Of the many accomplishments associated with Lionel Messi, saying no to Saudi Arabia may yet prove uppermost. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, not a potentate used to rejection, will be incandescent at the loss of esteem associated with Messi, for which he was prepared to pay $450m over two years for serious public relations leverage.
MBS fixer Yasir Al-Rumayyan will be hoping his centrality to the roll out of the boss’s big idea, Vision 2030, permits him the odd setback. He would not want many more as the Saudis escalate their global sporting programme.
In a week when Al-Rumayyan opened the Saudi vaults on an unprecedented scale even for them, buying up the game of golf as well as sundry footballers on mad money, Messi calmly announced on an Instagram post that he was off to Miami, not the house of Saud.
We can only assume that the gains to be had by Messi Inc in the United States outweigh the Saudi offer. Either way we are witness to not only the soft power of sport in the political dimension, but its hard edge shaping the commercial agenda. Messi may or may not aid Inter Miami’s MLS title challenge. What is certain is his capacity to grow the MLS brand, bringing the eyes of the world to America in the build-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The event is a huge investment by any host. The dividend comes from the association with big brand sponsors. The tournament extends not over one month in 2026 but three years starting now. The involvement of Apple in the Messi deal is central, pointing to a partnership that will see the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner driving content and earning a fortune.
Apple TV is in the first year of a ten-year deal with the MLS. This week it also announced a four-part documentary about Messi. The cameras followed him at Paris St Germain, at the World Cup in Qatar and in Argentina, documenting his incredible journey to summit of the game in that unforgettable denouement against France in December.
Messi can also expect to feature heavily in the content resulting from the deal agreed between the MLS and Box To Box Films, the company that produces the Netflix rating winners Drive To Survive in F1 and golf’s Full Swing. The value of Messi was demonstrated in the hours after news broke of his intention to join Inter Miami. On the morning of the announcement, the club’s Instagram account had 900,000 followers. Within 24 hours it had grown to 5.7 million, a number greater than baseball giants the New York Yankees and NFL market leaders, the Dallas Cowboys.
Messi’s impact could also be seen in ticket sales. According to news agency AFP, ticketing technology company Logitix reported a four-fold increase in sales in the secondary ticket market in the 24 hours after the Messi reveal. The average price for Inter Miami home matches rocketed from $31 to $152 and from $94 to $207 for away games. The Leagues Cup match at Mexican club Cruz Azul on July 21 saw the biggest jump, from $24 to $521.
Messi’s loss to Saudi Arabia was a soft rather than hard power blow. The Saudis did not need Messi’s revenue-building capacity but the influence of a social media engine, twinned with the peerless Cristiano Ronaldo, had the potential to persuade observers that Saudi Arabia was as straightforward and desirable a destination as the Cote d’Azur. Messi would have been front and centre of any bid to follow the United States in hosting the World Cup in 2030.
Elsewhere, Al-Rumayyan had a better week, continuing to accumulate sporting properties at an arresting rate. The unveiling of Karim Benzema in front of 60,000 fans at the Al-Ittihad Stadium rivalled Eurovision for performative kitsch. Why not make a fuss when you have just signed Real Madrid’s second-highest scorer on a three-year deal worth $300m to the player. N’Golo Kante must be prepping his welcome speech ahead of the light show treatment.
The acquisitions are part of an escalating effort to reposition domestic football as a prestige item following the relative success of the national team at the Qatar World Cup. Football is the one sport with which the kingdom has an authentic relationship, boasting a huge fan base and a rapidly developing infrastructure. Expect the imports to get younger and better as the Saudis push to host the World Cup.
The world of golf is still reeling from the coup Al-Rumayyan brokered in Venice with an American investment banker who understood the ruinous consequences of waging economic war against an enemy with nuclear money. Jimmy Donne, a director of the PGA Tour’s policy board, hid behind semantics to justify the new association with LIV Golf, which is described as a merger when in fact it’s a takeover. His involvement in the deal is all the more astonishing for his connection to the 2001 terror attacks, when he was based in the destroyed World Trade Towers in New York.
On the day of the attack Donne was attempting to qualify for the prestigious US mid-Amateur tournament and thus avoided the trauma. The deal with LIV Golf, funded by a regime allegedly behind the deaths of 2,996 victims is, Donne claims, a matter of working with, not for, the Saudis. Hardly a bargain for PGA Tour superstars sold a different vision by the leadership.
Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose imposed their own ban on discussing the deal as they walked up the first fairway during the opening round of the Canadian Open on Thursday, to allow them to concentrate on hitting shots. That McIlroy, the principal mouthpiece in the PGA Tour’s dispute with LIV, was kept out of the loop until Donne called on the eve of the announcement demonstrated the covert nature of the negotiations.
While we await the outcome of Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani’s $6bn bid to take Manchester United into Qatari ownership and the announcement of a new shirt sponsor at Newcastle, wait for it, from Saudi Arabia, the retooling of sport as realpolitik continues in Istanbul at a Champions League final featuring teams owned by a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi and a conglomerate in China.
Though the Suning Holdings Group is theoretically independent, the state is a major shareholder and therefore instrumental in the company’s ownership of Inter Milan. And we know the importance of Manchester City to a regime seeking to change the way the world sees Abu Dhabi, a state with a human rights record described by Amnesty International as dismal.
That won’t stop fans nor members of the commentariat eulogising the winning team, the focus on outcomes obliterating the geopolitical subtext. Get ready for the open-top bus ride through Abu Dhabi, or Nanjing should Inter ambush football’s big state power play.
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