The Ligue 1 changes its logo

The Ligue 1 2023/2024 won't bring many surprises in the coming days. Apart from dramatic scenarios, as always (excluding Pochettino's disaster during the 2020/2021 season), Paris Saint-Germain, leading the league with a +12 point difference from Brest, will raise the Hexagoal to the sky: an optimal way to conclude the last season of Kylian Mbappé with the Parisians and to inaugurate a generational turnover already initiated thanks to young talents like Warren Zaïre-Emery, Hwang Hee-chan, and Bradley Barcola. To shake up the French league, a radical change was needed, not concerning a specific club but the entire league. In fact, just four years since the last time, Ligue 1 unveils a new logo, introducing the fifth since 2002, the year of the championship's foundation. In 2020, Ligue 1 presented a new visual identity to the public, relying on the design agency Dragon Rouge, modernizing the branding to showcase Uber Eats and BKT, the new main partners of the French top league and Ligue 2. On that occasion, Didier Quillot, Executive Director of the LFP, stated: «We are very pleased to present today the new visual identity for our two professional leagues. This is an important first step that marks the start of the 2020/21 season and the signing of two major global brands as main sponsors of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2.» The LFP had to adapt, in fact, to the deal with Uber Eats: given the end of the partnership with the online food ordering and delivery platform, this time the new visual identity will have to aesthetically merge with the new official partner, namely McDonald's.

An easy and contemporary design, a white symbol that seems to include both the L and the 1, positioned on a blue background, with the addition of the extended text "Ligue 1": the top French league has chosen to simplify its logo as much as possible, awaiting the addition of the McDonald's branding. The yellow M of the world's most famous restaurant chain will probably (similarly to Uber Eats) appear in the lower area of the new logo, creating a new color scheme for the LFP. To discover how the finalized logo will be, there are still a few months to wait, considering that the partnership with McDonald's, although unveiled on the official LFP website for a few days now, will officially start on July 1, 2024, and will conclude in 2027. Since 2002, the year when the former Division took the name of Ligue 1, the modus operandi has always been the same: to adapt the logo of the main sponsor to that of the league, and vice versa. So much so, that before moving on to the partnership with Conforama, from 2002 to 2008, it was the telecommunications operator Orange sponsoring the championship, with the logo perfectly divided into a blue and an orange half. Considering the stature of McDonald's, it is fair to expect something unique, especially if we consider the words spoken by Jacques Mignault, president of McDonald's France: «We have many projects and ideas in mind for this partnership over the next three years.»