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LVMH ramps up presence in media with Paris Match acquisition

October 4, 2024

Paris Match covers the lifestyle of celebrities, royalty, sports personalities and entertainers. Image credit: Paris Match Paris Match covers the lifestyle of celebrities, royalty, sports personalities and entertainers. Image credit: Paris Match

 

French luxury giant LVMH has grown its media portfolio with the completed acquisition of Paris Match, a weekly magazine covering celebrities, royalty, sports personalities and their lifestyle.

The purchase from French publisher Lagardère will likely benefit Paris Match as LVMH intends to develop and diversify the title in print and digitally. The first issue was published March 25, 1949.

“Paris Match is more than a magazine – it is an iconic brand with a global demeanor that has helped to tell, and sometimes even write, the history of France since it was first established in 1949,” said LVMH Group chairman/CEO Bernard Arnault in a statement.

“By joining the group, Paris Match becomes a maison in its own right, and one that will benefit from our watchful supervision and from all of LVMH's expertise, enabling it to accelerate its development, particularly in the digital sphere,” he said.

LVMH’s media group includes Les Echos, Investir, Le Parisien, Radio Classique and Connaisance Des Arts. All told, LVMH has more than 75 brands in its group.

Created in 1992, Lagardère is an international group with operations in more than 40 countries worldwide. It employs some 31,300 people and generated revenue of $8.9 billion last year from book publishing and games, travel retail, news publications and magazines, live entertainment and racing.

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Under new ownership, Paris Match will be chaired by Jean-Jacques Guiony, chief financial officer of the LVMH Group and member of the executive committee, who will assume this role in addition to his current responsibilities.

Pierre-Emmanuel Ferrand, until now managing director of Lagardère News, in charge of press and digital, and former digital director of Canal +, becomes managing director of Paris Match.

Jérôme Béglé remains at the helm of the editorial team, as editorial director, and becomes the magazine’s publishing director as well.

“I would like to warmly thank Vincent Bolloré and Arnaud Lagardère, who are passing the baton to us today,” Mr. Arnault said in the statement.

“Faithful to its history yet looking to the future, I have full confidence that the Paris Match teams will reinvigorate the essence of its familiar slogan ‘le poids des mots, le choc des photos’ (the weight of words, the shock of photos),” he said.