owned multi-club soccer organization – alongside Washington Spirit (NWSL), London City Lionesses (WSL). Kang has also recently committed an extra $25 million to governing body US Soccer on top of her initial $30 million investment to grow the women’s game in the country.
Along with the rebrand, Kang announced she will fully finance the building of a dedicated training center designed by architecture firm F3, which previously designed the men’s and women’s training grounds for England’s Tottenham Hotspur.
Kang said F3 has designed the building based on feedback from players and staff and will include unique features such as childcare and nursery spaces, custom locker rooms and medical areas, private and group meeting rooms, and open spaces for training and recovery.
The club currently shares training grounds with OL’s boys’ academy at the Groupama OL Training Center, which sits adjacent to Groupama Stadium.
The new training center will be located in Meyzieu, around eight miles from the center of Lyon, and will house the women’s first team, reserves, and youth academy.
Kang declined to disclose exactly how much the new training center will cost, but added: “It’s not going to be cheap. This is going to be better than most men’s teams’ training centers.
“It’s actually amazing the team achieved the amount of success it has with the amount of resources allocated to them [previously].”
The team will also start playing its home matches at the 59,186-seat Groupama Stadium, the home ground of the men’s team and host of the 2019 Women's World Cup final, from the start of the 2025-26 season.
Addressing the use of the men’s stadium rather than moving to alternative mid-sized venues, Kang said: “We concluded that not only do our players deserve the best playing environment, our fans deserve that [too].
“We did look at other alternatives, because we all agree, from day one, filling out a 57,000-seater stadium is not possible. For big games, we absolutely have aspirations to sell out, but not all games are going to be like that.”
