A Euro 2024 sponsor backed by David Beckham is flogging bootleg England shirts.
The Man United legend, 46, is paid as a global ambassador role with AliExpress, which is also sponsoring the tournament. But we can reveal the Chinese retail giant is cashing in on fake footie kits.
Our reporter found a string of sham shirts, shorts and socks on the site. Sellers get around the ban by displaying images of unbranded kits in each team’s respective colours but ship out copycat versions. We ordered the imitation gear for £40.41, including shipping - a whopping 291 per cent less than the real deal, which comes in at £158.
The replica shirt boasts the same Three Lions badge and matching red and blue stripes on the arms. And small details including the multicolored George Cross in the collar are also identical. Our probe comes despite Alibaba, Aliexpress’ parent company, vowing to combat counterfeits as far back as 2015. And billionaire boss Jack Ma recently boasted: “Alibaba has the largest anti-counterfeit team in the world.”
The official England football team shirt for Euro 2024 competition (Reach Commissioned/Steve Bainbridge)
A pair of official team England football socks (Reach Commissioned/Steve Bainbridge)AliExpress agreed an exclusive e-commerce platform partnership with European football’s governing body UEFA in March. And Beckham, 49, became the firm’s global ambassador last month. Under the deal, the football superstar turned entrepreneur will be the face of AliExpress’ Score More promotion, which will run during games.
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An unofficial England football team shirt for Euro 2024 competition bought from AliExpress (Reach Commissioned/Steve Bainbridge)
A pair of unofficial team England football socks sold by AliExpress (Reach Commissioned/Steve Bainbridge)He said of the partnership: “AliExpress is helping fans get even closer to UEFA EURO 2024 this summer, by offering them great prizes as the action takes place on the pitch.” AliExpress joins other major Chinese brands sponsoring the Euros, including electric vehicle maker BYD and tech giant Vivo.
An AliExpress spokesperson said: "AliExpress has implemented extensive and strict measures to proactively scan, prevent and remove any sale of counterfeit football kits. However, we regrettably found that the seller has breached our strict regulations, as the Mirror journalist has pointed out, by not displaying the correct product image and hiding the product information. In this specific case, the product listing was immediately removed from the platform and the seller was notified that his product listing was removed due to infringement."
David Beckham was approached for comment.
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