Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid and La Liga have all apologised over the French striker's comments about Mao Zedong, but analysts say repairing their standing in China will be neither easy nor fast.
The France captain is at the centre of a row after a video surfaced this week in which he appeared to mock the former Chinese leader. Mbappe spoke of being amused by an internet meme that put his face onto "some guy, think he's a Chinese dictator." The video was purportedly filmed in April.
Mao is still officially revered in China as the hero of the communist revolution and the founder of the People's Republic. Historians blame him for millions of deaths, yet publicly ridiculing him remains taboo. Mbappe is now the latest foreign sports figure or organisation to anger Beijing.
The consequences have been swift. Leading Chinese brands have cut ties with the 27-year-old, and Spanish top-flight matches will be removed from the schedule of state broadcaster CCTV. Chinese state media and social media users condemned him, though many were not told what he had actually said. Within two days of the video circulating, the player, his club and La Liga had each issued apologies. A spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government took Mbappe's apology "seriously."
Even so, commentators doubt the matter is closed. "Viewed from a calm, objective and emotion-free standpoint, this is clearly a very damaging incident," veteran sports commentator Yan Qiang told AFP. He said it seriously harms the image of La Liga and Real Madrid in China, and that an apology is better than none but "definitely not the end of the story."
There is precedent. In 2019, China effectively cut ties with the NBA after then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for Hong Kong protesters. The league was removed from CCTV for more than a year, and NBA preseason games returned to China only last year. Commissioner Adam Silver said the split cost the league "hundreds of millions of dollars." Australian National University lecturer Debby Chan described both that case and Mbappe's as examples of China's consumer nationalism, in which online sentiment and state media combine into "a spiral of outrage."
Spanish football has plenty at stake. A La Liga source told AFP that China and the United States alone fund the majority of international broadcasting rights, valued at 748 million euros ($834m) for the 2024-25 season. Marca, a newspaper affiliated with Real Madrid, reports that the club earns 10 to 15 percent of its jersey and other merchandise sales in China. Hisense, Kaiyun Sports and Linglong Tire are among its prominent Chinese sponsors.
Adam Zhang, founder of Beijing-based Key-Solution Sports Consulting, said quick and heartfelt remorse was the necessary first step, and that it would influence whether the broadcast ban continues and for how long.
Yan questioned whether Mbappe, whose face has appeared on drink bottles and in advertising campaigns in China, can fully regain his standing. He pointed to the player's commercial presence during the World Cup as evidence of his huge influence, and said that if it cannot be sustained, La Liga and Real Madrid will be badly affected. Calling the outlook "genuinely hard to predict," he said he was not optimistic in the short term, and that future actions and behaviour will be key to repairing the relationship.
