Ares seek to recover US$250m amid Eagle Football dispute

Ares Management is in a dispute with John Textor over the future of Eagle Football Holdings and its ownership of French club Olympique Lyonnais.Ares is seeking to recover about US$250m in loans it says remain outstanding to Eagle. Accoding to Bloomberg, Ares wants to get its money back either by selling Lyon or by taking control of the club.Eagle bought Lyon in 2022 for around €800m, with Ares providing more than US$450m in financing. The investment was one of Ares’ first major moves into football, but Eagle has since faced financial pressure.Ares has already recovered more than US$200m of its original loan, helped by Eagle’s sale of its stake in Premier League club Crystal Palace last summer to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. However, the relationship between Ares and Textor has deteriorated, with Ares said to be frustrated by what it views as repeated breaches of the loan terms.Textor disputes that any loan terms have been breached. A spokesperson for the American businessman said: “We dispute all alleged events of default,” adding that Ares had signed off on Eagle’s audited financials.Ares said it will continue to defend its position. A spokesperson for the firm said it would do so “through legal channels.”Eagle’s football group includes Lyon, Belgium club RWD Molenbeek and Brazil’s Botafogo. The dispute underlines the complexity of multi-club ownership models, where financial stress at the holding-company level can create uncertainty across the clubs it controls.The situation also highlights a wider trend in football finance. Investment firms have increasingly provided funding to club owners and holding companies, seeing football as an attractive long-term asset. But the breakdown between Ares and Textor shows the risks when performance and finances do not develop as planned.Ares launched a US$3.7bn sports, media and entertainment fund in 2022 and has invested in clubs including Atlético de Madrid and Chelsea. Other firms have ended up taking ownership of major clubs after loans were not repaid, including Elliott Management taking control of AC Milan in 2018 and Oaktree Capital Management taking over Inter Milan in 2024.