Mbappé and China: How His Sponsors Have Reacted

What each sponsor did the week Mbappé became a problem in China

SOCCER

10/28/20264 min read

On September 18, Kylian Mbappé ended a twenty-year relationship with Nike, which had started dressing him when he was nine. He moved to On, the Swiss shoe brand, and it wasn’t only about money. According to The Athletic, part of the deal was paid in company shares. Neither side has said how many. On presented him as the cornerstone of its move into football, with its own boots planned for 2027 and Thierry Henry leading the project.

Five weeks later, that deal is facing its first real test.

What happened

On Monday, October 26, the French show The Bridge published a video recorded months earlier. Mbappé was asked about his favorite meme of himself, and he answered that it was one showing “a guy… I think he was a Chinese dictator.” The image that circulated put his face on the body of Mao Zedong. The video was taken down, but it was too late.

On Tuesday the 27th, Mbappé posted an apology in French, Chinese and English: his comment had been “ill-judged,” he understood it had hurt many people in China, and he was “sincerely sorry.” That same day Javier Tebas apologized on behalf of LaLiga. On Wednesday the 28th Real Madrid did the same, and China’s foreign ministry said it took the player’s apology “seriously.”

In between, every company with something at stake had to decide what to do. And not all of them could make the same decision.

The Chinese brands that ended their contracts

Dongpeng, a drinks brand that had run ads with Mbappé during the World Cup, ended its contract “with immediate effect.” Mengniu, a dairy company, and Milkground, a cheese maker, followed. The three statements are strikingly similar: they reject “any words and actions that hurt national sentiment.” RedNote, the social network, clarified that its deal with him had expired at the end of 2024 and that it was removing the promotional material.

The speed has a contractual explanation. Almost every major sponsorship includes a conduct clause: if the athlete does something that damages the brand’s image, the brand can walk away without waiting for the contract to end. The brand itself usually decides, and notice is usually enough. That’s why a company can terminate on a Tuesday morning without going anywhere near a courtroom.

But having the clause doesn’t explain why they used it so fast. For a Chinese consumer brand, China is the market. Keeping Mbappé that week cost far more than losing him. Think of a neighborhood restaurant whose star chef offends the whole neighborhood: the restaurant has no other neighborhood to move to.

None of the three has disclosed what it paid him. Forbes estimates Mbappé will earn around $100 million this season: about $70 million on the pitch and about $30 million off it. There’s no honest way to know how much of that $30 million disappeared this week.

The global brands that removed their content in China

Dior and Hublot face a different problem. They sell in China, but also everywhere else, and Mbappé is worth just as much as ever in Paris, Madrid or New York. According to several Chinese outlets, both removed content featuring him from Weibo. AFP searched their accounts for his Chinese name and found nothing. Neither has ended its contract.

It’s a wait-and-see approach that burns nothing: disappear from one specific shop window while the rest of the deal stays in place. If the noise has died down in a few months, the asset is intact. If it hasn’t, the decision is still open.

How it affects LaLiga and its clubs

The biggest hit hasn’t landed on any brand. It has landed on LaLiga. China Media Group, the parent of state broadcaster CCTV, suspended LaLiga broadcasts from Monday night and pulled ads featuring Mbappé. It made a public apology from Real Madrid a condition for resuming talks, and that apology came on Wednesday. The CCTV deal was signed in 2024, after nine years without an agreement, and runs until the end of this season.

The bigger exposure is elsewhere. Migu, China Mobile’s platform, holds exclusive online rights through the 2029-30 season and streams all 380 matches each season. As of October 28, it has announced no changes.

Here is the mechanism almost nobody explains. In Spain, TV rights are sold collectively, and the law sets how the revenue is split: in the top division, half equally and the rest according to each club’s results and following. If a contract in China loses value, Real Madrid isn’t the only one to feel it. The whole pot does. That’s why Tebas spoke of “more than 20 clubs” being affected. One player’s remark is paid for, proportionally, by Getafe and Alavés too.

Why On can’t react like the others

That leaves On. Global Times says it also removed Mbappé content from Weibo. We haven’t been able to confirm that elsewhere, and the brand hasn’t said anything publicly. What’s interesting is that even if it wanted to, On can’t react like the others.

It can’t cut ties like Dongpeng, because Mbappé isn’t just the face of an ad: he’s a shareholder in the company and the centerpiece of its football push. Nor can it simply step back like Dior, because its entire entry into football carries his name. And China is one of the largest sportswear markets in the world, exactly the kind of market a growing brand needs to reach.

That bond has already shown up on the stock market. On Tuesday the 27th, the same day the Chinese brands walked away, On’s shares fell as much as 6% before paring losses to around 3.5%, according to Investing.com, which linked the drop to the controversy. Because Mbappé is a shareholder, part of that drop is his too. Nobody knows how much, since the size of his stake has never been disclosed. It’s an unusual situation: the athlete loses money for the same reason, and on the same day, as the brand that sponsors him.

When On made Mbappé a partner instead of paying him only in cash, it tied the two together. That bond was the appeal of the deal: an athlete who wins when the brand wins has every reason to pull in the same direction. But the same bond holds when things go wrong. You can fire an employee on a Tuesday; you can’t push a partner out of the company in a morning.

The deal that looked like the most modern in the market a month ago is now the hardest to undo. That doesn’t mean it was a mistake. It means On chose a path where, whatever happens, the brand and the player go through it together.