How does one market a club like Monaco, newly promoted to France’s Ligue 1? Given the size of the principality, it’s difficult to generate big crowds. With a population of just over 36,000, Monaco is the second smallest country in the world and the smallest with a coastline. Only Vatican City is smaller.
How does one market a club like Monaco, newly promoted to France’s Ligue 1? Given the size of the principality, it’s difficult to generate big crowds. With a population of just over 36,000, Monaco is the second smallest country in the world and the smallest with a coastline. Only Vatican City is smaller.
Monaco is not a member of Uefa. Gibraltar, which was admitted recently, has a smaller population, but is not a sovereign state. It also has a thriving domestic football league. However, Monaco has even more local clubs (64) which compete in a number of cups. The leading competition is Challenge Prince Ranier III which Sun Casino has won ten times. Other clubs include Single Buoy Moorings, SBM Slot Machines and Parking Publics presumably made up of traffic wardens.
Attendances at AS Monaco averaged 5,000 per game in the season that has just ended. Even in 2003-4, the year in which they reached the Champions League final, they only managed to draw 10,000 a game.
The club has found it easier to attract quality players because of a treaty with France which allows non-French residents to pay no income tax. This halves the club’s wage bill. But this arrangement is now under threat as the French league has introduced rules forcing the club to move their registered office from the principality to French soil which would end their tax privileges. This dispute is likely to end up in the courts but Monaco may eventually lose.
The club is owned by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovev. His plan is to turn the club into a kind of luxury brand. Whether the jet set rich of Monaco will be willing to pay premium prices for hospitality seats remains to be seen.