World Cup 2026: Counterfeit vs. official, the growing challenge of identifying fake football shirts

Paris - The official shirt for 110 euros or the counterfeit for ten times less? With the 2026 World Cup approaching, the continuous rise in shirt prices is pushing many fans towards a parallel market of ultra-realistic replicas, which is controlled by criminal networks.

"It is almost impossible to tell the difference between the two," a member on an online forum praises his purchase of a counterfeit 2026 Spain shirt, which he received in ten days.

He praises the counterfeiter's "very solid craftsmanship," noting the brand logo embroidered in the right place and the artistic filigree details. The seller offers shirts for around fifteen euros, including the new kits that will be worn by Mbappé, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lamine Yamal and others this summer during the World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada (June 11-July 19).

"Today, anyone can buy a fake football shirt online," Delphine Sarfati, general director of the Union des Fabricants (Unifab), told AFP. She notes that, as a general rule, "seizures of counterfeit goods have multiplied by four since 2020" and that "counterfeiting accounts for 15 percent of the sporting goods market share."

Entire factories

"We have gone from the Italian mama who made them in a backstreet workshop to entire factories in China," she warns.

Yann Ambach, head of the office in charge of tariff and trade policy at French Customs, shared this observation with AFP. "We are dealing with large-scale fraud, criminal networks and poly-criminality (...)," he said. "Manufacturing, transporting and buying a counterfeit product is not a trivial act. It fuels criminal networks, results in job losses, a loss of expertise and a loss of tax revenue."

"When there are major international sporting events, we clearly see an increase in the number of counterfeit goods seized," he points out, adding that 30 percent of all seizures relate to "games, toys and sporting goods."

The growing appeal of these illicit products is largely due to soaring official prices, with some versions of the shirts costing more than 160 euros.

For economist Richard Duhautois, the shirt "is becoming a luxury product." He explained to AFP that the price surge is the result of a fragmented value chain. This is far removed from the sole manufacturing cost in factories, which are outsourced to low-wage Asian countries and do not exceed 10 percent of the final price.

According to the co-author of the book Foot Business (Odile Jacob, 2026), 35 percent of a shirt's price goes to the distributor; 25 percent to the kit supplier; between 8 and 15 percent to the club or federation; 5 percent is allocated to transport and the rest corresponds to taxes.

Fashion

The economist points out that this system benefits the teams twofold, as the share collected by the kit suppliers is then used to finance huge sponsorship deals, such as the contract worth over 100 million euros annually between Nike and the French federation.

Faced with this cumbersome ecosystem, the parallel market operates with "massive production" but "no licence, no marketing," he notes, explaining the counterfeiters' low prices. Hippolyte Genaud, co-founder of the Parisian vintage shirt shop LineUp, "understands people who turn to fakes," given the inflation.

Especially since imitation has taken a significant leap in quality, making it harder for him to tell the real from the fake: "on the new shirts, they are better and better made, you really have to look for the detail." According to him, the line between the two worlds is often very thin at the source: "I think they probably come out of the same factories (...) that there are many companies in Asia that produce for the kit suppliers during the day and for a second network at night."

Finally, he notes that the appeal of shirts is no longer the exclusive domain of the "avid football fans" who used to flock to his shop: "For the last five to six years, a new clientele has emerged, with people who will wear the shirt as a fashion item, for its aesthetic appeal." Whether it is real or fake.