We will therefore call it “the Messi effect”.
The arrival of Neymar at PSG in 2017 had already allowed the club of the capital a massive arrival of new "fans" on social networks.
That programmed from the Argentinian to the six Golden Balls takes Paris to another dimension.
To understand the already present influence of the Pulga (the Chip), here are the progress figures of the various PSG accounts on social networks in recent days.
On Instagram, the red and blue club is followed by 38.5 million people in total. Between January 1 and August 4, Paris had gained a total of 5.17 million subscribers, the equivalent of 24,000 per day on average. Since this Friday, August 9 in the morning, the progression has increased to 211,600 new daily subscribers! Ten times more, then. The very many fans of Lionel Messi (244 million followers on Instagram alone) seem to be moving slowly towards his new club, although nothing has been signed yet.
And this increase is valid on all accounts.
The most spectacular comes from the Spanish-language club's Twitter, that of Messi.
From 612 subscribers per day between January 1 and August 4, PSG has climbed to 8,400 new followers since Friday.
Twitter in Arabic, Portuguese, English and French is experiencing the same growth.
This also applies to the club's YouTube channel, where all the fans are eagerly awaiting presentation videos or a possible press conference in the coming days.
We can now imagine that PSG will experience other types of progress quickly, such as sales of shirts or the demand for places at the Parc des Princes when Lionel Mess has initialed his lease.