Inter Miami Weighs Future When Soccer Star Exits

Billionaire Jorge Mas has been good for Lionel Messi, helping the Argentine superstar monetize his global superstardom on the US stage.

Messi, in turn, has been very good for Jorge Mas.

Just over a year after Messi stunned the sports world by leaving Paris Saint-Germain for Inter Miami, the fortunes of the once-struggling team and its upstart league have been transformed.

Supercharged by Messi’s roughly 625 million followers, Inter Miami, owned by Mas, his brother Jose and English soccer legend David Beckham, is now the most popular American sports team on social media, according to data from Blinkfire Analytics. Revenue has surged almost four-fold to $200 million, Mas says, fans have shattered attendance records and Messi’s pink Inter Miami jersey is the world’s top seller.

The impact goes far beyond Miami, too. Major League Soccer says its teams have added $3.2 billion in value since his transfer. At 37, Messi has become the single-biggest driving force propelling US soccer as the country prepares to host the 2026 World Cup with Canada and Mexico. Earlier this year he became first soccer player to rank as Americans’ favorite athlete, according to SSRS.

Mas, a Miami construction executive and son of Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, predicts the Messi effect has even more room to run and that Inter Miami’s value will jump to $2 billion by late next year. That would be a more than three-fold increase since 2022.

“I was anticipating that here in Miami it would be amazing, we would sell out stadiums,” Mas, 61, said in an interview from his Coral Gables office. “But when you see the reaction when we travel, they’re full for Messi.”

For now. The dilemma for Mas and other owners is how to keep those seats filled when he’s no longer there.

Messi’s contract expires at the end of the 2025 season, when he’ll be several years beyond the age elite soccer players typically retire. Before returning to the pitch last weekend, he hadn’t competed since hurting his ankle in the Copa America final on July 26 and had missed more than two dozen matches for Inter Miami and Argentina since moving to South Florida.

Mas is confident US soccer’s biggest star will decide to play for longer. And team owners are ramping up spending, looking to ride a surge in enthusiasm for both the men’s and women’s game driven by Messi and the approaching World Cup.

New stadiums are being built, including a $780 million arena in Queens, New York, as well as Inter Miami’s new $425 million home. Others are being pitched, such as a new venue for Robert Kraft’s New England Revolution in Everett, Massachusetts.

But it’s raising the question of how fast the sport can keep growing without the talismanic Argentinean, especially for surging Inter Miami.

“Are my kids, your kids, going to want to buy Inter Miami shirts when Messi is not there?” said Simon Kuper, author of The Barcelona Complex: Lionel Messi and the Making – and Unmaking – of the World’s Greatest Soccer Club.

Importing ageing stars has a long tradition in US soccer. Brazil’s Pele came out of retirement in the 1970s to play for the New York Cosmos. The next seismic event was Beckham’s move from Europe to the LA Galaxy in 2007. Other icons, such as Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney and Zlatan Ibrahimović later joined the US league. Their star power gave short-term boosts to the game, but US soccer remains nowhere near as popular as American football, basketball, baseball or European soccer.

Lionel Messi, though, is unlike anything that came before. A global icon whose appeal extends across cultures, he’s won the Champions League four times with FC Barcelona, triumphed at the World Cup with Argentina and captured the Ballon d’Or—given to the best player in the world over a season—an unprecedented eight times.

When he signed with Inter Miami in July 2023, Messi reportedly rejected an offer from Saudi Arabia worth $400 million a year. It was a huge coup for Mas and the MLS at a time when the Saudis were enticing a cadre of household names from England, Spain and France.

“When you ask somebody around the world to name the six, seven, eight clubs in the world that they recognize, we’re in that conversation,” said Mas. “I’m extremely proud of that.”

Messi’s contract includes a roughly 10% stake in Inter Miami after he retires, a person familiar with the situation said. That would be worth $200 million if Mas’ estimates hold up. He’s paid about $60 million a year by the club and gets at least $70 million annually from sponsorships and endorsements, people familiar with the situation say. Mas declined to comment on Inter Miami’s ownership stakes and Messi’s pay. A Messi spokesperson declined to comment.

Messi is on track to be a billionaire by the time he retires, if he isn’t already. At the end of 2025, he will have earned an estimated $1.6 billion throughout his career, including playing salaries, bonuses and endorsements, according to Sportico. Before Inter Miami, Messi got paid €555.2 million ($613 million) by Barcelona in the four years before he was transferred to Paris Saint-Germain in 2021, according to a copy of his contract that was obtained and published by the Spanish daily El Mundo.

Inter Miami has reaped the benefits on and off the pitch. Dozens of brands have cut endorsement deals with the club that will generate $55 million this season, according to the data firm SponsorUnited. Players don jerseys emblazoned with Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.’s logo, while competing in an unassuming stadium in Fort Lauderdale named for JPMorgan Chase & Co. The team has attracted other big names, including Messi’s former Barcelona teammate Luis Suarez. They helped it triumph even when Messi is absent, with the team at the top of the Eastern Conference after winning 19 games this season.

What’s more, the club is profitable, Mas said, a contrast with how Barcelona fared in the last years of Messi’s tenure when his wages proved overwhelming to the Catalan club. The feat was possible, he said, because Messi is being compensated through equity and revenue-sharing agreements.

Mas said he also intends to bring in a new strategic partner to Inter Miami, most likely toward the end of next year when construction of its new stadium complex known as Freedom Park is well under way.

The Messi effect was in full display at the end of May during one of the last domestic games he played before his injury.

Playing against Atlanta United, Messi fielded a pass from another former Barcelona teammate, Sergio Busquets, in the 62nd minute and drove home a shot from outside the penalty area into Atlanta’s goal. The pink wave of 21,326 fans – it was yet another sellout – roared as the announcer known as “El Chamo” (Spanish slang for “The Kid”) let loose a resounding “Goooooal!”

That spectacle—complete with a fan support group behind the north goal that sings South American soccer anthems the entire game to the beat of their own drummer corps—is central to Inter Miami’s business model. Game-day sales of tickets, food and apparel are the team’s largest revenue source. Only 4% of Inter Miami’s annual revenue comes from the sale of broadcast rights, including proceeds of the league’s 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with AppleTV+.

The sold-out games have proved a boon to the rest of the league too. Ticket prices explode wherever Messi goes. For example, upper-deck tickets for New York City FC’s Sept. 21 match against Inter Miami at Yankee Stadium start at about $170 on SeatGeek, more than 10 times the price for the previous game against Philadelphia. And that’s without any guarantee that Messi will play. His draw is so great that some clubs have been forced to give money back when he failed to play.

There are signs that some clubs are thriving even when Messi isn’t on the pitch. This year, Atlanta United is drawing average crowds of 47,000 per game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which also hosts the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. And the July 4 iteration of the cross-town rivalry between the LA Galaxy and Los Angeles FC drew over 70,000 fans to the fabled Rose Bowl

Other owners are also confident the US league will keep growing without the Argentine star, especially with the sport’s quadrennial spectacle coming to North America.

“The World Cup absolutely will be a catalyst for the growth of Major League Soccer,” said Clark Hunt, owner and chief executive at FC Dallas. “If you look at the knock-on effect in every country that hosted World Cups over the last 20 years, the domestic leagues make a huge move.”

The LA Galaxy, one of the founding members of the MLS, has experience with superstars retiring. In the years after Beckham departed in 2012, the team has signed a slate of European stars, including former England captain Steven Gerrard, Ibrahimović and, just last month, German midfielder Marco Reus.

“You gotta have that ‘what’s next?’” said Tom Braun, president of business operations for the Galaxy. “Our league has continued to rise to the occasion every single time a star player might have come or gone.”

Mas wants Messi to stay past his contract, but he’s taking no chances. Inter Miami’s scouts are scouring South America, the US and Europe for talent.

One challenge is that there are so few players globally with Messi’s level of fame. Cristiano Ronaldo is 39 and committed to playing in Riyadh, while emerging superstars like Jude Bellingham, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe have no plans to come to the US at the peak of their powers.

After 30 years of fits and starts, it’s unclear how profitable US soccer is because teams don’t disclose their income statements. The league says its clubs are worth a combined $20 billion—a seven-fold increase in a decade. But such values are untested because no MLS teams have been sold since Messi joined the league.

What’s clear, though, is that the ultrarich keep piling on: Billionaire Egyptian investor Mohamed Mansour reportedly paid a $500 million expansion fee to make his San Diego FC the league’s 30th team next year. In 2004 there were 10 clubs.

“Could US soccer become really profitable?” said Stefan Szymanski, a University of Michigan sports management professor who specializes in the business of soccer. “One of the hallmarks of billionaires is that they have endless patience.”