Lyon owner John Textor reveals plan ‘to improve’ Ligue 1 | OneFootball

The Olympique Lyonnais owner, John Textor, sat down before the press to discuss a wide range of topics this evening, including his plan on how to better market Ligue 1 abroad.

The American businessman declared that he wanted to talk with the newly re-elected president of the LFP, Vincent Labrune, and discuss his idea of expanding the allocation of non-EU players for Ligue 1 teams so as to bring about more revenue streams for French teams.

As it currently stands, French teams can only register four non-EU players to their squad. This means that they are restricted by how many players they can sign from North America, South America, and Asia, with most African, Caribbean, and Oceanian nations exempt from this rule.

John Textor: ‘There is a way to protect French players while being more open internationally’

Textor declared that this rule was currently impacting marketing prospects for teams across the top division, “We want to improve the product in France but we can’t. If we want to improve our product, it’s not going to work, no one is going to watch French football if we stay as we are. There are ideas that we want to put in place, like extending this limit of four non-EU players.”

“The idea of bringing in players from Korea or South America opens up French football to a larger international audience, and that would be good for generating more revenue for French clubs via TV rights or advertising,” the American businessman explained. “There is a way to protect French players while being more open internationally.”

Textor concluded his thought by calling on the league, “We need to think more intelligently about how to open up this league to the world by allowing clubs to be more flexible in terms of recruitment and thus give reasons for people all over the world to watch the league, and therefore [we can] have more revenue.”

GFFN | Nick Hartland