This photo taken on May 15, 2026, shows people camping out in line outside of the Swatch store in Times Square in New York, ahead of the May 16 release of the Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop watch. Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP
Zurich: Swiss watch giant Swatch said Monday insufficient organisation by shopping centres contributed to scuffles at around 20 stores worldwide over the weekend as clients raced to buy a limited-edition timepiece.
Hundreds of people waited through the night or longer hoping to get their hands on the "Royal Pop" timepieces, billed as a "disruptive collaboration" with the luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet.
But things turned ugly in New York and several European cities as well as in Thailand on Saturday, with fights breaking out and some security gates vandalised at some of the 220 stores offering the watches.
Displayed watches of the Royal Pop collection through a glass window on the facade of a closed shop of Swiss watch company Swatch in Paris on May 16, 2026. Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP
In France, officers fired tear gas to control a crowd of around 300 would-be buyers outside a Swatch shop near Paris, and four people reported being punched in the crowed massed outside a store in Lille, northern France.
"There were problems... because the lines were extremely long and the organisation by some shopping centres was not sufficient to handle the rush," Swatch said in a statement to AFP.
It noted similar incidents during the 2022 launch of its MoonSwatch collaboration with Omega.
"As with the MoonSwatch, things 'normalised' a bit after launch day, especially after we again communicated that the Royal Pop collection would be available for several months," it said.
Fights and police interventions were also reported at stores in Amsterdam, London and Milan, and Swatch said it had to close stores in several cities for "safety considerations".
