A football with a price tag of £4,000 seems quite insane, doesn’t it? To put that into perspective, the hand-stitched commemorative ball that Louis Vuitton produced in honor of the 1998 World Cup will set you back that kind of money these days.
To be honest, the luxury French fashion firm that commissioned it over 30 years ago probably didn’t expect the ball to be used in the park on a Sunday morning when they were having a kickabout with their friends.
Chris Michael Dixon, better known by his username ChrisMD on YouTube, recently made headlines when he decided to put the “world’s most expensive football” through its paces in front of his 5.56 million subscribers.
To help put the price of the Louis Vuitton ball into perspective, consider that for the same amount of money you could get 32 official Nike Premier League footballs, which cost £125 each.
In spite of this, Chris wanted to investigate both sides of the spectrum when it comes to footballs, so he chose to compare a Louis Vuitton ball that cost £4,000 to a standard Mitre ball, which can be purchased at most sporting goods stores for roughly £10. Chris and three of his friends set out to decide which of two balls was the superior option by pitting them against one another in a series of tasks.
The two balls were put through their paces in three separate tests: curled free-kicks, powered shots, and volleys. Each test was designed to put the balls through their paces.
As a result of Chris’s threat to use a flamethrower on the losing ball, the stakes were raised to an extremely high level. A significant financial loss in the event that the experiment demonstrated the same results as the more affordable Mitre offering, which it unavoidably did.
In point of fact, there wasn’t much of a gap between the two balls during the entirety of the competition (other than the ridiculous difference in price).
The Mitre ball eventually came out on top when it came to the volleys portion of the trial, but the two were unable to be differentiated in terms of the number of goals scored during the free-kick and power shot competitions.
The Mitre ball was used to score a total of five goals, whilst the Louis Vuitton ball was only used to score a total of four goals.
The competition is not precisely what one would call “hard science,” thus the final score shouldn’t be taken as seriously as it could otherwise be.
However, some of the comments that were made about the Louis Vuitton ball while the challenge was being conducted were extremely harsh.
During the special power shots segment of the game, the luxury contender’s flight and feel were washed, which was disappointing.
“There were times when it moved through the air in a most unpredictable manner… “exactly like a cheap football that costs ten pounds,” quipped Chris.
When he was halfway through the challenge, the social media phenomenon observed that his £4,000 buy was beginning to show signs of wear. This was the beginning of the end for him in the challenge.
“The cracks are beginning to appear… One of his friends made a joke about whether or not he had kept the receipt.
At the conclusion of the event, Chris was unable to conceal his dissatisfaction with his expensive acquisition, saying, “It curls too much, doesn’t travel in a straight line… as well as pauses He stated that he was not a fan of it.
Later, in accordance with the guidelines that were published for the competition, the YouTuber lit fire to one of the 3,000 Louis Vuitton balls, effectively wasting £4,000.
Although we understand that he can most likely afford to take the damage, we feel that it is still a rather pointless move on his part.
Having said that, we do not see their being much of a demand for any of the other 2,999 variations of the ball that are now available.
