PARIS (George Eddy's International Show) - There was amazing news last week in the French basketball community with Tony Parker announcing he will become the majority shareholder and president of the Lyon-Villeurbanne (ASVEL) club at the end of the present season!

This move was expected to come at the end of his playing career, but Tony wants things to advance more quickly and he considers that the time is ripe in French basketball right now, thanks to the buzz created by the national team winning its first-ever Eurobasket crown.

Parker was already a minority shareholder since 2009 and vice-president with power of decision concerning all recruiting matters, but he wants to go a step further by investing more of his own money, attracting new sponsors (perhaps his Chinese shoe partner PEAK?) to increase the club's budget and ambitions, and having power of decision over ALL matters.

This announcement took many by surprise because it's extremely rare to see an active NBA star player take on so much responsibility at such a young age. But throughout his whole career, Tony has always been incredibly precocious and thoughtful about his business decisions.

A few years back, Kobe Bryant was a minority shareholder in Milano, but he was never president!

Parker hopes to rekindle stalled talks with local political leaders about a new arena project that's been bogged down for years. This would enable the ASVEL team to envision a Euroleague participation in then next two to three years (Lyon-Villeurbanne was the last French club to qualify for a Euroleague Final Four back in 1997).

This news comes on the heels of recent and persistent rumours concerning the takeover of the Paris-Levallois club by the Paris Saint-Germain football club with a doubling of their budget and an Euroleague wild card in an even shorter time frame.

Paris Saint-Germain already owns the Paris team handball club and would like to create a world-renowned omnisports club like Real Madrid or Barcelona.

This is music to the ears of a lot of French basketball fans who feel that their pro league lacks big-budget teams as locomotives for media buzz and the possibility to compete with other European heavy-hitters in the Euroleague.

The French Pro A has the advantage of being well-run financially and all the contending teams have similar budgets and pay their players on a regular basis, which is already saying a lot. Each season seems to crown a new champion and this season, 11 clubs are still in the fight for the eight playoff spots.

All the games are athletic, competitive and difficult to predict but this differs considerably with the French league in the 1980s and 1990s, when three or four teams dominated the competition and also won several prestigious European Cups, notably CSP Limoges, a club which is in first place this season for the first time since 1994.

A new pecking order would be established with big population centres in Paris and Lyon and possibly Strasbourg leading the way and clubs like Limoges from smaller towns would bite at their heels thanks to a faithful fan-base and regional sponsors and partners.

If everything goes according to plan, this would lift the entire league to a higher level through competitive emulation.

Many observers felt that Parker would join forces with Paris, backed by money from Qatar, after being frustrated by the slow progress in Lyon. But Tony is going to compete with Paris, a team he played for at the age of 18 and which he and his agent were part owners of 10 years ago.

The current coach in Lyon, Pierre Vincent, who was hand-picked by Tony in 2011, says that things will take time because Lyon has had big budgets before without dominating the league. He sees Tony applying the management priciples he learned in San Antonio: concentrating on wise and efficient spending, inventive recruiting and the formation of young players as priorities.

In a recent survey in France's leading sports newspaper L'Equipe, Parker was designated as the highest-paid French sports figure. It was the first time ever that a basketball star finished in front of all the football stars.

That Tony would want to invest his money in France where he grew up has made him even more popular.

After being selected as 2013 Sportsman of the Year in France and working miracles on the court throughout his career, it's only fitting that Tony would be the one to try and work another miracle by putting a French club back on top among the elite of European basketball.

George Eddy

FIBA

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