Bloomberg — David Beckham has suffered defeat after crushing defeat in his almost decade-long quest to turn Miami into a soccer town.
Now, the former Manchester United and Real Madrid star is on the verge of a breakthrough: Thanks to a deal involving millions of dollars from Apple Inc. and Adidas AG, Beckham is close to persuading Lionel Messi to play for his Inter Miami team. What’s even more remarkable is that the Argentine superstar is reportedly turning down $400 million a year from Saudi Arabia to move to the US, dealing a blow to the Kingdom’s attempt to boost its sporting ambitions.
Beckham, 48, began working on getting Inter Miami off the ground with partners in 2014. It was part of the deal he had negotiated with Major League Soccer when he left Real Madrid in 2007 to join the LA Galaxy, which gave him the right to buy a MLS expansion team for $25 million upon retirement.
Inter Miami was worth $585 million as of the end of last year, according to Sportico, making it the 10th-most valuable MLS franchise, based on revenue and real estate holdings. While Beckham only has a minority stake in the franchise, adding arguably the world’s most famous player should boost its value.
“Beckham was big and Messi is bigger,” said Steve Davis, a soccer writer and FC Dallas broadcast analyst. “Messi’s arrival will add a lot of value to the media deals, the individual clubs, it adds value in player acquisition. If Messi is there, its going to provide more motivation for other players to come join the league.”
The Messi transaction might be more significant to US soccer than when the Brazilian legend Pele came out of retirement at 34 and spent three seasons with the New York Cosmos in the 1970s.
To pull it off, Beckham had powerful allies. Messi is being offered profit-sharing agreements with Adidas and Apple, The Athletic reported, citing people familiar with the transaction. Apple, fresh off the success of the soccer-themed show Ted Lasso, forged a $2.5 billion 10-year deal with Major League Soccer to show games on its TV+ platform. Adidas is seeking to recoup some of the considerable market share it lost in the US to Nike Inc. as it struggles after the collapse of its Yeezy franchise.
Bringing on Messi may also be a turning point for Beckham and Inter Miami. Just days ago, the club fired its head coach — Beckham’s former teammate Phil Neville — as it sits at the bottom of the MLS’s Eastern Conference.
The club had gone through multiple setbacks, with two separate bids to build waterfront stadiums rejected by the city. Ownership also changed over, leaving the billionaire brothers Jorge and Jose Mas as the main shareholders. They own MasTec Inc, an $8.6 billion infrastructure contractor that builds wind farms, sewer systems and oil pipelines.
Beckham, who captained England, won the treble with Manchester United, was a galactico for Real Madrid and scored breathtaking free kicks, sees Inter Miami as part of his soccer legacy.
“Of course you want to compare yourself to the great clubs financially and obviously on the field as well,” Beckham said in a 2020 interview with CNBC. “We want our kids to turn up at the stadium 10, 15, 20 years from now and say this is what our dad has created.”
Even before Messi, Inter Miami’s fortunes had started shifting. Mas and Beckham got Miami’s city commissioners to agree to a 99-year lease last year to redevelop a city-owned country club into a privately-financed property that would include a soccer stadium, hotel, office park, retail space and public park.
While the stadium mega project has yet to break ground, Messi will find Inter Miami’s current home starkly different than what he enjoyed in Barcelona, the club he’d played for since he was a teenager before joining Paris Saint-Germain in 2021. Inter Miami’s home is the DRV PNK Stadium (pronounced Drive Pink) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, which is sometimes shared with the Florida High School Athletic Association for state championships.
It holds barely 18,000 people — compared to almost 100,000 for Barcelona’s Camp Nou. But maybe Miami’s appreciation for the sport will catch up soon.
“There’s no better chance to develop a love for Major League Soccer than now, because they’ll have the greatest player of all time playing in Miami,” Davis said.
--With assistance from Michael Smith and Edward Dufner.
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