How PSG went from football club to lifestyle brand Want to watch? Here is the schedule for the Floorball World Championship 2022 in Switzerland

Imagine you are a football club and people are more passionate about your merchandise than about your athletic achievements.

What are you doing then? Buy the most expensive football players? Reset your priorities? Thinking of an even more unusual marketing strategy? Or is the mix of sport, fashion and luxury your secret recipe for a successful football club?

In the case of Paris Saint-Germain, this interaction seems like the recipe for success. Qatari owner Nasser Ghanim Al-Khelaifi bought the club in 2011 for €70 million, while PSG is now worth more than €3 billion.

It has only a limited connection to football. Because PSG has become a lifestyle brand – even shaking up the fashion industry. How did it get this far? And what’s behind it?

Fashion city like home

In the mid-1950s, Coco Chanel revolutionized the fashion world – turning Paris into the world capital of fashion. But Paris is not only home to the world-famous designer, but also to the great museums. The city has been combining fashion and art for decades. The football club also makes this their own.

“PSG managed to capitalize on Paris’ DNA,” says Dr. Christian Lang, head of sports management at the University of St. Gallen, to Watson. In doing so, the Sheikh Club has expanded into areas that other football clubs have not yet explored and that make up Paris: fashion, art and music.

Lang isn’t the only one to be sure that the city’s popularity, glamor and affinity for fashion give the club an edge. “Of course the fact that the club is in Paris helps,” Antony Marcou, CEO of the sports marketing agency Sports Revolution, told the Bleacher Report. “As a marketer, if you could think of a few keywords related to the city of Paris, you would use words like ‘chic’, ‘high quality’ and ‘culture’. It works as a marketing function.”

But owner Al-Khelaifi wants the brand to shine even more: “The goal after the PSG acquisition was – or is – to redefine the identity of the brand to give the PSG brand a healthy dose of French glamour,” says Christian Long.

“Within a few years, the club has grown into a lifestyle brand that attracts artists and celebrities from all over the world,” Lang continues. Fans include Rihanna, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Bella Hadid and LeBron James, all of whom have been spotted in chic PSG attire.

Away from tradition – on to the catwalk

However, with Swarovski stones on the jerseys, you don’t leave the competition behind on the field – nor do you win titles. Even if that is Al-Khelaifi’s goal.

“It is part of Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s project to make Paris Saint-Germain a very big football club and a global lifestyle brand,” Fabien Allègre, PSG’s manager of brand diversification and development, told the Bleacher Report. . “That’s why, unlike many other clubs, we managed to cover markets that are quite far from the markets that football clubs usually cover.”

Christian Lang also notes this: “The football club is consistently moving from selling fan articles or from the classic fan article brand to a sustainable positioning as a lifestyle brand,” says Christian Lang.

According to Lang, the Bundesliga and Super League clubs offer a total of around 300 traditional items such as clothing, flags, bed linen, towels, china, jewelery and school supplies.

PSG this is not enough. Or too stuffy. Or both.

For example, the football club allows models with so-called capsule collections to walk the catwalks in Paris or New York. For capsule collections, the club collaborates with fashion designers on a collection that combines – or ‘encapsulates’ – the specific brand with PSG.

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But this is far from the only store that sells extremely rare collectibles in addition to traditional sporting goods. “PSG has built an unparalleled distribution network with stores in North America (Los Angeles and New York), Asia (Tokyo, Seoul, etc.) and the Middle East (Doha), as well as stores in and around Paris,” said Christian. Long.

The club focuses not only on these regions to promote its brand in the global market, but also to address entirely new target groups. Because: Especially in Asia, Barça and Real Madrid have had the upper hand so far.

Football players as promotional ambassadors

The presence of Paris Saint-Germain goes far beyond football. But also in sporting terms, the Parisians can keep up with the big clubs: Neymar, Messi and Mbappe – the club has three of the best players in the world under contract. Until now, this has not been enough for international titles – but the brand is benefiting greatly. “The players are the main ambassadors of the PSG brand. They have one of the biggest fan bases on social media,” said Christian Lang.

PSG – the Gen Z club

With more than 160 million followers on social media, PSG is now one of the most popular sports clubs on the internet, according to Christian Lang. On Instagram, the Parisians are even the French company with the most followers – with Instagram increasingly fading into the background.

The association mainly focuses on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. «Clothes with the Paris Saint Germain logo are worn in all parts of the world. This shows that the club is more than ever a club of the new generation,” said Lang.