In the end, Real Madrid didn’t have to pay a single cent for Kylian Mbappe, whose move to the Santiago Bernabeu was officially announced on Monday to the relief of Madridistas around the world.
Although some Real Madrid fans had written off Mbappe as selfish and a poor fit for the club after his surprising and controversial 2022 decision to change his mind and stay at PSG, there is nobody complaining now that the deal is done.
Real Madrid had once offered 200 million euros in 2021 in order to sign Mbappe, only to see PSG reject the deal without even responding.
Los Blancos would go on to win the Champions League that season without Mbappe, thanks to a huge breakout from their own star winger Vinicius Junior, which included a Remontada over PSG.
Kylian Mbappe is now a Real Madrid player for free, and the sweetener is that Florentino Perez’s proud club is set to profit massively from the buzz of the move.
Per Diario AS, Real Madrid will generate a total of 500 million euros from jersey sales, sponsorship deals, rights deals, and other merchanise as a result of the Mbappe transfer.
Although a lot of these reporter figures of star players benefiting a club commercially need to be taken with a grain of salt, Kylian Mbappe is one of the rare cases in which it is plausible to say that the deal pays for itself.
Mbappe isn’t entirely free due to a high salary and contract bonus, but those values should still pale in comparison to the kind of money he can bring to Real Madrid as the most popular player in European football.
Real Madrid continue to win on and off the pitch, following a much better blueprint of the Galacticos model Perez first brought to the Spanish capital in the early 2000’s.
