Rewritten Content:
On the morning of Lionel Messi’s first official practice with his new teammates at Inter Miami, Freddy Eraza Jr. and his father woke up before the sun rose. Hoping to see Messi and take a photo with him, they arrived at DRV PNK Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 6:00 am on Tuesday. A news channel helicopter had been circling the practice field for at least an hour. However, when the Eraza’s reached the stadium, 36-year-old Messi had already arrived, and they missed the opportunity to get a souvenir. Four hours later, they were still in the practice facility and stadium parking lot, sweating alongside dozens of fans in the sticky 35-degree Celsius heat of South Florida. Everyone was waiting for a glimpse of the man considered perhaps the greatest soccer player of all time, who surprisingly decided to spend the twilight of his career competing in Major League Soccer (MLS) instead of joining the powerhouse of Barcelona or for more money in Saudi Arabia.
It made sense to see many fans, jerseys, and flags from Argentina in the area because Messi led the country’s national team to the highest glory in the World Cup in December. Additionally, Florida is home to the largest Argentine community in the United States. But Messi’s disciples come from all over.
“There’s a bit of everything here,” said Eraza, a 40-year-old originally from Honduras who now resides in Fort Lauderdale. “There are people from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, and quite a few Americans.”
This is the power of Messi. Before he accepted to join this team, Inter Miami was perhaps best known for a cheating scandal in 2021. The team is a new franchise that just started playing in 2020 and is currently at the bottom of the standings this season. But since Messi announced that he would be their new home, he has completely changed the world of Inter Miami and brought enormous attention to South Florida.
Messi, who has won the Ballon d’Or as the best male soccer player in the world seven times, is not just an iconic athlete who has achieved almost mythical proportions. He has already had, and will likely continue to have, a notable cultural impact on a city – and region – known as the unofficial capital of Latin America. Restaurants have changed their menus to include Messi-themed dishes. Murals and posters of Messi have appeared everywhere. The Argentine culture is spreading through him.
“The magnitude of this announcement – no matter how much I prepared for it, or imagined and dreamed about it – is mind-boggling,” said Jorge Mas, the Cuban-American billionaire and South Florida native who is the managing owner of Inter Miami. “You would have to have lived in a cave to not know that Leo Messi is a player for Inter Miami, no matter where you are in the world.”
Just look at the ticket demand.
It’s true that Inter Miami plays in a stadium about 48 kilometers north of downtown Miami with a capacity of 19,000 and is a temporary venue until a larger facility proposed next to Miami International Airport is completed in two years.
But the prices of many tickets for Messi’s first game with Inter Miami on Friday, against the Mexican team Cruz Azul, skyrocketed from about $40 to over $300. Messi may not start and may only play a part of the game – which is part of a new month-long tournament between the MLS and Liga MX called Leagues Cup – but it has already been announced that the match is sold out.
The average resale ticket price for the remaining home games of Inter Miami jumped from $152 to $850, and away games experienced an even greater increase, according to Ticket IQ.
While some fans have managed to get an Inter Miami Messi jersey, the items are difficult to find online. An update on the official Inter Miami and MLS stores, which are operated by sportswear retailer Fanatics, stated that Adidas, the official jersey provider for the league, will deliver “this product in mid-October.” The MLS regular season ends around those days. (Adidas did not respond to a request for comments).
According to Fanatics, since the launch of the new Messi jersey on Monday, Inter Miami has been their top-selling team across all sports. The company said on Thursday that it had sold more Inter Miami merchandise since Monday than in the previous 7 and a half months of 2023.
“This will give us a level of global exposure that we never would have been able to achieve without a player like Messi,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. “Whether it’s in South America or Argentina, or in Europe because he had legendary careers in Barcelona and France. The goal is to try to capture as much interest as possible in Messi.”
Before Messi’s announcement, Inter Miami’s Instagram account had one million followers. By Friday, that number had skyrocketed to nearly 11 million, surpassing Inter Milan, the historic Italian football club, and all professional sports teams in the United States, except for three NBA teams.
“The city is buzzing right now,” Inter Miami defender DeAndre Yedlin told nearly 40 reporters gathered before a Thursday morning practice, a much larger crowd than usual. “People are really excited, which is nice to see.”
For Messi’s unveiling event last Sunday – which was broadcast globally in English and Spanish on Apple TV+, MLS’s streaming partner in its first year – almost 500 media members were accredited, according to Inter Miami. Almost 200 were authorized for Messi’s first practice. While reporters had access to only 15 minutes of the training session, which is common in sports, several Argentine TV and radio reporters broadcasted live from their spots across the field and later from the parking lot.
“That’s a gift that Leo has given to the sport,” said David Beckham, former soccer star and one of the owners of Inter Miami. “For him, this is about legacy. He’s in the stage of his career where he’s done everything any football player can do in the sport.”
Even off the field, Messi is one of the most famous humans on Earth. During the World Cup in Qatar, it was common to see not only Argentine fans wearing his jersey and singing national team chants but also people from Bangladesh or the Philippines. For example, there is a 9-meter-tall cutout of Messi in the state of Kerala, in southern India.
Based on his popularity in Asia, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) had already begun its plans to grow in the U.S. market a year and a half ago. Leandro Petersen, the AFA’s commercial and marketing manager, said the federation has active agreements for 30 years in South Florida, either to build new facilities (North Bay Village) or to renovate existing ones (Hialeah) to use as training centers for their national team ahead of the 2024 Copa America and the 2026 World Cup.
But now that Messi is present, Petersen said the federation is benefiting from the momentum and seeing its timelines accelerate. Previously, he said, it was harder to compete with established American sports leagues like the NFL or the NBA.
“What’s happening now is that the…
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