It’s back to school. While the male championship is released, an international truce obliges, the professional footballers of Hegaxone find the grounds. And from the first day of the first league (Arkema Première League), the first division championship in France, the menu is enticing. Saturday, September 6, the Lyonnaises – renamed Ol Lyonnes at the offseason -, champions in titles, and their Parisian runners -up welcome in the elite the promoters of the RC Lens and Olympique de Marseille.
The events, an eventful summer, confirmed two opposite trajectories for the two locomotives in the championship. In Lyon, an XXL recruitment embodies the ambition to become untouchable again, including at the continental level: Jonathan Giraldez, double winner of the Champions League with Barça, took the reins, and the Frenchman Marie-Antoinette Katoto and the German Jule Brand join Ada Hegerberg and Kadidiatou Diani in attack, making OL a team A ninth European coronation.
In Paris, the situation is more uncertain. The capital’s club lost Katoto and his ex-captain Grace Geyoro, who left for London City Lionesses in the last hours of the transfer window for the amount-record in women’s football-of 1.65 million euros. To fill these departures, PSG relies on the Nigerian internationals Rasheedat Ajibade and Spanish Olga Carmona. His former player Paulo Cesar, fifth five seasons, must stabilize a still fragile project. Summer was not easy either at Olympique de Marseille, which has announcement The layoff of his coach Frédéric Gonçalves ten days before the start of the championship.
Energize the championship
OL Lyonnes and Paris Saint-Germain will cross the iron from the third day, September 27 in the Rhône, before a return match scheduled for January 31, during the 14ᵉ day, in Paris. The “classics” against OM – December 6 and March 11 – also promise, such as derbies between PSG and Paris FC (December 20 and February 7), third of the last championship and winner of the French Cup.
If, for this first day of the championship, the confrontation between Lens and PSG, on Saturday evening, will be broadcast on Canal+ Foot, and between OL Lyonnes and OM, Sunday, in clear by Canal+, the other four meetings will be the subject of a multiplex on the YouTube channel of the League. And “At least ten second league posters”the second division championship, will be broadcast for free on Sport in Francethe Youtube channel of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, promises the Women’s Professional Football League (LFFP).
A year after its creation, the body aspires to pursue its objective of “Make France the best European Professional Women’s Football League”. The French Football Federation (FFF) has deployed a five -year engagement plan, amounting to 70 million euros, 14 million of which were invested last season. The same sum will be invested This season, in order to energize the championship. The License Club system is strengthened with thematic labels allowing clubs to be financially rewarded according to the priorities they set for themselves (training of players, visibility, experience of supporters, territorial commitment), and a progressive quota of players formed locally must enter into force by 2028.
In May 2025, the president of the FFF, Philippe Diallo, said that «The LFFP [devait] find your economic autonomy as quickly as possible ”. On the sponsorship side, if the French chemist Arkema extended his participation until 2028, the female elite concluded a new partnershipthe amount of which was not communicated, with the sports betting operator Betclic in July. The quest for revenue is as delicate as it is imperative in the hexagonal context, where the financial crisis linked to the drop in diffusion rights for Ligue 1 and League 2 night to women’s teams, still largely linked to their male counterparts.
For the authorities, the Lyon experience, where the women’s section was sold in 2023 to the American investor Michele Kang – also in June to the rescue of the male section – is a model. At Paris FC and AS Saint-Etienne, the arrival in 2024 of the billionaires of the Arnault family and the Canadian businessman Lawrence Tanenbaum (through his company Kilmer Venture Sports) reassured, as in RC Strasbourg, which in 2023 became the property of the Blueco consortium. This does not prevent several clubs in financial difficulty, such as Le Havre, Dijon or Montpellier, from having put their female section for sale, without finding a taker for the moment.
