Dongpeng Beverage and Mengniu have both ended their sponsorship deals with Kylian Mbappé, pulling his face off Chinese shelves and billboards within hours of each other on 27 October. The two contracts were worth roughly €7m a year to the France captain, and Goal.com, citing L’Équipe via Foot Mercato, reports they were due to run until February and March 2027 respectively, with renewal considered highly likely before the controversy. Le Monde, cited by Africa Soccer, put the combined value at around 50 million yuan, close to €6.7m.
Dongpeng, whose Bushuila electrolyte drink had carried Mbappé’s image across Chinese cities during this year’s FIFA World Cup, said it was dropping him with immediate effect. Mengniu, China’s largest dairy producer, followed within hours with an almost identical statement, citing zero tolerance for words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.
The trigger was a short clip from French online show The Bridge, filmed in April and only widely shared in China this month. Asked for the funniest meme he had seen of himself, Mbappé pointed to one placing his face on, in his words, “some guy, I think he’s a Chinese dictator.” The image is Mao Zedong, and jokes about the founder of the People’s Republic remain socially taboo.
According to Al Jazeera, Dongpeng said in its statement: “Our company firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments,” adding that it was terminating all cooperation with the player with immediate effect.
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La Liga off CCTV, Dior and Hublot pull back
The commercial damage has run wider than the two headline deals. According to Yahoo Sports, cheese maker Milkground has also cut ties, while Dior, Hublot and On have removed Mbappé content from their Chinese Weibo pages, and new users can no longer follow his accounts on Weibo or RedNote. Social platform RedNote added that its own content partnership with Mbappé had expired at the end of 2024.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV suspended its La Liga broadcasts in the wake of the clip, and the league issued its own statement, carried by Al Jazeera, saying Mbappé’s remarks had been made in a personal capacity and did not represent La Liga. The CCTV agreement, signed with China Media Group in 2024, had been showing La Liga matches free-to-air on CCTV-5+. La Liga’s longer-term new-media rights in China sit with Migu, the streaming service of state carrier China Mobile, through to the 2029-30 season.
Forbes estimates Mbappé’s annual earnings at about $100m this season, split roughly $70m on the field and $30m from endorsements and business interests, putting him third on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid footballers. None of the Chinese brands has disclosed what it was paying, so the direct hit to that $30m figure is still not public.
Mbappé apologises, deals stay cancelled
The 27-year-old issued a statement on 27 October, carried by Al Jazeera, published in French, Mandarin and English.
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“My comment was ill-judged and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world. I apologise to everyone my words have upset. This was absolutely not my intention. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry,” he wrote.
Neither Dongpeng nor Mengniu has reinstated its deal since the apology was published on 27 October.
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