CASE STUDY 012: Paris and a taste of sporting success amidst competition for France’s attention
France, a nation any Football fan would associate with an endless pipeline of talent, a few World Cups and European titles, and too many icons of the sport to name. The top flight of the nation’s domestic league, Ligue 1, is broadly recognized as the 5th best footballing league in the world. Featuring global institutions like Olympic Lyonnais, AS Monaco, Olympic de Marseille, Lille, Rennes, and PSG (to name a few), the country and its academies have created a talent pool that could likely field 3 World Cup squads at any moment. France is the definition of a developed footballing nation when it comes to the sport’s culture and game-performance.
Paris Saint-Germain was, and remains, the only professional football club to have attracted a Jordan brand partnership (at the time of writing). AS Monaco are the frequent subjects of Kappa’s most influential retro campaigns. Puma routinely harvest the local energy of Olympique de Marseille’s fanbase to create special edition kits that feature in every major footballing media publication numerous times a year. The attractiveness of these clubs at the global level is simple - they carry a balance of local influence and global ambition. A taste of a rich national culture, a uniquely chic or lively city, and a football team that can take on the world’s best on their day.
In our team’s visits to Paris over the past years, the most striking takeaway was Football’s cohabitation under the lucrative sporting spotlight. Rugby and Cycling were on the televisions in bars and cafés just as often as Football. To use an admittedly imperfect proxy measurement of interest, there were more basketball stores in the Paris city center than football-specific stores. There are actually more football-specific stores in New York City center (5) than Paris (3) today. And what about cycling stores? There are over 40 shops in central Paris alone. And so, what do we make of this? How can a country that divides its sporting attention be so damn good at the most popular sport in the world?
One of many arguments as to why the United States comes nowhere near the likes of France (on the men’s side of the game to caveat) is because we simply have too many competing pass-times. Baseball, Basketball, American Football, and Hockey just to name a few. But please, spare us the argument, “oh if our best athletes in the US played soccer it would be over for everyone else.”
France has a dynamic and rich history with sports far beyond soccer. Familiar with the Tour de France? Of course. 6 Nations Rugby? Maybe - if not, that’s on you. The point is, they aren’t strangers to investing in something else outside of Football and still they thrive in this hyper-competitive sport.
Counter to what you may be thinking by now, we didn’t write this case to argue why the US is so inferior to France when it comes to the game of Football. This case was genuinely focused on calling out a concept - sports can coexist and still develop top quality playing talent, a rich mainstream culture, sub-culture, and the entire range between. Today, in Paris, you can go for a walk and see over 15 kids wearing a football kit within 15 minutes. You can also see people repping their favorite NBA team, watching Paris-Roubaix in those funny little cycling hats, or sitting at a pub in those beautifully collared rugby kits. Perhaps our most recent trip was too quick, but we didn’t hear many debates as to which sport was better, more dominant, or more important. Instead, we saw how the influences of each sport coalesced to create a vibrant and diverse sporting market. Make no mistake, Football is central to the country’s sporting world, but it certainly isn’t everything. In the medley of sporting interest, the city of Paris produces some of the most interesting brand projects in the Football space (shout out Red Star Paris in Ligue 2) and the most professional footballers in the top 5 leagues (yes, more than any city in the world).
Ultimately, we wrote this article to counter the notions that to be a great footballing nation, you need to focus on the sport and the sport alone. The city of Paris and the broader country of France embodies this notion. When you examine the culture of Football in this city, one saying comes to mind - the devil is in the details. To quote a late famous local, “Luxury is in the things we do not see”(Gabrielle Chanel). Go to a magazine stand in Paris and ask for a Football magazine - they will point you to an entire wall hidden in plane sight. We call that luxury.
