Meet This 60YO Billionaire Who Convinced Lionel Messi To Join MLS Over Saudi League

It's been a week since Inter Miami signed seven-time Ballon d¡¯Or winner and 2022 World Cup champion Lionel Messi. The Argentine superstar¡¯s contract with the team will run through the 2025 Major League Soccer (MLS) season.

Billionaire Who Convinced Messi To Join Inter Miami

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While there were rumours that the former PSG star may come back to Barcelona, Messi's joining Inter Miami came as a surprise to many. And a key person who is believed to have played a role in convincing Messi is billionaire Jorge Mas. He persuaded Messi to join a team that is currently last in the league.

The 60-year-old is an American billionaire businessman and the chairman and largest shareholder of MasTec, a Miami-based construction and engineering company. He is also the owner of Inter Miami Football Club, alongside its President and co-owner David Beckham.

Also Read: 5 Investment Lessons We All Can Learn From FIFA World Cup

Vision To Boost US Soccer Through Messi

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He is seeking to give a boom to the business of US soccer and make it a lot more profitable. The linchpin of his strategy was signing Messi to a contract that threw out a traditional cash-for-services agreement in favour of revenue sharing agreements and an equity stake in the team ¡ª a dealmaking strategy closer to Wall Street¡¯s playbook.

Messi will get a share of the windfall from any increase in international accounts for Apple TV+, while Mas¡¯s Inter Miami soccer club is set to earn millions from increased ticket and merchandise sales. The rest of the league will see a knock-on effect from the hype around Messi, as per Mas¡¯s theory, as a Bloomberg report mentioned. Billionaire Mas¡¯s vision is that Messi will also attract top players to Major League Soccer.

"I have very high aspirations for Inter Miami, for MLS, and for the sport," Mas said in an interview Monday, a day after thousands of fans stood in the rain to see Messi don the Florida club¡¯s uniform for the first time. "I¡¯m all in."

Of course, it¡¯s a risky proposition, with almost everything riding on a 36-year-old player who has had a tremendous career but is also getting old by his profession¡¯s standards.

The Trend Of Ageing Players Moving To The US

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Lionel Messi follows a trend of ageing soccer champions who moved to the US, with mixed results. Brazilian legend Pele came out of retirement at 34 and spent three seasons with the New York Cosmos in the 1970s, while David Beckham left Real Madrid in 2007 to join the LA Galaxy. There were also Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, and Didier Drogba. And still, US soccer¡¯s promised popularity boom failed to materialise, as per the report.

But billionaire Mas is a patient man, and he says it took more than three years to bring Messi to Miami. Part of the billionaire's pitch included selling Messi a life in Florida.

Billionaire Mas put focus on the opportunity for Messi to come to a ¡°country that¡¯s hungry for soccer, where he could literally change the sport,¡± and closer proximity to his family in Argentina.

But there were also big financial incentives.

Big Financial Incentives To Being In Messi

Lionel Messi¡¯s contract with Inter Miami runs through 2025, with a base salary of $20 million per year that could reach $60 million with bonuses. Upon retirement, Messi will receive a minority stake in the team.

In a way, it mirrors how billionaire Mas himself became a soccer tycoon by chance. Mas is the son of a Cuban immigrant, Jorge Mas Canosa, who became a leader in a movement to overthrow Fidel Castro. The family¡¯s fortune comes from MasTec Inc., a $9.1 billion company that builds pipelines, fibre-optic networks, and wind farms across the US. Mas is the chairman, and his brother is the CEO.

After a failed attempt to purchase the Miami Marlins several years ago, Mas bought out Beckham¡¯s partners at Inter Miami, where his family now owns 80% of the team. Mas sees Messi changing the team¡¯s fortunes, estimating its value could reach $1.5 billion within a year, compared to an estimate of $585 million last year.

Construction will soon begin on Inter Miami¡¯s new Freedom Park stadium, which will seat as many as 25,000 fans. The stadium is slated to be completed in 2025, the last year of Messi¡¯s contract, which has Mas holding out hope that his star player will hang around for longer.

Billionaire's Biggest Worry For Messi

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Billionaire Mas reportedly said his biggest worry is that Messi wouldn¡¯t be able to find schools for his three kids. After the pandemic made Miami a magnet for wealthy newcomers, securing a spot in one of the most prestigious private schools became next to impossible. Luckily, the Mas family had a long history of favours to call in and ended up finding them a spot.

¡°I wanted to make sure his landing here was smooth, seamless as possible,¡± Mas said. ¡°And I think so far, so good.¡±

Now it remains to be seen whether the billionaire's hard work and efforts to land one of the game's best ever players into the country and club can provide the dream turnaround, which surely seems possible given the massive fan following that Messi has all across the world.

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