When Lionel Messi signed to affix MLS, his contract reportedly included a stipulation to obtain a share of the revenues generated by streaming companion Apple TV.
Since Might, Messi’s relationship with MLS has additionally included a sponsorship settlement that made his new sports activities drink, Mas+ by Messi, the league’s official hydration companion.
And now MLS seems set to permit Miami so as to add to its traditionally stacked roster by signing yet one more shut Messi buddy, Rodrigo De Paul—skirting league spending guidelines by structuring the deal as a mortgage from Atlético Madrid with a purchase order possibility.
In any case that, we’re nonetheless ready on Messi to signal a much-anticipated contract extension to stay in Miami past 2025. And people with questions on that gained’t be capable of ask him anytime quickly, since he gained’t be among the many 12 MLS gamers accessible to reporters at Monday’s media day on the 2025 MLS All-Star Recreation.
Possibly that’s not the worst information on the planet for journalists who care about telling attention-grabbing tales. Messi’s soccer expertise are extraordinary, however he’s almost as gifted within the long-revered athlete pastime of giving numbingly uninteresting interviews.
However for many who hoped Messi’s relationship with MLS would truly be transformational, it’s simply one other twist of the knife: a actuality verify that the pact between the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner and the 30-year-old league is very one-sided.
Possibly it’s comprehensible to try to maintain the most important star who has ever performed in your competitors completely happy. It’s additionally comprehensible to start out asking how—and when—that’s going to result in actual modifications.
Messi was imagined to be a windfall second, one that may make MLS a extra engaging vacation spot for extra, youthful stars.
There’s little signal of that materializing on the league’s 29 different golf equipment.
Kevin De Bruyne and Antoine Griezmann reportedly turned down stateside presents regardless of appreciable curiosity. Olivier Giroud and LAFC opted to terminate his contract by mutual consent, permitting France’s all-time main scorer to return house after a yr of scoring struggles. Cristiano Ronaldo took extra Saudi cash in spite of everything, regardless of a quick window when an MLS transfer appeared believable.
Messi was additionally imagined to be a car to move extra informal followers to MLS stadiums and screens.
On the field workplace, the preliminary Messi hype helped MLS to a file regular-season common attendance of 23,234 in 2024. However up to now, 2025 is shaping up like a regression to the imply.
Within the TV and streaming world, Messi’s arrival clearly sparked an preliminary surge in MLS Season Go subscriptions on Apple TV. However the longer-term affect is tougher to quantify, with Apple persevering with to supply little in the way in which of tangible viewership information.
And whether or not reasonable or not, Messi got here to America with the expectation that he could be for MLS what Pelé was for the NASL a technology in the past.
Those that had adopted the Argentine even remotely knew that was a false hope.
Messi has at all times been a soft-spoken, introverted determine—somebody who accepts fame for the riches it affords himself and his interior circle, however not often embraces it. Even within the managed setting of an advert shoot, the completed product not often sees him saying greater than, “No, Michelob Extremely,” or “Bien asistencia.”
However that expectation nonetheless existed. And MLS was completely happy to hype it—both in naïve hope that Messi would ship one thing near Pelé’s relentless ambassadorial work for the New York Cosmos, or within the extra cynical perception that followers wouldn’t care when he didn’t.
Messi may be taking part in in MLS. However he has hardly assimilated into it. If something, his existence at Inter Miami feels extra like a household enclave carved out from the remainder of the league with every passing week.
From the reconstruction of a roster now heavy on Argentine and different South American expertise, to the appointment of a head coach and sporting director whose most evident {qualifications} are longstanding ties to the crew’s most well-known participant, to the continued refusal to work together with all however a couple of handpicked media members—the consolation of the world’s No. 10 has come above each different concern.
It’s properly inside Messi and Miami’s prerogative. It might even show a profitable method on the sector.
Nevertheless it’s exhausting to see the way it results in the massive change MLS was banking on.