Just a day after Lionel Messi announced to the world that he was coming to Major League Soccer and Inter Miami, CBS Sports Golazo Network host Susannah Collins twirled her hands around a clear glass bowl live on air and pulled out a red ball.
FC Cincinnati and Inter Miami had advanced out of the quarterfinals of the Eastern region in the U.S. Open Cup. The team whose name was pulled out of that bowl first would host the semifinal of the 110-year-old tournament. On the heels of Messi’s announcement the day prior and the seismic movement of ticket prices around his games in the hours since, the ball Collins pulled would now represent a multi-million dollar prize. The semifinal was now likely to be a sold-out game, with the chance to sell every ticket in the house at Messi-level prices.
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“The team that will be hosting in the east is…” Collins said, pausing slightly for effect and unfurling the small piece of paper.
“FC Cincinnati.”
Three weeks later, FC Cincinnati put tickets for the semifinal up for sale. Typically, the club’s rivalry “Hell is Real” game against the Columbus Crew is their hottest-selling ticket. With around 17,000 season ticket holders and a stadium capacity of 25,513, that game usually sells out after a few days.
Messi’s visit needed just one day to sell out.
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When details of Messi’s contract emerged, some observers wondered whether MLS owners would be frustrated that league partners like Apple, Fanatics and Adidas played a role in sweetening the deal in order to entice the Argentine to any single club. So far, the answer has been no, mostly because every team understands that it, too, will see the benefit of the signing. MLS was built so that the business interests of the teams are tied together, a single-entity structure that embraces revenue share and aims to minimize losses for each individual owner. What’s good for one team typically is good for all.
“The group in that room (at MLS board of governors), they’re all partners unless they play each other,” MLS deputy commissioner Gary Stevenson said earlier this month. “So they’re rooting for each other.”
Messi’s arrival opened up the potential for increased revenue not just for Inter Miami, but for the whole league, something which is important when you consider that Sportico research for last year had the average MLS team bringing in $57 million of revenue per year, compared to NFL ($545 million), NBA ($308 million), MLB ($313 million) and NHL ($187 million).
“It’s a positive for all the clubs in the league, and I think it’s positive for the league,” Houston owner Ted Segal said earlier this month. “Personally, I feel gratitude towards the Mas brothers and David Beckham for getting the deal across the line, in partnership with the league. And I think it’s a (continuation) of our momentum that we have in this league right now.”
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Right now, just about everyone in American soccer is seeing the rewards of Messi’s arrival — and the show he’s put on in his first two games. Most MLS teams hosting Miami are seeing significant upticks in gameday revenue. Messi’s jerseys are selling out. Apple announced that three games the week of Messi’s debut set records in viewership. Social media numbers are through the roof, both in Inter Miami’s followers and in views on highlights, like Messi’s freekick goal in his debut against Cruz Azul, which has drawn hundreds of millions of eyeballs. Even the U.S. Soccer Federation will benefit – as the organizer of the U.S. Open Cup, it will get a 50 percent cut of the gate from FC Cincinnati’s U.S. Open Cup semifinal.
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Messi’s deal is not just about who is paying him, but also about just how big the ripple effect from this contract will be.
“While we’ve talked about the dollars being significant, I think the halo effect of him and what it means for the entire football ecosystem (is key),” said Derek Aframe, executive vice president and head of integrated marketing at Octagon, a top global sports and entertainment marketing and management firm. “Anyone in some form or fashion is going to benefit from his presence.”
After Inter Miami’s 4-0 win over Atlanta United last Tuesday, right back DeAndre Yedlin arrived to speak to the media with a pair of pink and black Beats by Dre headphones on top of his head. They were a gift to teammates, he said, from Messi.
Beats by Dre, of course, is owned by Apple, so the headphones became another visible extension of the partnership between one of the biggest companies in the world and one of the biggest sports figures.
It also spoke to the unique nature of Messi’s contract.
“The fact you’ve got MLS, Apple and Adidas and equity in (Inter Miami), those four pieces coming together are rather historic, that you see that level of coordination to bring any athlete,” Aframe said.
Similar to David Beckham’s deal with MLS in 2007, Messi’s contract is designed to be a mutually beneficial one beyond Messi’s playing days. MLS paid a steep price in the $25 million expansion clause that Beckham triggered to launch Inter Miami. By the time the team was announced, expansion fees were significantly higher — NYCFC paid $100 million in 2015, a year after Beckham triggered his clause, and FC Cincinnati paid $150 million in 2018, the year Miami announced its team. But in providing Beckham an opportunity to own an MLS franchise, the league also kept Beckham’s brand tied to its own.
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Beckham’s visibility around Inter Miami, and thus MLS, advertises the league to all of his followers and fans. Messi’s contract has similar benefits. With a trigger to own a percentage of Inter Miami after he is done playing, Messi will be an MLS stakeholder after his playing days. His brand will remain closely linked with the league. It also incentivizes Messi to continue to push the league forward, as he directly benefits from its growth.
“Jorge (Mas) is spending a tremendous amount of money, to have Apple and (senior vice president of services) Eddy (Cue) jump in, this only happens when you have five or six people that are willing to take economic risk,” said former AEG executive Tim Leiweke, who helped put together the deal that brought Beckham to MLS in 2007. “The league and Don Garber have been through this and Don is smarter about this than anybody in the world. It’s about: how do you compensate Messi to share in the 10-year vision even though the contract is three years?”
Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas noted as much when he compared the contract to that of Michael Jordan, whose deal with Nike and the Jordan brand has continued to pay long after Jordan stopped playing.
“Commercial opportunities are important. The windows of athletes are ‘X’ time and I always talked to him about a legacy,” Mas said on Taylor Twellman’s new Apple podcast, Offside. “I said, ‘Lionel, you have an opportunity. Much like Michael Jordan. Much like figures in time, Muhammad Ali, a name you could recognize in every corner of the world, David Beckham and others. That in your post-career, you can not only maintain relevance but make a difference in the things that matter to you.’ And I think that was super compelling.”
Even in the short-term, MLS attaching itself to brands like Beckham and Messi is hugely valuable, both in significance and in reach. That has been evident in the early days of Messi in MLS, with his highlights being shared out by both Messi (490 million Instagram followers) and Beckham (81.5 million), far exceeding the impact of Inter Miami (12.7 million) or MLS (3.3 million).
“When we look at athletes active on social, by carrying sponsors with them, jerseys sponsors, arena sponsors, there is an incredible amount of value in that and that value attaches itself to Inter Miami and their sponsors,” said Daniel Kirschner, the CEO of Greenfly, a platform used by over 500 sports organizations to optimize digital content. “Inter Miami’s reach and impact, the number of people seeing those logos, has expanded exponentially. For MLS more broadly, it brings value by showing who he is playing against, awareness of teams, awareness of the league. It carries that value to a much broader fan base.”
For Messi’s commercial partners, the impact has been immediate.
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Tor Southard, senior director of Adidas Soccer in North America, said in a press conference on July 20 that the company has seen “incredible demand” for Messi jerseys and that “retail partners have reported record single-day sales for the launch day.” Messi jerseys are on backorder online and have sold out in the team stores at DRV PNK Stadium on game days. Adidas inked Messi to a lifetime contract in 2017.
Ahead of last Tuesday’s game against Atlanta United, Messi shared a link to MLS Season Pass on his Instagram story. It was another example of the value of his partnership with Apple. According to Sports Business Journal, the MLS Season Pass subscription numbers have increased from around 700,000 in early June to nearly 1 million in late July.
Other advertisers, like Hard Rock Casino and Budweiser, have also put out new ads upon Messi’s arrival.
AB InBev struck a partnership deal with Messi in 2020, winning an award for an advertising campaign by sending bottles of Budweiser to the goalkeepers on whom Messi has scored goals. Octagon works with AB InBev, and Aframe said Messi’s move to North America brings an entirely different value proposition to companies’ partnership with the Argentine.
“It opens up a whole new set of opportunities to attract a new fanbase in that sense,” Aframe said. “There’s a chance to maybe reframe the story of Messi, in light of now playing in this country. That story is yet to be told.”
In MLS, the valuation of Messi goes beyond single-game ticket sales, or even jersey and subscription sales. There is an opportunity valuation, as well. Messi opens doors to new audiences.
The Messi boost can be seen simply by looking at Inter Miami’s social media growth, from just less than 1 million Instagram followers before he announced to 12.7 million today (though claims that 3.5 billion people saw his unveiling should be taken with a large pinch of salt). But there is no guarantee on how long that expanded audience will stick around.
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The task the league and teams now face is how to turn these touchpoints with Messi into fans that stay after he’s gone. It’s a challenge that MLS teams hosting Inter Miami recognized as soon as Messi announced he was coming and ticket sales spiked.
The Chicago Fire is currently on pace to set a league record for most gross revenue driven by a single game. Prior to Messi’s announcement on June 7, the team had sold around 8,000 tickets for its midweek game against Inter Miami on October 4. They sold 10,000 more in the 10 hours or so after Messi’s announcement.
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Currently, the team is tracking toward more than 40,000 tickets sold for the game at Soldier Field, an NFL venue with a capacity of 61,500. The low ticket prices are $189 in the 400 level, with prices going up to $495 in the club level, $650 in the 100 level and a handful of field-side seats as high as $3,500. Sources said the Fire are looking at between $7 and $10 million in revenue for the game. That is more than every other Fire home game this season combined.
For a team that ranked dead last in MLS in revenue as recently as 2021, it’s a massive uplift. But the game now also represents a significant opportunity for Chicago, which has been attempting to pull in new fans since returning to Soldier Field in 2020 after a generation in suburban Bridgeview.
The Fire has been one of the worst teams in the league over the past decade, and that’s led to a significant drop-off in fan interest. The hope was that a rebrand and a return to the downtown Soldier Field in 2020 could provide a rare chance at a reintroduction to the market that might spur interest. That plan was scuttled by the COVID-19 shutdown. The Fire sold nearly 50,000 tickets for its first game back at Soldier Field in March 2020 only for the pandemic to end any hope of making a big impression under new owner Joe Mansueto. The game was postponed and the season was played behind closed doors.
This Messi game now presents a similar marquee event to pull in fans who otherwise haven’t engaged with the Fire. If Chicago can put on a show for the 30,000-plus who purchased tickets specifically to see Messi, perhaps they can compel them to return.
The Fire is not alone in these efforts. Atlanta United opened up the upper bowl of its stadium (Mercedes-Benz Stadium, 71,000 capacity for soccer) and sold out the 25,000-seat inventory with an average price of around $150 — adding around $4 million in gross revenue. That despite the fact that Messi may not even play because Atlanta United has an artificial turf surface and some players deem that too risky as it can cause more knee injuries in particular. (With the Mexican national team playing the Tuesday before the game and the NFL’s Falcons playing the day after, Atlanta United officials have said they will not be putting down a grass surface on top of the turf.) Charlotte FC also opened up the entirety of its NFL stadium and is selling upper-bowl tickets for between $150-$250. They also play on an artificial surface.
Other teams, like LAFC, who have bigger season ticket bases and smaller venues, aren’t going to see the single-game revenue increases, but look at the game as an advertisement for their teams, stadiums and atmosphere. Notably, the league’s revenue share model, which was updated this year, requires teams to put 10 percent of all ticket revenue into a league pot through the first 30,000 tickets sold, then 33 percent of all revenue above that, according to sources with knowledge of the agreement. So, every team in MLS benefits from the Messi crowds.
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Those aims to convert Messi fans into Fire fans — or any other MLS team — are a microcosm of the long-term opportunities built into this current Messi boost.
“We have a special moment to capitalize on,” Garber said earlier this month. “So you would expect us to do everything to ensure that we’re providing our fans, our partners, particularly our media partners, all the tools to be able to capture the moment. We’re very thoughtful about how we ensure that to 2026 and beyond, MLS is raised to a higher level and it’s really transformed by having this iconic moment that we take advantage of.”
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(Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Sam Richardson)
