The Lionel Messi problem
The world's best player is the biggest draw in MLS by some distance. Which makes his absence that much more noticeable
In the spring of 2023 I went to cover what was supposed to be a unique event. The Major League Soccer season would unofficially kick off with a match between the L.A. Galaxy and LAFC at the famous Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
The match between regional rivals — the Galaxy had once been MLS’ marquee franchise but had been eclipsed in recent years by the hip newcomers with the downtown stadium and the celebrity owners — was also a launching point of sorts for the league’s glitzy new broadcast partners. Apple had swooped in and bought global media rights for $2.5-billion over 10 years. While there were many questions about that deal — it seemed an odd partnership — the Rose Bowl game would at least provide a splashy kickoff. Maybe even an attendance record. Journalists from around the world, even in Europe where MLS doesn’t get much coverage, were flown in to document the event.
It was splashy, but not in a good way. Heavy rains on the Friday before the match caused the whole thing to be postponed, because the unpaved parking areas around the Rose Bowl had been turned into wet grass and mud.
It was perhaps an omen for MLS, and Apple, that in sports, as in life, sometimes things do not go as planned.
On the weekend, Inter Miami lost a playoff game to Atlanta United in, it must be said, pretty hilarious fashion.
If you click on that link for the video of the game-winning goal, you’ll note that it comes as a Miami player plunks himself down in the box, hoping for a stoppage of play due to injury. Atlanta ignores this request, understandably, and gets a goal as most of the Miami team are preoccupied with calling for a stoppage. Great stuff.
The significance of all this is that Inter Miami had set a record for most points in the MLS this season, powered by the presence of Lionel Messi and several of his friends. Messi, arguably the greatest player of all time, arrived late last year when Inter Miami was in the MLS basement but turned them into a powerhouse this season. Joined by several of his former Barcelona teammates in Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets, Inter Miami were dominant and were expected to go on a run deep into the MLS Cup playoffs. Except they lost the first-round best-of-three series to Atlanta and are now out before even getting to the final eight.
All of which has continued a pattern: Messi is the biggest thing to happen to MLS, but his presence has knocked the league off-kilter. So much attention is on Messi and his exploits that everything else can feel like an afterthought. And there is a lot more of everything else than there are games in which Messi is involved. Like, for example, the rest of the 2024 MLS Cup playoffs.
On one level, the move to bring in Messi was a masterstroke. Inter Miami, owned by part by fellow soccer icon David Beckham, instantly became a global brand and sales of their pink kit have rivalled those of famous big clubs in Spain and England. Miami games have set record crowds across North America, and in some cases clubs have moved out of their normal stadiums just to host Miami in a larger venue to meet ticket demand.
Messi, the 37-year-old from Argentina, is that good. Not only was he an incredible footballing force in his prime in Barcelona, he has had a late-career renaissance with his national team, winning the World Cup and the Copa America (twice) after it seemed like he might never win a major trophy with the national team. (He retired from international duty once, before coming back.) Imagine if Wayne Gretzky had set all of his records in a huge hockey market and then capped his career by finally winning Olympic gold. And then went to play hockey in Switzerland. That’s basically the Messi arc at this point.
But he also doesn’t play all that much. Owing to injuries, international duty and, it seems, not a tremendous sense of urgency to don the pink kit as often as he can, Messi started just 15 of Inter Miami’s 34 games this season. He came on as a sub in four more. This is not ideal for his team, which is paying him a reported $20-million per year, and especially not ideal for MLS and Apple, which is said to have given him some equity to make up for the fact that he took a pay cut to come to the United States. And it’s particularly bad news for the fans around the league who pay massive prices for tickets to the one Miami game at their home stadiums only to have him not even make the bench. It’s like buying Taylor Swift tickets and only getting the opening act. (With apologies to Gracie Abrams and the other openers.)
The novelty, by this point, feels like it has worn off. Messi can still do remarkable things on the pitch when he plays, but the idea of an Inter Miami game as appointment viewing has passed, if only because it’s more likely than not that he won’t play. And MLS is no higher on the North American sports radar than it was before Messi arrived — it’s a niche league with dedicated fans, but doesn’t have anywhere near the mainstream appeal of football (pro or college) and the three other major pro leagues.
Which gets back to that Apple deal. The tech giant has put its MLS programming behind a paywall, with a subscription package that provides access to every MLS game from anywhere in the world. From the outset, that was ambitious. Most MLS supporters watch their club team but aren’t seeking out other random games, so 20 bucks a month was a steep price to watch a few matches. Apple is famously private about its viewership numbers, so there is no way to know if the Messi arrival drove a large increase in MLS Season Pass numbers — or if there was an initial bump that has long since levelled off. The fact that Miami/MLS/Apple spent all that money to bring him in after just a few months of the 10-year deal always felt like they realized they needed some kind of major selling feature for a package that had priced out casual fans. Which is a problem when that selling feature is a bit player.
Actual MLS supporters have a litany of Apple-related complaints: the schedule, which puts most games at 7:30 pm on Saturdays, is lousy for cooler areas in the spring and fall. The broadcast teams don’t have the local knowledge of the team-specific commentators they largely replaced. Where a broadcaster like TSN used to spend resources to make their network the home of Canada’s three MLS teams, now those teams are just three of Apple’s 29. The same is undoubtedly true of any team in a smaller market: fans in somewhere like Charlotte or Minnesota would surely have had more coverage of their club from a dedicated host broadcaster than they get from the Apple behemoth.
And there seems little doubt that when the next MLS season begins, Messi and Miami will again be at the centre of the league’s promotion, despite the early playoff exit. He is, as mentioned, 37, and is only under contract for 2025. They will try to squeeze every bit out of his presence that they can. Although “presence” might be overstating things.