PARIS: France’s Ligue 1 champions Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) have gone on record for the first time in expressing their interest in investing in India, Sportstar reports.
However, PSG head of communications Jean Ribes said that the club is aware of the challenges in doing so, making its Qatari owners assess the situation till they find a capable local partner in India for a potential joint venture or strategic alliance.
Its current association with India is only limited to tying up with three academies in India namely Shiv Nadar School, Shikshantar School and GEMS Modern Academy in Gurugram.
“For us [PSG], the Indian market is very important. If you break into the Indian market, the potential for business is massive. The problem is the game is not well developed yet,” Ribes told Sportstar in a interaction organized by the LFP in the city.
“We are looking closely at what the English and the other clubs are doing, and we will advance progressively. We were in India [before] and we found it difficult to develop the academies. For us, it’s [India] one of our top markets, but it’s not an easy one to break into.
“We need to find the right partners to build the academies, to develop even a PSG shop; because in Japan we opened one PSG shop and we are going to open a second one. Someday, it’d be great to have a PSG shop in Bombay [now Mumbai] or Delhi.
“We have sponsors from China, we have sponsors from Indonesia, the United States, from many, many countries. We do not have sponsors from India, but it’d be fantastic for us to be able to have access to sponsors from India or to have Indian market people representing our brand. There are some very big companies in India but we need to have the access and right now, we are missing access.
“If we can find an Indian businessman who comes to us and says, ‘I am ready to work with you and develop the brand’ by opening stores or opening academies, we could bring in star players and we could imagine having a match in India with our team (PSG) some day. If we can find that person, we will definitely go. Just to go there and invest without knowing the right people is difficult,” Ribes concluded.
