Energy-drink maker Dongpeng and dairy giant Mengniu both ended their partnerships with Kylian Mbappé on Tuesday after a video circulated online in which he appeared to joke about a meme of his face on Mao Zedong. The authenticity of the video has not been verified.
Published 27 October 2026 · 04:07 GMT
Energy-drink maker Dongpeng and dairy giant Mengniu both ended their partnerships with Kylian Mbappé on Tuesday after a video circulated online in which he appeared to joke about a meme of his face on Mao Zedong. The authenticity of the video has not been verified. On Tuesday, 27 October 2026, two major Chinese brands, energy-drink maker Dongpeng and dairy producer Mengniu, announced they were terminating all cooperation with Real Madrid and France forward Kylian Mbappé, with immediate effect. Dongpeng said it “firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments”.
Two of Kylian Mbappé's biggest Chinese commercial partners ended their deals with him on Tuesday, 27 October 2026, within hours of each other, after a video circulated online in which the Real Madrid and France forward appeared to joke about a meme of his face superimposed on that of Mao Zedong. Energy-drink maker Dongpeng said it was terminating all cooperation with Mbappé with immediate effect, and dairy giant Mengniu, China's largest dairy producer, said it was doing the same. Both companies used near-identical language, saying they firmly oppose and have a zero-tolerance policy towards behaviour or words that offend national sentiments or hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.
The announcements came a day after Mbappé lost the Ballon d'Or to England captain Harry Kane on Monday; a coincidence of timing that put the 27-year-old at the centre of two very different headlines in two days. Neither company gave a financial figure for the deals it was ending, and neither named any other partner or product line affected.
The wording matters because it is, so far, the whole public record. Dongpeng's statement said: “Our company firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments,” adding that “with immediate effect we are terminating all cooperation with Kylian Mbappe”. Mengniu's statement said: “With immediate effect our company is terminating all cooperation with Kylian Mbappe,” and that “Mengniu firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” The two statements were reported together, on the same day, by the same wire.
What triggered them, according to that reporting, was a video that emerged online in which Mbappé said the funniest internet meme he had seen was of his face photoshopped onto that of “some guy; I think he's a Chinese dictator”. The report describes this as an apparent reference to a meme of Mbappé superimposed on an image of Mao, one of several using the footballer's face and other historical figures. The scale of the reaction in China is not in doubt as a matter of online traffic: “Dongpeng Beverage ends cooperation with Mbappe” was the top-trending topic on Weibo, China's largest social platform.
The most important caveat in this story is also the simplest: the video at its centre has not been verified. AFP Fact Check could not immediately verify its authenticity, and no outlet in this cycle has published a forensic check, a date, a location, or the full context of the remarks. Readers should therefore treat the clip as what it currently is, a circulating video that two sponsors treated as real enough to act on, not as a confirmed record of what Mbappé said, where, or when.
Just as unconfirmed is everything around the commercial fallout. No value has been published for either the Dongpeng or the Mengniu deal, no end date or renewal clause has been reported, and there is no reported response yet from Mbappé, his representatives, or Real Madrid. It is also unknown whether the terminations cover every product line and territory, or only the China-facing campaigns, and whether any other sponsor is reviewing its own position.
Mbappé is not a marginal endorser in China. He is one of the most recognisable footballers on the planet, a World Cup winner with France whose record-breaking season still did not win him the Ballon d'Or, the spearhead of Real Madrid's attack, and a player whose image has been deliberately built for the Chinese market; Dongpeng's Bubbly brand signed him as a brand ambassador, and Mengniu has built entire World Cup campaigns around star footballers. Losing two such partners in one day is therefore not a footnote to a football career; it is a rupture in the commercial bridge between a global star and the world's largest consumer market.
It also matters beyond one player. Sponsorship in China operates under a constraint that has no exact equivalent in Europe: a single perceived slight to national sentiment can end a deal overnight, whatever the contract's remaining term. For every athlete, club and brand that sells into China, Tuesday is a pricing event; the cost of a careless remark, or even a remark that merely looks careless once clipped and shared, is now visible in two terminated contracts.
Read the two statements side by side and a mechanism appears. Neither company argued about the video's authenticity, its context, or Mbappé's intent. Both moved straight to the formula, zero tolerance, immediate termination, that leaves no room for apology, clarification or a cooling-off period. That is the point of the formula: in a market where a topic can top Weibo within hours, delay reads as defiance, and defiance is what costs a brand its domestic standing.
This is not new, and that is why it is instructive. In 2019, after a team executive's tweet supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrations, every one of the NBA's official Chinese partners suspended ties with the league, and Mengniu, the same dairy company, was among those that vowed to suspend all commercial cooperation with the NBA. The pattern is consistent across seven years: the trigger changes, the corporate reflex does not. What has changed is the speed, because the clip-to-trending-topic pipeline now runs in hours, not days, and because the star in question is himself the product, his face is the advertisement.
There is a second mechanism at work, quieter but just as important. The brands did not wait for a regulator, a court, or a federation to rule. They acted as their own judges, because in this market the audience is the regulator: once a topic tops Weibo, the commercial damage of inaction is immediate, while the damage of overreaction is speculative. Tuesday's decisions were, in that sense, rational; and that rationality is precisely what makes them hard for any foreign star to insure against.
The first lesson is archival. In the age of the clip, a remark does not need to be recent to be costly; it needs only to surface. Athletes whose interviews, streams and dressing-room jokes live forever online are, in effect, permanently exposed to a future audience that will judge them by a different country's red lines. The second lesson is contractual: morality and national-sentiment clauses, once boilerplate, are now the clause that matters most in a China-facing deal, and stars and their lawyers will now read them the way they once read salary figures.
The third lesson belongs to the clubs. Real Madrid sells itself globally in part through Mbappé's face, and a break between its star and the Chinese market touches merchandising, pre-season tours and sponsor packages that extend far beyond two drink and dairy deals. Clubs have spent a decade building China strategies around individual stars; Tuesday shows how quickly a single player's off-pitch moment can reprice the whole strategy. Expect quiet audits, not public statements, from every club with a Chinese sponsor this week.
Four signals will decide whether this is a one-week controversy or a lasting break. First, whether Mbappé or his representatives address the video at all; a denial, a clarification, or continued silence each point in a different direction. Second, whether AFP Fact Check or another verifier authenticates or debunks the clip, which would change the story from a sponsorship row into a misinformation case. Third, whether any other Chinese partner follows Dongpeng and Mengniu, or whether the two prove to be the exception. And fourth, whether the deals quietly return once attention moves on; a pattern seen in earlier controversies, where termination announcements proved easier to make than to sustain.
For now, the facts are narrow and the implications are wide: two statements, one unverified video, and a superstar whose Chinese commercial standing changed in a single day. The next move belongs to the people who have not yet spoken.
From Europe and the United States, the story reads as a collision between free expression and market access. A footballer makes, or appears to make, an offhand joke, and two sponsors in a market of 1.4 billion people end the relationship the same day, without waiting for verification. The Western lens asks whether any global star can speak freely while his income depends on audiences whose red lines he does not share, and whether sponsor contracts have quietly become speech codes with immediate effect.
From China, the story reads very differently: as brands protecting themselves in a market where national sentiment is not an abstraction but a daily commercial reality. Dongpeng and Mengniu did not present themselves as censors; they presented themselves as companies refusing to be associated with words that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, and the Weibo trending topic suggests a large domestic audience agreed with the decision. The East lens also notes the commercial logic; Chinese brands built World Cup campaigns around stars like Mbappé precisely because his face sells, which is why his face, turned into a meme about Mao, became a liability overnight.
From the Global South, the story reads as a cautionary tale about dependence. For athletes, federations and brands in Africa, Asia and Latin America that court Chinese sponsorship, Tuesday shows that the money comes with a condition that is rarely written in plain language: do not become a liability in Beijing's public conversation. The 2019 NBA case, in which Mengniu also suspended ties, is the precedent many Southern sports administrators will remember; not because they agree with every decision, but because it showed that even the world's biggest league could lose its Chinese partners in a weekend.
Both companies announced on Tuesday, 27 October 2026, that they were terminating all cooperation with Mbappé with immediate effect, citing a zero-tolerance policy towards behaviour or words that offend national sentiments or hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. The announcements followed a video circulating online in which he appeared to joke about a meme of his face on Mao Zedong.
According to the reporting, Mbappé said the funniest meme he had seen was of his face photoshopped onto that of “some guy; I think he's a Chinese dictator”, an apparent reference to a meme superimposing his face on Mao Zedong. Crucially, AFP Fact Check could not immediately verify the video's authenticity, so the remarks are reported as apparent, not confirmed.
Dongpeng, an energy-drink maker whose Bubbly brand had signed Mbappé as a brand ambassador, and Mengniu, China's largest dairy producer and a major World Cup sponsor, both ended all cooperation with him. Neither company published the financial value of its deal, so the commercial cost to Mbappé cannot yet be quantified from public statements.
Watch four things: whether Mbappé or his representatives respond to the video, whether any verifier authenticates or debunks the clip, whether other Chinese partners follow the two companies, and whether the terminated deals quietly return once attention fades. For now, his Chinese commercial standing has changed in a single day, and the next move belongs to those who have not yet spoken.
