Watch Paparazzi

Footballer Karim Benzema spotted wearing Richard Mille

Karim Benzema was photographed wearing a Richard Mille RM055 'Yas Marina Circuit Edition,' one of only 50 examples ever produced, placing him in exceptionally rare company among collectors and athletes who track limited Richard Mille production runs with the same intensity they follow transfer windows.

The Richard Mille RM 055 was introduced as the brand's 'Bubba Watson' collaboration piece in its standard guise — a manual-winding skeletonized sports watch built around the RMUL2 calibre, a free-sprung variable-inertia balance movement producing approximately 48 hours of power reserve and beating at 21,600 vph. The architecture is deliberately spare: a skeletonized baseplate and bridges machined from grade 5 titanium, with a tonneau-shaped case that keeps total mass well under 50 grams on the wrist. The Yas Marina Circuit Edition departs from the standard references through specific dial furniture, color treatment, and case finishing directly referencing the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix venue — a nod to the geographical crossover between Formula 1 money and Middle Eastern luxury culture that Richard Mille has cultivated deliberately since the mid-2000s.

For collectors, the RM055 'Yas Marina Circuit Edition' represents precisely the kind of geographically and numerically constrained release that appreciates rapidly and circulates almost exclusively through private sales. Fifty pieces is a meaningful restriction even by Richard Mille's standards, and the motorsport-venue association gives it a dual-market appeal: serious horology collectors and F1-adjacent enthusiasts both compete for the same 50 references. Provenance and condition are everything at this production level.

Benzema's affinity for Richard Mille is well documented — the brand has become the default ultra-luxury sports watch for elite footballers across Europe and the Gulf, combining genuine technical credibility with visual impact that reads clearly on camera and at pitch-side. His presence in Madrid's dressing room effectively made Richard Mille the room's dominant reference point for high-end watchmaking during his peak years at the club.

At a UK list price of approximately £90,000 — translating to roughly $112,000 USD at prevailing rates — the RM055 Yas Marina Circuit Edition sits at the serious end of the Richard Mille entry tier. On the secondary market, limited-edition RM 055 variants with documented provenance consistently trade above retail, with grey-market transactions for the Yas Marina edition reported between $130,000 and $160,000 USD depending on condition and box/papers.