As reported by Le Progrès, Lyon are set to lose at least €4m as a result of the punishments handed down by the LFP following the projectile throwing incident last month that saw Marseille’s Dimitri Payet struck by a bottle and the game between OM and OL abandoned.
Like all of French football, Lyon are struggling to overcome the financial crisis of the last two years and the prospect of playing the rearranged prestige meeting with Olympico rivals Marseille behind closed doors won’t help. The club will have to reimburse all 57,000 fans as a result which could mean the loss of €3.5m in revenue from that game alone.
Although the match with Reims, already played behind closed doors as punishment, was scheduled to provide cheaper tickets for fans, the local paper report that that game will have seen another €1m lost. As a result, Lyon will lose half the revenue generated by bonuses from a stellar Europa League campaign so far as a result of these punishments that also saw the team docked one Ligue 1 point.