Man City star Jeremy Doku has just won a historic legal battle in a Paris court.
The 21-year-old recently completed an impressive maiden season with City since arriving from RB Leipzig for £55.5m last summer.
Now, the winger has followed up his first Premier League triumph with a legal victory over the Panini sticker company and UNFP (France’s equivalent of the PFA) alongside three French players.
In doing so, he has followed the lead ofKylian Mbappe, who has campaigned on this issue vociferously and has recently won his own landmark success in the domain.
Doku wins image rights dispute
As reported by French outlet L’Equipe, a Paris court has ruled in favour of the four-player group led by Doku who were disputing the use of their image rights without compensation.
The court’s decision found that the UNFP does not own the image rights of the players that they were selling to Panini for their sticker albums.
Former Southampton right-back Jeremy Pied was among the group of players on Doku’s side in the case but the identities of the other two players are not known.
Why is this significant?
UNFP’s deal with Panini is worth around of £2m per season, but that value would likely vanish if they no longer have the right to sell French players’ image rights.
While this one commercial deal in isolation will not send shockwaves throughout football, the issue of image rights is a growing concern among increasingly commercially savvy players and their agents.
For example, new Galactico Mbappe has been at the forefront of the debate around image rights and has secured an 80 per cent cut of his rights as part of his blockbuster move to Real Madrid.
That is a far higher cut than Real has typically given its big-name stars.
Will the image rights row affect Man City?
Not in the short term – but the ripple effect the ruling could have might an impact on their commercial strategy in years to come.
City are arguably the best commercial operators in world football and are experts at leveraging their players’ brands to boost their appeal as a sponsorship prospect.
Commercial revenue accounted for accounted for £341.3m of the club’s record-breaking £712.8m turnover in 2022-23.
That figure is likely to shoot up again when City release their accounts for the current campaign thanks to the club’s commercial directors capitalising on their treble win last season with a series of new deals.
That in turn will have a material impact in extending their ability to blow out sides out of the water in the transfer market, with Profit and Sustainability rules favouring clubs with the highest turnover.
The image rights saga will affect clubs across the board, but as one of the clubs who have been so successful in marketing their stars, City may be at the biggest risk.