Kylian Mbappe: Why Paris Saint-Germain believe star’s new €105m contract will pay for itself
Paris Saint-Germain believe Kylian Mbappe’s lucrative new €105m contract, which helped to keep him out of the clutches of Real Madrid, will pay for itself.
Mbappe signed a new three-year deal with PSG on Saturday worth around €35m a year, putting the 23-year-old France forward in the same pay bracket as team-mate Lionel Messi.
It sparked an extraordinary response from Spanish league chiefs, who called it “scandalous” that PSG could outmanoeuvre one of its teams after losing €224m last year.
But insiders at the French champions insist the investment in Mbappe, which also includes a signing-on fee reported to be in the region €150m, will be easily recouped.
They point to the signing of Messi last summer on a free transfer from Barcelona, which they say generated a €15m profit for the club in the first year of his contract.
That came from €50m in additional revenue that PSG attribute to the signing of the superstar Argentina No10, minus his salary costs.
Significant among that extra income were new commercial partners in South America and nine new international television contracts for the French domestic league.
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PSG also benefited from a major increase in hospitality and merchandise revenue, a four-fold increase in social media reach and a €18m boost in the value of club NFTs.
On top of any new business that Mbappe’s new contract might generate, his employers believe they can recoup the signing-on fee should they sell before 2025. Real Madrid offered €200m for him last summer.
They are set to make savings from the departure of some high-earning players such as winger Angel di Maria, who played his last game for PSG on Saturday against Metz.
And they argue that Mbappe’s package represents good value given that they view him as the world’s best player and Manchester City and Chelsea made financial commitments of a similar size, once transfer fees are included, last summer for Jack Grealish and Romelu Lukaku, neither of whom has been an ever-present for their club. Mbappe, by contrast, scored 356 goals in 45 games for PSG this season.
The Qatar-owned club have not made any formal response to LaLiga’s statement but are understood to be frustrated at assumptions that they cannot afford the Mbappe deal, especially as they believe Real Madrid offered the player even more money.
Mbappe had been expected to leave Paris for Spain this summer but made both clubs wait until the final weekend of the French season for his decision. After it was announced, he scored a hat-trick in PSG’s 5-0 win over Metz.
In a statement issued on Saturday before Mbappe’s new PSG deal had even been confirmed, LaLiga said the contract “attacks the economic stability of European football”.
The organisation, which represents clubs from Spain’s top two divisions, said it would complain about PSG to European football’s governing body Uefa, French authorities and the European Union.
LaLiga said: “This behaviour demonstrates once more that state owned clubs do not respect and do not want to respect the rules of a sector as important as football.”
