Lionel Messi is a week into his new venture with Paris Saint-Germain, and the club has seen the No. 30 kit with the “Messi” name in the back flying off the shelves.
Fabien Allègre, director of diversification at PSG, stated that many supporters flock to grab that kit during an interview with L’Equipe. Still, he brushed aside rumors that the club sold nearly 800,000 Leo Messi jerseys last week.
Some have insisted on social media that the capital club has sold almost 800,000 jerseys in recent days thanks to the arrival of the Argentine forward. However, the information used as the source has been proven false. Many have taken up a witty but outdated tweet from 2014 as the source of the numbers.
When asked about the figures for jersey sales, Allègre didn’t provide the exact numbers, but he did want to shut down any rumors involving crazy amounts of Messi kits sold.
“It’s crazy to come out of such figures. Yes, the sales trend has been phenomenal (the best swimsuit launch of all time), but we are a long way from the million swimsuits sold. The deal with Messi was made very quickly; it is not something that we could have anticipated,” Allègre said.
“So yes, we remain agile, but we have to do with our partner’s manufacturing times. Whether it is Nike, Adidas, or Puma, they all have the same approach regarding the production and the number of jerseys put on the market. We are not magicians.”
Finally, Allègre mentioned that the third PSG kit would be coming out this fall.
“For the moment, we have only unveiled two shirts (home and away); there are still the third and fourth shirts to be launched (early September for the third, late January for the fourth). Over the past two seasons, it was with all of these four outfits that we had reached the million jerseys sold,” Allègre said.
