Messi Marketing: Messi’s engagement with Inter Miami will accelerate soccer’s transformative impact on U.S. sports marketing. Find out why the MLS has the opportunity to surpass Spain’s La Liga in revenues and shorten the gap to the three U.S. juggernaut leagues, NFL, MLB, and NBA. Five key questions and answers you need to know about.
Argentina’s 2022 World Cup win put the Americas back on the pedestal. Now Messi’s Inter Miami engagement propels soccer marketing in the U.S. to a whole new level. 6 questions and their answers.
Question 1: Liga MX has more viewership in the U.S. than MLS. Advertisers know this. Why would this change?
Answer: Certainly, Liga MX currently has more viewership than the MLS; the 1.14 million viewer average for ABC’s 2021 MLS Cup pales in comparison to Univision’s average viewership of 3 million during Liga MX’s Apertura second leg final in June 2021. Advertisers often prefer Liga MX to engage the Hispanic demographic. “Liga MX soccer activations speak closer to the Hispanic consumer than MLS.“Nick Kelly, at the time Head of U.S. Sports Marketing at Anheuser -Busch, said during a Portada event in 2019. However, major news happened; Messi’s (marketing) engagement with Inter Miami is a game changer. The most recognized soccer star on the planet has a massive global fan base and is a household name for the U.S. Hispanic population and the U.S. population overall. As a very early proof of that, take Inter Miami’s Instagram account: before news broke of Messi’s deal, Inter Miami had around one million followers. Only 24 hours later, the club’s IG page reached 5.9 million followers by last Thursday afternoon.
The huge swing in Inter Miami’s IG account puts them as the most followed sports page among any NFL, MLB, NHL, or other MLS team. The New England Patriots had the No. 1 spot with 4.9 million followers, the Dallas Cowboys followed with 4.5 million followers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees have around three million followers on the platform. It is no surprise that Messi marketing would bring over such a large social media presence because the 35-year-old soccer star is the second-most followed person in the world with 469 million followers on Instagram.
Question 2: Messi Marketing: Social media followers do not necessarily translate into financial clout. BTW: In revenues, the MLS is dwarfed by the big 4 U.S. leagues NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL.
Answer: The world’s best soccer player coming to Miami is also a gigantic endorsement for soccer in the U.S., the world’s largest economy. An extremely powerful and diverse economy that supports sports marketing on a massive scale. It is no wonder that the three largest sports leagues worldwide are based in the U.S, with the National Football League (US $ 17.035 billion in 2022) leading, followed by Major League Baseball (US $10.476 billion), and the NBA (US $ 9.54 billion). The NHL is fifth in the ranking with US $4.920 billion. Non-U.S. leagues among the top 10 grossing sports leagues are all soccer leagues; English-Premier League ranked 4th (US $ 5.54 billion), Spain’s La Liga 6th (US $4.84 billion), Germany’s Bundesliga 7th (US $3.61 billion), Italy’s La Lega 8th(US $2.556 billion), France’s League 1, 9th (US$ 1.57 billion) and the MLS 10th (US $ 1.49 billion).
In 2022 MLS revenue level amounted to 8.47% of the NFL’s. It is not unreasonable to assume that they can grow to 30% or 35% of the NFL revenue level by 2030. That would amount to an MLS annual sales level of between US $5.11 billion and US $5.96 billion, propelling it to surpass Spain’s La Liga and competing with the English Premier League as the top soccer league in the world.
Of course, continued investment by the MLS and its teams and partners to achieve a higher revenue goal will be necessary. Consider that the MLS and soccer are still young in the U.S. Inter Miami is only five years old. Its stadium, the Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, only has a capacity of 18,000 spectators. Expanding its capacity or moving the team to another stadium may accommodate more Messi fans.
Question 3: Pele and Beckenbauer played in the U.S. in the seventies, but not much changed. What is different this time?
Answers: The world is much more interconnected today, particularly because nowadays, social media gives individual players much more power than they used to have. That makes soccer marketing more powerful. But, in addition to that, the stars are much more aligned this time because of the following factors:
Messi Marketing: The North American soccer marketing dynamic …
Soccer development is conceived as a North American play by Liga MX and MLS. This is even more so the case if it is considered that three Canadian teams play in the MLS. There are several national team competitions, for both men and women, relevant to North American audiences, including Copa America 2024 to be played in the U.S. and, most importantly, the 2026 Soccer World Cup in Mexico, U.S., and Canada. After 32 years since the first World Cup edition in 1994, soccer will return to the U.S., inspiring future generations and providing incredible momentum for continued fan creation. The fact that the World Cup will be played in North America, in the summer, and on North American schedules also means that advertisers will not have to deal with the challenges presented in far away Qatar.
On the club level, the 2023 Leagues Cup will be the third edition of the Leagues Cup, an inter-league soccer tournament between Major League Soccer and Liga MX. It will be held from July 21 to August 19, 2023, with all 77 matches in the United States or Canada. In 2023, the tournament was expanded to include all clubs from MLS and Liga MX and now functions as a regional cup for these leagues. That means that Messi’s Inter Miami will play against Cruz Azul on July 21, providing a direct connection to the Mexican soccer fan.
…has a powerful Hispanic link.
Hispanics, soccer fans by excellence, are powering North American soccer developments in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. Hispanics represent the fastest-growing demographic segment in the U.S., with a growth rate far outpacing all other races and ethnicities with a 5 times faster growth rate than any other race (2010-2020). The U.S. Census Bureau forecasts that U.S. Hispanics will represent 27% of the total population by 2060 in the U.S., equating to 111 million U.S. Hispanics. Many marketing decision-makers in the U.S. are only now realizing how important it is to market to the Hispanic demographic on their terms; “We are doing more of what we should have been doing,” Esther Gonzales, Director, Sponsorships and Experiential Marketing at AT&T., said at Portada’s recent Marketing in Multicultural America Summit in Los Angeles. Gonzales mentioned that AT&T’s continued growth is due to the telecom giant’s increased business with the U.S. Hispanic consumer. New marketers will likely join the Hispanic soccer marketing fray through experiential or media activations, while others (e.g. Tecate, Anheuser-Busch, and Buchanan’s) may increase their commitments.
Live sports has become the only massive real-time audience driver
At a time when media consumption is more fractured than ever, live sports are virtually the only way for marketers to engage large amounts of audiences in real-time. The recent Apple-MLS deal is a major confirmation of this. The agreement grants Apple TV the exclusive rights for live-streaming MLS regular-season matches, the playoffs, and the Leagues Cup in more than 100 countries. Messi coming to the U.S. has made Apple’s subscription offer more appealing. MLS Season Pass costs US $14.99 monthly or US $99 for the entire season. For Apple TV+ subscribers, prices dropped to $12.99 per month and $79 for the entire year. Messi is rumored to obtain a cut of revenues from new subscriptions as part of the overall agreement his team is negotiating. Interestingly, Apple announced last week that it plans to feature a four-part documentary series on Messi on Apple TV.
