Mentioned in this article Games: Dota 2

French football giants Olympique Lyonnais (Lyon) has launched an esports team in China, consisting of four FIFA Online 3 players, Song Di, Xu Qingmu, Sun Jiangfeng and player/manager Feng Rui. They will be competing in the fourth season of the FSL, a FIFA Online 3 league organised by Tencent Games.

Lyon will be the first European sporting organisation to be involved with esports in China. A French football club taking their first steps in esports in China might seem odd, but there are investment reasons behind the decision. In 2016, Chinese investment firm IDG Capital Partners purchased a 20% stake in the club for $111 million. The joint venture with the Chinese investors was done to promote and grow football in China, and now with an esports division they are able to tap into the 520 million user gaming market of the country.

While League of Legends and Dota 2 stand high above other games in China as the most popular esports titles, FIFA Online 3 has a huge and passionate community. The developers reported over 40 million registered users, with over 10 million monthly active users. FIFA Online 3 is a free-to-play version of FIFA, developed by EA Games and published by different companies in South Korea, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore and Malaysia.

Lyon aren’t brand new to esports, signing a French FIFA player, Fouad “Rasfou” Fares, in January 2017. This is part of a continuing trend of large sporting teams investing in esports, namely fellow French club Paris Saint-Germain, and other European clubs like FC Copenhagen and FC Schalke 04.