How PSG Owns French Football 🇫🇷
Plus tennis players to get minimum wage and Nike wins the London Marathon
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
Today we talk about the love-hate relationship between Paris Saint Germain and French Ligue 1.
PSG lost €369m last season. That equates to more than 50% of the total losses in France’s top two leagues.
Most of this loss can be traced back to the club’s famous summer transfer window that saw the likes of Lionel Messi, Sergio Ramos, and Achraf Hakimi move to Paris on bumper contracts. In total, PSG spent more than €1 billion last season. For context, they could have purchased the entire squads of 11 of their Ligue 1 rivals for the same money.
It isn’t just in the areas of spending and debt that PSG dominates. In 2019/20 the club generated over a third of the total revenue in Ligue 1 – more than the 15 clubs with the lowest revenue combined.
Some even say that PSG doesn’t simply compete in Ligue 1… it is Ligue 1.
Now, that may seem like a slightly harsh statement, and we are certainly not trying to fuel the widely shared internet joke that Ligue 1 is a farmers’ league.
But it is hard to ignore the fact that PSG has kept Ligue 1 relevant over the last few years, even making several French clubs far richer than they could have expected to be.
Or as former Stade Rennais coach Rolland Courbis put it in 2016:
“PSG are a gift from heaven, Ligue 1 is already dying so imagine how it would be without them.”
The first piece of evidence to show the importance of PSG to French football can be seen in the UEFA country coefficient.
📈 The Coefficient
This is a list that ranks UEFA’s member countries based on the performance of their teams in European competitions across the last five seasons. The higher the country on the list, the more Champions League places their league receives.
Currently, England, Spain, Germany, and Italy get four places, while France and Portugal get three (The Netherlands will have three places from next season). If a league drops out of the top six, their teams receive even fewer opportunities to compete in Europe and have access to the lucrative prize pots.
As you can see here, France looks like a stable top-six side, but strong performances from Dutch or Portuguese teams in Europe could easily put that top-six place in jeopardy.
For example, if AZ Alkmaar wins their last three European Conference League games and takes home the cup in Prague on 7 June, the French league would no longer be among the top 5.
France, even being that high up in the first place, is solely the work of PSG. They are consistently the only top-performing French club in Europe. Nothing makes this more apparent than the fact that PSG currently sits in sixth place in the UEFA Club coefficient. The next best French club is 26th-placed Lyon.
The positive impact of PSG is also shown in the league’s broadcast income.
💰 The Money
When Qatar Sports Investments purchased PSG in 2011, it was a relatively unpopular club (compared to today) in a largely unfashionable league. Since then, PSG has become a commercial giant that boasts one of the most star-studded and marketable squads in world football.
As PSG has established itself in Europe, demand to watch Ligue 1 increased dramatically. Attendance at the stadiums has also improved, with an extra 1 million fans buying tickets during the 18/19 season than had done in the 08/09 season. A lot of this increased demand can be traced back to Paris. Before the Qatari takeover, lots of places stayed free in Paris (ø 70% attendance). Today it's almost sold out every matchday (ø 95% attendance).
While the league still has some way to go to match the attention levels of the other big five, this relative popularity has allowed Ligue 1 to demand more money from broadcasters.
From 2016-2020 Ligue 1 made a record €727m per season for their domestic rights. That’s a 20% increase on what it received in the previous cycle. In 2020, the league actually agreed to a whopping €830m per year with Mediapro, only for the deal to fall through thanks to the pandemic.
From many angles, PSG’s dominance has brought prosperity and global attention to Ligue 1. But there is a potential downside…
⚖️ The Balance
Christophe Lepetit of the Limoges University warned:
“If it [PSG’s domination] goes on for a long period of time, people will get fed up and it could hurt the league’s economical attractiveness.”
Lepetit said this in 2016. Since then, PSG has won 4 of the last six titles and looks set to add another. Winning Ligue 1 has become so normal for the club, it’s no longer enough to guarantee that the coach keeps their job.
The fact that Ligue 1 was unable to replace the money lost from the broken Mediapro deal could be a sign of Lepetit’s warning starting to come true.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🎟 German club Fortuna Düsseldorf to give away free tickets next season.
The Bundesliga 2 side will be offering free tickets to all fans in some matches next season. The initial plan is to do this for three games, but that could increase based on the demand. The cost will be covered by the club’s sponsors.
Why are they doing this? Well, Fortuna want to increase their connection to the local community and feel that inviting locals for a free visit will convert them into fans and boost overall attendance as the club looks to break back into the Bundesliga. Fortuna also believe that they are trialing a new concept, one that could be picked up by other teams and leagues that want to improve attendance.
For context, Fortuna currently compete in the 54,600-seat Merkur Spiel-Arena, a venue that is rarely more than 50% full on a match day.
🎾 Tennis players to receive minimum wage
There appears to be a theme of giving in this week’s newsletter. First, PSG boosting the French league, and Fortuna giving away tickets, and now the ATP tour is planning to give male tennis players a minimum wage.
Under new plans, players ranked 300 and above will be entitled to a minimum amount of money each month to cover their basic costs. It’s not yet clear how much this will be.
There has long been a problem in tennis, with those outside the top 50-100 rarely making enough money to cover tournament, travel, and training costs. Novak Djokovic has been a vocal supporter of distributing even more of each tournament’s prize money to these lower-ranked players. It now appears that his pressure has worked, with the ATP deciding that lower-ranked participants deserve a greater cut of the prize fund.
👟 The Boot Room
🏃🏿♂️ What were the fastest shoes at the London Marathon?
Since 2016, marathon running has been dominated by the so-called ‘Super Shoes.’ These are lightweight, highly cushioned, and carbon fiber-plated shoes that are designed to allow the runner to go as fast as possible.
They were first made famous when Nike developed the Vaporfly shoes that helped Eliud Kipchoge to a sub-2-hour marathon and forced the Marathon authorities to bring in new rules on shoes.
Since then, Nike athletes have taken 31 of the 36 podium places available at the major marathons. For years, it seemed that Nike had won the marathon arms race.
That was until the recent Boston Marathon, where Adidas Adizero shoes took the top four places in the men’s race, and a surprise entrant from Swiss company On Running took the victory in the women’s race.
As a result, all eyes were on last week’s London Marathon. Would Adidas and On complete their comeback over Nike, or would the Swoosh re-take its lead?
The answer? An emphatic win for Nike.
In the men’s race, Kenyan athlete Kelvin Kiptum ran to victory in 2:01:25, setting a course record and becoming the second-fastest marathoner in history. On his feet, he had some Nike Vaporfly Next% 2.
Nike also took second place, with Geoffrey Kamworor wearing the new Alphafly Next% 3 prototype. Adidas had to settle for third.
In the women’s race, the top 2 (Sifan Hassan and Alemu Megertu) were sporting Nikes, while Adidas again had to settle for third.
🇨🇳 Adidas is taking a nationalist approach to boost sales in China.
China has been a tough market to crack for the big sports apparel brands. Adidas, in particular, has been hit hard. Last year, they saw Chinese sales fall by 36% to €3.2bn. This fall had a number of causes, including the lasting effects of the pandemic and the rise of local sportswear competition like Anta and Li-Ning. Perhaps the biggest reason, though, was a nationalist boycott triggered by the refusal of Adidas to use Xinjiang cotton, which activists say involves forced labour.
Adidas needed to re-establish itself in China and decided to start taking a more nationalist approach. This included designing clothes that integrated Chinese culture.
Adidas executive Adrian Siu, the company’s country manager for China explained:
“The Chinese consumer is increasingly confident in traditional Chinese culture. [...] We are marrying traditional Chinese elements with international product design to win the hearts and minds of [...] young consumers.”
The goal is to design at least 30% of all Adidas items sold in China locally by 2024. Adidas also wants to move production from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia to China. This should shorten production times and allow the company to respond quicker to local fashion trends.
Adidas will also focus more on items designed for health and fitness, with the Chinese middle class being far more health-conscious in recent years. To that end, Adidas is expanding its portfolio of athletes, including Wu Yibing, China’s best tennis player. This comes after being dropped by several fashion influencers during the nationalist boycott.
📱 Social Media Madness
Here are some of the best moments from social media this week.
First up, Tottenham’s players were so embarrassed after losing 6-1 to Newcastle last Sunday that they offered to personally pay for the travel costs of any fan that attended the match.
Then there are these incredible images of Luton Town’s stadium which could become a Premier League ground in just a few months…
Talking of promotion. Wrexham are finally going to be playing in the football league. This was a big moment for the entire town, and that includes arguably the two most popular people in Wales right now…
no translation in french ?