Johan Ibrahim Adrián

Kylian Mbappé: A Player And A Brand The Mbappé Brand ​ Back in 2017, Mbappé told RMC: "I have had a career plan since I can remember," and you just need to take a look at the way this player manages his image to understand how far the plan goes. Kylian Mbappé knows his name sells. As the highest-paid player in the world, he’s sure to make any sponsoring brand an instant success. ​ ​ According to Front Office Sports, after joining PSG, Mbappé “is now the top earner for the 2022-23 season, expected to earn $128 million — a record for the Forbes' annual list. The French star will earn around $110 million from his salary and signing bonus, with the remaining $18 million coming from endorsements.” To make that kind of money outside the field, managing your image is a full-time job that requires a high brand value awareness. ​ Mbappé and his mother quickly realized the potential of becoming a personal brand. Even when the main goal was to become a well-paid soccer player, a side business was born. Once he got into PSG and started making real money, he and his mother, Fayza Lamari, founded "KEWJF", a family joint-stock company to manage all of Mbappé's businesses. That’s right, when it comes to Mbappé, business also means family. He doesn't even have a traditional agent. His parents (and his personal lawyer) are his only consultants when it comes to making big career decisions. The main objective of this company, which they founded, is managing Mbappé's public image down to the very last detail. That's how much he cares about his positioning. KEWJF (and his mother) takes care of everything related to Mbappé's image: his fashion brand, his personal shop, his Instagram account, his website, and his publishing house; and, of course, all his sponsorship deals. This is where Mbappé’s approach to business differentiates from the regular player accepting all and any offers that come their way. His particular approach to business can be understood by taking a look at his sponsors: instead of simply accepting all the offers he might receive, he and his team have carefully picked a small group of four high-value sponsors: Nike, Hublot, Oakley, and EA Sports. This is a different strategy for maximizing revenue: one where the player points toward the premium segment and keeps himself away from cheap-looking sponsorships like hotdog companies, cryptocurrency online exchanges, and online poker websites, just to name a few sponsors other players work with. Just to give you an example: Swiss luxury watch brand Hublot closed a deal with Mbappé for around €1 million a year to have him as its next ambassador, replacing legendary Olympian Usain Bolt. This explains why he's so careful with how he manages brands and exposition, to the point of hiding the names of unwanted brands in his photos and boycotting official photoshoots of the French federation to re-negotiate the individual sponsoring terms for the players when showing a specific brand. Regarding this incident, the website France24 said “ESPN reported Mbappé refused to participate in a team photo and sponsor activities (...) because he does not want to endorse some brands, including fast food chains and betting companies, that are under contract with the national team. The strategy becomes crystal clear: allowing the player to become a "rare" coin, so to speak, not every brand will be willing to pay the high prices Mbappé is going to charge them in exchange for becoming their walking advertisement. This is pure business genius: recognizing and embracing his value not only as a player, but as a personal brand. Going deeper into his branding strategies, we need to talk about his mother, the woman in charge of the business. She has said that "Kyllian's image rights are also a question of beliefs and morals," hence the reluctance to be associated with betting companies, fast food chains, and alcohol brands like Budweiser. Mbappé and company could multiply their immediate income by a hundred if they accepted these kinds of sponsorship, but out of principle, they just won't do it. As a matter of fact, his mother has turned down offers from almost two hundred brands that have reached out and tried to make Mbappé a part of their own image. Beyond The Sponsorships ​ The operative word to think about Kylian Mbappé is BUSINESS. Everything he does is oriented toward profit, thus making himself a brand in his own right, and he knows how to make his worth rise. But, of course, this is not what you will always hear from him since it’s in his best interests to keep his fans’ love for the sport alive and kicking. Mbappé's strategy of “making himself scarce” goes beyond the way he (and his mother) approach sponsorship relations. It applies to the way he negotiates with soccer clubs as well. Have you ever thought about how a player can reject an offer from the number one club in the world? We’re sure you’re familiar with the story: Mbappé was targeted by Real Madrid for a long time, and he was close to joining the club several times, including the summer of 2022, when the team offered him up to €200 million! The team believed he had him against the ropes, but, in the end, he ended up returning to the ranks of France’s capital soccer club, PSG. When the deal was closed, he told ESPN: “Everybody knows I wanted to leave last year. But things are different now, in sporting terms and personally (...) Leaving my country wasn't the right thing. There's a sentimental aspect to this, and the sporting project [in PSG] has changed as well... We spoke for months about the sporting project, and we spoke about money for just a few minutes." Well, let’s dive a bit into that because, even when the personal branding and the sponsorships have become a successful business for Kyllian and his family, that money doesn’t even scratch the surface when it comes to the real earnings Mbappé will be making with this decision; heck, he might even have avoided losing money. Paris Saint-Germain is paying Mbappé a whopping €250 million over three years! This is the result of Mbappé’s positioning strategy; Real Madrid and PSG fought for him in a bidding war, ultimately won by PSG. Of course, if we do the simple math behind this agreement, PSG simply offered more in the end, but in this contract, there’s more than meets the eye. Mbappé might have just been protecting his image rights and sponsorship deals. If he had signed with them, he would have lost half his sponsorship revenues to Real Madrid. Here’s the thing: all the Real Madrid players are contractually bound to surrender 50% of their image rights to the club, a weird imposition that Madrid justifies as a matter of mutual profit, given the big-time exposure players get by being in the world’s biggest team. So, there you go, by giving Real Madrid half of his sponsorship income, he would have lost money, indeed. It seems it all comes back to image and sponsorship again. But is it really all about money? Striving For A Legacy ​ Maybe there’s more than just a branding preoccupation after all. Mbappé has said he wants to be remembered as something more than a millionaire player, “not just the guy who shoots the ball and finishes his career and goes to the yacht and takes his money.” A project that leans toward this yet-unexplored side of the successful player is the upcoming project of founding his own film-production company in the United States under the name “Zebra Valley” with the objective of “creating unique, compelling content that will engage and inspire fans around the world.” This was confirmed on Twitter on June 15, 2022, by WME Sports, the sports branch of the American agency WME, a subsidiary of Endeavor. The tweet read: “WME Sports is proud to announce we have signed international soccer star, Kylian Mbappé, and his entertainment company, Zebra Valley. Welcome to the family, @KMbappé!” This company will serve as a launchpad for films that reach beyond the scope of soccer. For example, one of the first projects they have in mind focuses on the life of a Syrian refugee. And you might be asking yourself, What does this have to do with a famous soccer player? Well, if you have been paying attention, you’ll agree that Mbappé’s first and most important asset is his own image, something he wants to make sure to endure the passage of time. Associating his name with these stories with a social impact and an international reach ensures that Mbappé’s present image turns into a future myth, creating a legacy that goes beyond the ball, the field, the sport, and the passion. Image, money, skill, and success all blend to create one of the biggest profiles the soccer world has seen in recent years; one that is sure to leave a mark in the history of the sport and in the hearts of the fans, not to mention the deep pockets of the Mbappé family.