Fresh from his successful quest to pick up a fourth Olympic gold medal, veteran NBA star Kevin Durant has become a minority shareholder at big-spending Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint-Germain. Clearly, the Phoenix Suns star has enjoyed his time in the French capital, and his move to invest in the soccer club came as part of his involvement with Arctos Sports Partners, who have a 12.5% stake in PSG.
35-year-old Durant is known to be a big soccer fan, and though PSG no longer has two of their most bankable assets, with Kylian Mbappe moving to Real Madrid over the summer and Lionel Messi having moved to Inter Miami a year earlier, the Parc des Princes side are still among Europe’s elite and have successful manager Luis Enrique at the helm.
Durant showed glimpses of his best during his first full season at Phoenix in 2023/24, and Suns fans who feel that the legendary star could help the Arizona-based franchise to their first-ever NBA title would do well to take a good look at the key insights and info relating to the best sportsbooks here, thereby assisting efforts to make the biggest bang for their buck.
By all accounts, Durant is a good friend of PSG president Nasse al Khelaifi and he is part-owner of MLS side Philadelphia Union. It does seem very fashionable for big US stars to get financially involved in soccer right now.
Clearly what Ryan Reynold and Rob McElhenney have done at Wrexham may well have aided this phenomenon, the co-owners helping the Welsh side rise from the fifth-tier of English football to League One. In addition to this, actor Michael B. Jordan has invested in Premier League side AFC Bournemouth, with the Black Panther star putting his money where his mouth is in terms of the South Coast club.
Then there’s LeBron James, who has been involved with Premier League giants Liverpool for a number of years now. PSG are, by some distance, the biggest club in French football, hence their run of 10 domestic titles over the past 12 years, with the only sides to break that dominance being AS Monaco in 2016/17 and Lille in 2020/21.
It’s worth noting that prior to major investment from Qatar, PSG had won just two Ligue 1 titles in forty years, which goes some way to illustrate just how far the club have come in the past decade or so.
They are still hot in pursuit of their first-ever UEFA Champions League title, having reached the final in 2019/20, only to lose to Bayern Munich by a solitary goal from former player Kingsley Coman.
In 2024/25, Durant will hope to steer the Suns deep into the postseason and will hope to impress new head coach Mike Budenholzer, who came in to replace Frank Vogel, who lasted just one season at the Footprint Center.
He signed a five-year deal in May, worth a reported $50 million, making him the fifth-highest-paid coach in the NBA.
Prior to his appointment as Suns head coach, he spent five years at the Milwaukee Bucks, having also spent five years at the Atlanta Hawks prior to that. He led the Bucks to the 2021 NBA title but was then fired in May 2023 after they lost to the Miami Heat in the first round of the playoffs in five games.