Lionel Messi might increase attendance, TV viewers, and market share, according to Major League Soccer

Lionel Messi will face the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NBA after 20 years of playing against Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Brazil.

After Messi joins Inter Miami next month, Major League Soccer is aiming for a significant increase in both its broadcast viewership and market share. In a country where football has been playing catch-up for more than a century, Messi is projected to become the third ultimate football evangelist after David Beckham joined the LA Galaxy in 2007 and Pelé joined the New York Cosmos in 1975.

Former U.S. Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati remarked, “Lionel Messi coming to MLS is an event that can’t be replicated in any other way.” “You’ve got one of the greatest players in history, if not the greatest player in history, joining an American football league just after winning the World Cup and gaining international recognition. That is just a tremendous, amazing chance for American athletics.

At 36 years old, Messi will join the MLS, whereas Beckham and Pelé were both 34. Messi is still a staple for Argentina’s national team and may participate in the Copa América next year and maybe the 2026 World Cup, which will both be held in the United States.

Before Pelé, in 1974, the Cosmos of the former North American Soccer League averaged 3,578 spectators when they played at Downing Stadium near the Triborough Bridge. At Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, they averaged more than 34,000 by his last year, 1977.

The general manager of the Cosmos who signed Pelé, Clive Toye, recalled encountering opposition.

Oh, the American football team will never play that. Oh, what a silly game, he remembered hearing. “Messi is coming to a country where there are millions of football players, where the national team and women’s national team draw large crowds, where there are professional teams at all levels — there are minor league teams hidden away in villages all over the country, and kids play football everywhere every day.”

After the 1984 season, the NASL was discontinued, and the MLS was established in 1996—two years after the United States had its first World Cup—to take its place. San Diego will begin competition in 2025, and the league that started with 10 clubs has expanded to 29 this year.

From 2.8 million and an average attendance of 17,400 in 1996 to 10 million and an average attendance of 21,033 last year, attendance has climbed. The overall turnout is up 28% this year and is up 7% on average.

There are around 22 teams playing in venues designed specifically for football, although only six of them use artificial grass.

“When you think about stadiums, infrastructure, soccer-specific stadiums, and the training grounds, all of that makes it a great league,” said Gregg Berhalter, the U.S. coach at the 2014 World Cup. “And MLS comes out on top in a lot of categories when you’re comparing it to other leagues that he could possibly go to when he’s doing that checklist,” says the author.

Football still behind other American sports. Last season, 18.8 million people watched the 272 NFL regular-season games on television and online, with an average attendance of 69,442 per game. Averaging 26,843, MLB attracted 64.6 million viewers.

34 MLS games were shown on ABC and ESPN last season, with an average audience of 343,300 people. The league averaged 443,000 viewers on Fox, 138,000 viewers on FS1, and 254,000 viewers for Spanish-language broadcasts on Univision and UniMás.

This season, MLS does not release television viewing data for its games as part of a 10-year deal with AppleTV+.

Messi, a four-time Champions League champion, a World Cup and South American champion, has a broad popularity. Javier Hernández of the LA Galaxy, who leads the MLS in Instagram followers with 22 million, is far behind him with just 469 million followers.

He can also communicate with the media in a small amount of English; yet, until recently, he was reluctant to do so, even in Spanish. During the World Cup last year, he seemed much more at ease.

Nearly 6 million Instagram followers of Inter Miami have increased by 3.8 million. The club may think about hiking ticket prices or maybe shifting games from the 18,000-capacity DRV PNK Stadium to the 65,000-seat Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, which will host the 2026 World Cup and be the home of the NFL’s Dolphins. Some road games could be moved to bigger locations.

Beckham signed a five-year, $32.5 million deal to join MLS that gave him the option to pay a reduced $25 million fee for an expansion franchise, which turned out to be the Miami team that debuted in 2020.

MLS owners, executives, and American football fans anticipate Messi’s effect to be far greater.

Don Garber, commissioner of Major League Soccer, said of Beckham, “I don’t believe anybody would deny that he has overdelivered on every one of those benchmarks. David “played a significant role in helping us make that happen,” there is probably not a soccer fan on the globe who doesn’t know the LA Galaxy and Major League Soccer.