France’s billionaire Arnault family, owners of luxury group LVMH and one of the richest dynasties on the planet, is preparing to secure majority ownership of minor soccer club Paris FC — but sees any sporting turnaround as a long-term aim.
Antoine Arnault, son of LVMH CEO and Chairman Bernard Arnault, told CNBC the investment in the second-tier club was about “emotions” rather than finances; as it looks to replicate the sporting success Red Bull has achieved in its own acquisitions of German soccer club Leipzig and Austria’s Salzburg.
The Arnaults will partner with Red Bull in the Paris FC endeavor, with the family’s holding company Agache taking an initial 52% share, according to the Associated Press, while the energy drinks juggernaut acquires 11%.
Arnault said that compared to other clubs his family had identified more “interest and value creation than the others, not only on the sports side, but also on the branding side, which was the Paris FC.”
“There is an anomaly in French football and in Parisian football, that it is probably the only big city in Europe with only one big football club. And Paris FC already has infrastructure, already has a great team, already has a beautiful history, but just needs, financially, a little bit of a stronger shareholder to push it to go to the next level,” Arnault told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed.
Antoine Arnault speaks to the media during the Paris FC press conference at Groupe ADP – Centre d’entrainement Paris FC on November 20, 2024 in Orly, France.
Kristy Sparow | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
Compared with Qatari-owned titans Paris Saint-Germain, which has dominated French domestic soccer for decades and attracted world-class stars and competed in international tournaments, Paris FC is a little-known club which last played in the top league in the 1970s.
Asked by CNBC whether he saw Paris FC as a potential challenger, Arnault said: “That would be very immodest of us, to even compare ourselves to Paris Saint-German. The first objective is to go into League One and to go up, then scale, and then to build a beautiful club with good values that our fans love and that our fans respect and want to come back to the next match.”
“Not having the pressure of time to succeed is something that’s very important, I think, to take the right decisions and to, yes, take a little bit of pressure off the shoulders of players who are under a lot of traditional sports stress, which is positive, but sometimes also with a big shareholder like this, negative,” he said.
“We are not an investment fund. We’re not asking them to win the Champions League in three, five, 10 years, just to do the best they can and to give everything on the pitch.”
The team are set to gain additional momentum from the recent appointment of Jürgen Klopp, who took English club Liverpool to Premier League success, as Red Bull’s global head of soccer. Klopp is expected to work with the Arnaults in an advisory role.
Wealthy families and businesses have long eyed high-profile sports teams as attractive acquisitions, often as a so-called “trophy asset” or for branding opportunities rather than as a significant moneymaker given the huge costs involved.
Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney since 2020 have spearheaded somewhat of a reverse strategy, purchasing small and struggling Welsh club Wrexham AFC — then in the fifth tier of English soccer — and creating a globally successful documentary about their efforts to turnaround its fortunes and rise through the leagues.
But the Arnault family’s acquisition draws more comparisons with those of Red Bull, whose investments pulled both Leipzig and Salzberg into their domestic top flights and gave them Red Bull-branded arenas — though drew significant ire from fans of rival clubs in the process.
Arnault told CNBC that if his family wanted a “trophy asset,” they would have looked elsewhere.
“What we want is to build the story of resilience, build a story of hard work with beautiful values,” he said.