Mbappé and Cherki Draw a Line as the Betclic Row Hits France’s Camp

Key Points

• Kylian Mbappé and Rayan Cherki are among five French players hitting out at Betclic claiming they never even knew their images taken on June 2 at Clairefontaine would pop up in a World Cup promotion just 48 hours later on June 4.
• Now as it turns out, Betclic were doing nothing wrong according to the 2023 collective image rights agreement. This agreement lets federation sponsors like Betclic get away with using five or more players in promotional ads – but the players argue it’s a world of difference between having a contractual right and actually having a say in the matter.
• The FFF are yet to come out with an official response to the whole debacle and insiders reckon it’s unlikely to get sorted out before the World Cup finishes on the 19th of July.

Days before France starts its World Cup campaign, a betting advertisement has split the squad open in a way nobody wanted. Kylian Mbappé and Rayan Cherki have gone straight to the French Football Federation, demanding to know how their faces landed inside a Betclic promotional campaign. French media are not painting the picture inside the camp as a peaceful one. Les Bleus had barely arrived at their base at Bentley University in Massachusetts, and the tension was already there for everyone to see.

On 2 June, the players gathered at Clairefontaine for what the schedule listed as a commercial partner day. Nobody explained what the footage would turn into. Two days later, Betclic pushed a World Cup campaign live, and there they were — Mbappé, Cherki, Désiré Doué, Michael Olise, and Ousmane Dembélé, all five faces attached to a gambling advertisement they say nobody asked them about. According to L’Equipe, Mbappé and Cherki carry the most weight in this dispute. Neither man has kept quiet about where he stands on gambling brands, and neither has accepted being connected to one without a fight.

The Dispute That Has Carried Over Since Qatar 2022

At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Mbappé walked out of an official photo session rather than stand next to sponsors he refused to be linked with, Betclic among them. The FFF, under pressure, promised to build a new image rights framework to replace one that had sat unchanged since 2010. Four years later, L’Equipe says that promise produced no real change to the contractual terms at all.

What came from those talks was a 2023 collective agreement, put together between the FFF, player representatives, and the National Union of Professional Footballers, and presented to the public as a resolution. Under that agreement, federation sponsors can use images of five or more players together in a collective team promotion. Betclic’s campaign featured exactly five players, used official federation media assets, and sat entirely within those terms. On paper, the operator did nothing wrong at all.

That is exactly the point the players are fighting. Their problem is with the FFF, not with Betclic. Mbappé and Cherki say the federation never made it clear that footage from 2 June would go to a gambling brand. L’Equipe reports something that cuts even deeper — the players believe they had no real chance to say no, because the contractual structure was already in place before they ever received their first senior call-up.

Mbappé has never been unclear about where he stands. Two years ago, speaking to Canal+, he said it without hesitation: “In fact, we don’t agree with that image rights agreement: junk food, gambling promotion… We are the French national team, and we are role models. Some of us come from communities where countless people have been ruined by these things. It ruined the people I know.”

The Question the 2023 Agreement Left Completely Open

The 2023 framework settled who held the legal right. What was never settled was who owed the players a conversation. Betclic got its rights through proper channels. The images came from a session the federation set up for this exact purpose. Every condition was met. And still, five players are saying the same thing — nobody told us.

The UNFP, one of the parties that built the 2023 deal, is now back in discussions trying to handle the fallout from its own work. How much it can push before 19 July remains to be seen. Multiple outlets report the FFF does not expect anything close to a formal resolution until the tournament is over.

L’Equipe reports that players are unhappy about a cut to World Cup bonuses and a tighter limit on family seat allocations for matches, with the ticket issue generating more heat inside the squad than even the money question. That timeline carries real weight. The Betclic dispute has not arrived alone — it has landed in a camp that was already carrying other frustrations.

What the ANJ Has Said and What It’s Keeping Bottled Up?

The Autorité Nationale des Jeux has kept eerily quiet on the Betclic row, at least in public. But behind that silence lies months of stern warnings the regulator has been firing off to its 18 licensed operators in France, essentially telling them the World Cup 2026 will be a closely watched affair. ANJ President Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, set to step down on June 15, hasn’t minced her words about what she expects from operators and what the next regime will be scrutinising once the final whistle blows.

Her words carry a lot of weight and we should listen up: “As the World Cup draws near, we’re entering a danger zone with several warning lights flashing red for the regulator, more matches mean more advertising and more chances to bet, and at the same time, we’re seeing a worrying rise in the number of gamblers taking things too far and contributing to operator revenue.”

The ANJ has been requiring all licensed operators to submit their marketing strategy every six months since 2024 for the regulator to give the thumbs up, and they’ve already flagged a 25% surge in operator marketing budgets heading into this tournament. In a consumer survey of its own, the regulator found a pretty staggering 30% of French bettors plan to splash out more during this World Cup than they did in 2022, a big leap up from 19% four years ago.

If there’s one thing operators with a collective image rights arrangement need to pay close attention to, it’s the row over this contract. Nowadays, complying with the rules and getting the player’s consent aren’t seen as the same thing and the gap between them is getting wider. Mbappé has stuck by this line for years now. His lawyer Delphine Verheyden has been saying the same thing just as long: “A player’s image is tied up with their values, and sponsorship campaigns should reflect those given the influence top players have on young fans.” Speaking to Ouest-France back in 2022, Verheyden put it in a way that the federation might have picked up on before things came to a head this week: “Things change, and so do athletes. Younger fans are no longer willing to go along with things they used to get by with when they were older. My job is to make sure the player’s image rights aren’t taken away from them, which is pretty fundamental to who they are as a person.”

The Expert’s Analysis

The law says Betclic did nothing wrong. But structurally, things look pretty tricky, an agreement that’s supposed to prevent exactly this kind of disagreement lets the operators get away with not telling the players about using their image without a requirement. And that absence is the story now. Mbappé has been saying the same thing since 2022. Each time the FFF gives Betclic the benefit of the doubt, the gap between what was promised and what was actually delivered grows a bit bigger.