Lionel Messi celebrates his second goal of the match between Honduras and Argentina at Hard Rock Stadium, Miami, Sept 23, 2022.
Icon Sportswire | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
It has been three days since soccer legend Lionel Messi shocked the soccer world by announcing his move to MLS club Inter Miami FC after parting ways with Paris Saint-Germain, and ticket prices across the league are already soaring.
Secondary ticket market StubHub says sales for Inter Miami’s matches starting in July have increased nearly 28 times for the reason that announcement.
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July 2023 matches onward have already sold as many tickets as your complete 2022 season compared with this time last yr, the ticketing company said.
The possibility to see Messi, widely considered one in all the best soccer players of all time and a winner of last yr’s World Cup, is not going to come back low cost.
Average ticket prices on StubHub for the David Beckham-owned team are up 4.5 times, jumping from $24.52 to $124.51 for the reason that news dropped.
One other secondary ticket site, Vivid Seats, reported the typical price to attend a Leagues Cup match between the Mexican League’s Cruz Azul and Inter Miami has soared 1,021%. On June 4, a ticket cost $122, and 6 days later, that very same ticket was going for $1,413.
In only just a few days, Inter Miami went from being the seventh-highest selling team of the 2023 season to the fourth-highest selling team for season sales on StubHub.
“Supply is proscribed,” sports business analyst Joe Pompliano said on CNBC’s “Last Call.”
“In the event you take a look at Miami’s stadium, they only have 18K seats. While you look across Europe, in Barcelona specifically [where Messi spent most of his career], they’ve 100K seats. There may be a fundamental imbalance in the provision and demand equation we’re seeing,” he added.
That is all for a team that sits last place within the MLS’ Eastern Conference and is now on the hunt for a latest coach after recently firing third-year coach Phil Neville.
It is not just Miami seeing the uptick — Messi’s future competitors are also seeing a bump.
“Messi might be a draw for soccer fans across the country, drawing fans to away matches very similar to we see with big stars within the NFL and NBA,” said Adam Budelli, a spokesperson for StubHub.
Messi and Inter Miami are set to go to LAFC at SoFi Stadium on Sept. 3. Sales for the match moved from the fifteenth highest-selling event of the season to the second — and it’s on course to simply be the No. 1 event of the LAFC season, StubHub data shows.
In Miami, it isn’t just ticket sales which might be seeing a pleasant bump. Merchandise can also be taking off.
Fanatics won’t start printing Messi Inter Miami FC jerseys until the deal is official, but fans are already scooping up team gear in large numbers.
The digital sports platform says more Inter Miami merchandise has been sold since Wednesday than the previous two months combined.
Since Wednesday, Inter Miami is a top-five selling team across all sports throughout the Fanatics network.
Meanwhile, Inter Miami is on the brink of money in on its future global audience.
In response to Josh Gerben, trademark attorney at Gerben Law, the team filed an application June 5 to trademark the phrase “LIBERTAD PARA SOÑAR,” the Spanish translation of the team’s slogan, “Freedom to Dream.”
