Soccer: behind the transfer market, the flourishing business of mercato rumors

Survey After a two-month break, Ligue 1 resumes on Friday evening, August 5, but clubs have until September 1 to complete their recruitments.

"Jules Koundé's transfer to Chelsea almost finalized", "Zidane at PSG, the incredible deal", "Mbappé's arrival at Real Madrid takes shape!". Of the three announcements published on sports news websites, none materialized: French defender Jules Koundé joined Barcelona, Paris-Saint-Germain's new coach is Christophe Galtier, and Kylian Mbappé stayed at the club. Le Parisien, who begins his 2022-2023 season in the French league on Saturday August 6, at Clermont.

At the height of summer, sports news can take on a café-like atmosphere. From June 10 (France, England) or early July (Germany, Spain, Italy) until September 1, soccer clubs have the opportunity to reshuffle their squads by buying, loaning or selling players. Fans will be in a frenzy, looking for the slightest clue as to what's going on.

Le 10 Sport, Foot Mercato, Maxifoot, Foot 365, Football.fr, 90min, Foot01, Foot11, Le meilleur du foot... the galaxy of sites dealing with the subject seems endless. They often apply the same recipes: rudimentary design, very short articles, a photo of the player and a title that gives more hope than it contains.

Inside, we sometimes find a simple statement from another media outlet, French or foreign, rarely verified or verifiable. The more star-studded the stories, the more likely they are to attract readers. This model has been proven by celebrity sites, which have no problem disseminating contradictory information within a few hours.

"If we talk nonsense, no one dies".

Interviewed by Le Monde, Hassen Ferroukhi, Editorial Director of Football.fr, asserts that he is "in the race for ratings". The man who also runs Foot 365, Sports.fr and DZfoot (all four sites belong to the Reworld Media group) explains that his sites' revenues are based solely on online advertising:

"We're on a model where we're looking to make page views, so we do as many articles as possible: 60 to 80 briefs a day. We have to do tons on each brief, and to do that, we have to find information: in the foreign press, particularly Spanish and Italian, but also on social networks. We try to check a bit, but as soon as the competitors talk about it, we talk about it too. The conditional is very useful.

And if the information contradicts itself, as on Football.fr which, on June 12, published three articles, within a few hours of each other, entitled successively "Zidane at PSG, "tout va mal!"", "Zidane at PSG, the incredible deal", "Zidane at PSG, it's still no!?". "It's just another article on the soap opera. This isn't a very serious subject, it's not politics. If we're talking nonsense, no one's going to die," said Ferroukhi.

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Recognizing a credible source of information

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What are reliable sources? Reliable sources can be published documents with a reliable publication process, authors considered authoritative on the subject, or both. As no publication is completely accurate, it may be wise to cross-check several sources.

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Numerama is on the list of the 10 most trusted online media that generated the most engagement in 2021, according to a Newsguard report published on December 28.

How do you know whether a piece of information is true or false?

In short, a piece of information has a good chance of being true if the source is verifiable, dated and given by several recognized media.

How to check information on an Info ou intox site? 4 sites to test information France Info's Vrai ou Faux section is a platform where information is sifted through to validate or invalidate it. The hoaxbuster.com site verifies information, lists it and explains whether it's news or fake news.

What is false information?

Fake news, fausses nouvelles, fausses informations, canards, in English: fake news ([feɪk nuËz]), are false news items disseminated with the aim of manipulating or misleading the public.

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