Should French football fear the possible departure of Kylian Mbappé from Paris SG to Real Madrid?
Beyond the simple thorny case for the capital club which will have to manage the succession of its star striker, the flight of the 2018 world champion to Spain will directly or indirectly concern all of French professional football.
Vincent Chaudel, founder of the Sports Business Observatory, deciphers, point by point, the expected consequences of a transfer of the 25-year-old striker.
Read alsoMercato: “It’s original”, Florentino Pérez brushes aside a journalist’s question on the arrival of Mbappé at Real Madrid
A sale of TV rights which will bring in less?
Ligue 1 launched its call for tenders to sell TV rights last September but according to
L'Équipe
, DAZN's proposal of November 15, estimated at around 500 million euros, was rejected by the LFP, which requested €700M for national rights (to which international rights will be added).
How to sell a car at the best price when its engine, in this case Kylian Mbappé, is missing?
The equation will be difficult to solve for Vincent Labrune who will have to reassure potential buyers about the quality of his product.
“
The stakes are high because the income collected with TV rights affects all of French football and a Ligue 1 without Mbappé is always more difficult to sell than with it
,” summarizes Vincent Chaudel who especially fears a shortfall in the sale of rights outside our borders.
“
The margin for progress was very important because the LFP had not managed to capitalize on the presence of the fantastic three, Mbappé-Neymar-Messi.
The contract was already in place when they arrived and had not been renegotiated
,” he warns before highlighting another dark point: these negotiations take place at a time when the future of certain big teams is being written in dotted line:
“Dmitry Rybolovlev seems ready to sell AS Monaco, we do not know the intentions of Jim Ratcliffe in Nice, those of Frank McCourt at OM and the Lyon project with John Textor got off to a bad start
,” explains Chaudel.
So many question marks that can make potential buyers think.
Read alsoMercato: Mbappé decided to join Real Madrid?
PSG not aware
Consequences on ticketing revenues throughout France?
The arrival of Paris SG and its host of internationals is the assurance for any club of filling the stadium with the promise of reaping the highest ticket revenue of the season.
Will PSG still attract as much without its star striker?
Not sure.
“At the time of the Messi-Mbappé-Neymar trio, clubs could consider selling the equivalent of three to four times the capacity of their stadium.
All things considered, there is a Mbappé effect just as there can be a Messi effect in the United States: the average ticket has been multiplied by ten to see him play in the Miami stadium.
And if Mbappé leaves, the clubs will inevitably have a little more difficulty in having sold-out crowds.
They will also have to adapt their pricing policy by pulling it down a little.”
A drop in revenue for PSG?
The departure of the flagship of the Qatari crown will inevitably have consequences on the turnover of Paris SG even if we must put it into perspective.
“PSG is not going to lose 200 million in turnover if he leaves
,” says Chaudel.
Sponsorship contracts are multi-year and all the big deals have already been signed.
The effect will therefore be marginal.
In the area of jersey sales, we see that it is the
Korean Kang-In Lee who is driving revenues upwards
, ahead of Mbappé.
Here again, a departure would not be good news but not a disaster either.
The shortfall will also depend on the arrival of a world-renowned player next summer to replace him.
Like all major European clubs, PSG will be forced to find a new leader even if the project is today more collective than individual.
A PSG less attractive for future recruits?
After losing Messi, then Neymar, will the capital club lose with Mbappé the only player capable of attracting other great players with his name alone?
Vincent Chaudel believes that the striker's transfer to Madrid could, on the contrary, have a beneficial effect in recruitment: “
Playing alongside Mbappé is necessarily a privilege for many players but it also means agreeing to put oneself at Mbappé's service. and live a little in its shadow.
Having left, he will offer the possibility of a new player to embody the project.
There can therefore be a positive effect, especially since the club will find very significant room for maneuver financially because Mbappé's salary is colossal.
A championship less visible from abroad?
Many foreign countries only look at Ligue 1 through the prism of PSG and, this year, Mbappé, the squad's only global icon.
The ghost of the international could weigh on the exposure of the championship through the international media next season.
“Internationally, who are the stars followed around the world in our championship?
There are not any.
Dembélé, Donnaruma?
They are excellent players but not players capable of claiming the Top 10 of the Ballon d'Or today, nor footballers capable of attracting hundreds of millions of subscribers on social networks like Messi or Neymar.
Ligue 1 will inevitably lose... unless PSG manages to quickly attract a player of the standing of Erling Haaland,”
analyzes Chaudel who sees another weak point in Ligue 1, perhaps even more worrying: “
Paris SG is crushing everything for years and the fact that the competition is so weak necessarily harms the attractiveness of the championship.
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