In this way, a couple of multinational corporations have helped win the battle for Messi’s services on behalf of the United States. Adidas has long sponsored Messi personally and will be eager to see him decked out fully in the three stripes for the next two and a half years, though the details of any added financial commitment there aren’t public. The latter purchased the rights to broadcast games on Apple TV+ for $2.5 billion over 10 years in 2022, and they saw broadcasting the GOAT as so transformational for that project that they’ve offered him a cut of new subscriber revenue. (He exercised that option to establish Inter Miami in 2014, a year after Manchester City’s ownership group paid $100 million to set up NYCFC.)īut wait, there’s more: according to a Wall Street Journal report, Messi has also been enticed by Adidas and Apple, the MLS’s two biggest sponsors.
But he’s also been offered an equity stake in the club once he’s retired, a deal nearly as enticing as the one Beckham signed back in 2007, which allowed him to acquire an MLS expansion franchise at a cut-price $25 million. He’ll get a healthy salary around $54 million, even if it’s below the rumored $400 million a year the Saudis put on the table. The Messi murals are already up in Miami. (According to Spanish outlet AS, it’s more than $30 million a year.) Messi was likely drawn to South Florida by the more relaxed environs of MLS after some tumultuous years at PSG (culminating with a missed practice for a trip to the Kingdom to fulfill his ambassadorial duties) and a highly American financial proposition. Don’t mistake Messi’s decision for some moral stand against the Saudi government’s human rights record, however: he’s already signed up as a Saudi tourism ambassador, and we can safely assume he’s well-compensated for all his ambassadoring.
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One player the Saudi Pro League has missed out on, though, is the greatest who ever lived, Lionel Messi, who’s chosen instead to depart Paris Saint-Germain for Inter Miami, one of the newer MLS outfits owned in significant part by David Beckham. Come to Jeddah and set your family up for generations. The message is clear: come play in Riyadh for a couple years and never worry about money again. These contracts are not public and the sums are not confirmed, but the exact numbers almost don’t matter.
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He’s got a new teammate in N’Golo Kante, a World Cup winner with France, who will leave Chelsea and receive $100 million plus image licensing deals over four years. Initial reports suggested he would be compensated at a level upwards of $100 million a year, though there’s now some doubt whether it’s quite that high. He’s since been joined by Karim Benzema, who will leave Real Madrid this summer to play for Al-Ittihad. Cristiano Ronaldo was already over there, playing for Al-Nassr since January after he accepted an offer that by some reports totals over $200 million per annum. If an autocratic state’s slush fund offered you tens of millions of dollars to play soccer in the desert for a couple of years, would you take it?īelieve it or not, these sums are actually below some early reports of what’s been on offer to a few marquee players after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) took over four of the Saudi soccer league’s biggest teams this month.
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