Lyon is the richest French football club

After joining the Lyon Stock Exchange on Friday, its shares were up 0.8% to 24 euros ($16; �31) by mid-afternoon.

This valued the 28% float at 88.4m euros, making the entire club, the richest in France, worth 312m euros.

Lyon will use the extra money to build a new stadium. Until it changed the law last year, the French government had banned football flotations.

Paris had long maintained that allowing a club to list its shares would expose it to potentially damaging commercial pressures, but after pressure from the European Commission, it changed the legislation in January last year.

'New era'

"It's a new era for Lyon and all French sports clubs," said Lyon president and controlling shareholder Jean-Michel Aulas.

He added that such a flotation was the only way in which French clubs could catch up with richer rivals in other European leagues.

"All other countries have this access to private finance and then this will open the way to the construction of some private stadiums," he said.

"We know today that the equipment in French stadiums is extremely behind."

Commentators said that a number of UK institutional investors had bought Lyon shares.

Lyon had dominated French football over the past decade, winning five titles.