One is aiming for a fifth French Champion title, the other is aiming to maintain it. One is one of the greats of Europe while the second gradually aspires to approach it. Between Paris Saint-Germain and Paris FC who face each other this Sunday evening at the end of the 17th day of Ligue 1, a world of difference remains.
“It will take us time to fight on equal terms,” admitted Pierre Ferracci, president of the company promoted to “Parisien”. The manager is well aware of being “far from PSG on a sporting level”, a consequence in particular of the budget available to his club to operate.
For its first season in the elite, Paris FC has, according to our information, a budget of between 100 and 120 million euros. And if it ranks in the top 10 of the biggest budgets in Ligue 1, the difference is colossal with its neighbor Paris Saint-Germain which can count on some 850 million euros to operate. Driven by its sporting success and popularity, PSG also closed the 2024-2025 financial year with a record turnover of 837 million euros.
Logically, the numbers of the two clubs do not play in the same league and their market values attest to this. Measured at just over 91 million euros by the specialized site Transfermarkt, with winger Ilan Kebbal (12 million euros) as the “best” player, that of Paris FC can hardly stand up to the army of Paris Saint-Germain whose squad had a historic 2024-2025 season.
With six trophies including that of the Champions League, key players in all positions, almost all capable of scoring and making the difference, the European champion’s squad is valued at 1.19 billion euros! “Count” 100 million euros for Ballon d’Or Ousmane Dembélé, 90 others for Désiré Doué, 110 for João Neves as for Vitinha or even 70 million for Ecuadorian defender Willian Pacho, who arrived in Paris in the summer of 2024 and under contract until 2029.
Hosted at the Parc des Princes since the early 1970s, Paris Saint-Germain also enjoys an attendance almost three times greater than that of Paris FC. The club will also celebrate its 176th consecutive sold-out match. Nearly 48,000 spectators have been present at each match since the start of the 2017-2018 season.
But with its neighbor Jean-Bouin the beginnings are more than correct. In an enclosure which has just under 20,000 seats (19,607 precisely), an average of 17,090 spectators attended the matches in the first part of the season, with a record for the match against Olympique Lyonnais (18,445 spectators recorded). If the club manages to stay in Ligue 1 and maintain its solid subscriber base – more than 7,000 to date – it should in turn be able to increase the number of matches played in a packed stadium.
