The numbers are there. And they are frightening: watch thefts have jumped 60% in a year worldwide in 2023. According to The Watch Register, no less than 6815 watches were reportedly stolen last year, for a global value of about 1.17 billion euros. And France has not been spared according to data from another specialist in the field, Watchfinder & Co. So, how to curb this phenomenon?
Is the clockmaking crime boosted by… the Paris Olympics?
The “miscellaneous news” section has been regularly populated by spectacular thefts in recent months. With common points between many of these crimes: athletes are recurring victims and luxury watches and jewelry are highly popular with thieves. The PSG footballer Gianluigi Donnarumma, the cyclist Mark Cavendish, F1 drivers Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc have all been targets of criminals, for instance. Each time, the loot amounted to several hundred thousand euros.
And since sport and watchmaking crime seem to be closely linked, the Paris 2024 Olympics could lead to a significant rise in thefts. According to a study conducted by The Economic and Labour Relations Review, and relayed by Watchfinder & Co., “the Olympic Games are systematically associated with an increase of about 10% in property crimes in the host cities during the games”. The peak would have been reached during the London Olympics, in 2012, with 1700 theft victims every day in the British capital.
To make matters worse, the international ranking Numbeo 2023 places France first in Europe for crime rate. And since 2022, the Ile-de-France region has been particularly affected with “an average of 5 to 6 luxury watch thefts per week, which has forced the Paris police headquarters to set up a special unit that now has over 30 trained agents”.
How to effectively fight against watch theft?
Faced with such numbers, it’s hard not to feel a certain level of anxiety. This is confirmed by other statistical data reported by Watchfinder, which shows that two thirds of luxury watch owners have admitted they’ve become more vigilant when wearing them. Adrien Fourlegnie, director of Watchfinder France, shares a bitter observation: “This worry leads many French people to leave their watches in a safe – the antithesis of what we believe owning a watch should be.”
This awareness campaign has just been launched to combat this potential psychosis. The stated objective: to effectively combat crime related to watch theft. To achieve this, we must first encourage watch owners to register their item as soon as they purchase it. But sellers (Watchfinder, Cresus, Chrono24…) also have a role to play by applying stricter controls and selection processes on their platforms.
A certificate of authenticity is therefore the minimum union requirement to obtain when one wishes to buy a second-hand watch. Furthermore, a platform like Enquirus, founded by the Richemont group, should allow to “break the cycle between theft and resale of watches”. Here, owners, experts and retailers can simply register their watch or access a database to know if the timepiece one wants to acquire has not been stolen.
Deter thieves, enhance traceability and raise awareness among owners: these three elements are obviously not a miracle solution, but they can help contain this wave of horological crime in the long term.