The Messi Effect — How One Player is Drastically Changing the Global Sports Media Industry

We have seen the future of televised sports. It wears No. 10.  

The jersey belongs to one Lionel Messi, captain for Argentina’s national soccer team and more recently a forward for the Major League Soccer team Inter Miami, where in short order he has become a pink-shirted human highlight reel whose powerhouse left foot routinely terrorizes hapless goalies. Exhibit A was a dramatic laser of a free kick against FC Dallas early in August, tying the game in the 85th minute as the ball shot to the back of the net with such purity it seemed almost ordained. “I thought we had it,” FC Dallas coach Nico Estévez said after losing in overtime. Many have.

Messi’s arrival on the MLS scene has been energizing not just for Inter Miami but the entire league, the Colorado Rapids included.

“For the league as a whole, and not just from the Rapids side of things, Messi coming over to the U.S. is huge,” says Nate Christiansen, vice president of business development with the Colorado MLS team and its parent Kroenke Sports & Entertainment. So far, there’s no date set for a Messi appearance at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, but Christiansen is hopeful the scheduling gods will ultimately make it happen. In any event, he said, “only good things can come to U.S. soccer from it.”  

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The halo effect Christiansen is witnessing has to do with more than raw athletic prowess. It’s also providing a signal about future relationships between players, leagues and media partners, and where they’re likely to go next. One likely destination: Cupertino, California.  

The Silicon Valley city is headquarters for the world’s most valuable company, Apple, whose market capitalization now runs north of $2.8 trillion. Apple is the economic force that’s injecting new life, and a new business model, into MLS, and very possibly into the broader sports environment.  

It’s all about new flavors of synergy. Apple, you may have noticed, very much prefers that the world channels its activities through Apple’s suite of technologies and services, each of which exists in a braided ecosystem of apps and capabilities. iPhones play music from Apple’s subscription music service, store data within the connected iCloud server array, allow for easy transaction payments via Apple Pay, pass through subscriptions to news sources and dish up movies and TV shows from Apple’s all-original video service, Apple TV+.  

The newest Apple media gambit is a big carve-out for MLS that is very much interlaced with Messi’s arrival on the scene. Apple has taken over the MLS Season Pass service that gives the soccer-loving and the soccer-curious access to every league game for an annual payment of $99, or $14.99 per month.  

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The MLS video offering isn’t new; it’s been around for years. But it has never had the level of visibility and cross-marketing muscle Apple now provides. Nor has it ever been graced with the star power of the world’s greatest soccer player. This is where the Messi-verse comes into play in a big way. The business relationship between the soccer superstar and Apple has widely been reported to revolve around a relationship that gives Messi skin in the game. Multiple press reports have indicated Messi individually nets a piece of the MLS Season Pass subscription action, effectively earning a commission every time someone signs up.  

And thus, we might just be seeing the hazy outlines of a very different-looking sports-media future. The old way was a four-part dance: Player signs with team for big money. Team and its league negotiate media deals with the ESPNs and Fox Sports of the world. These partners then find money to pay the bill by sharing in subscription payments from an aging “pay TV bundle,” coupled with chunks of advertising budgets from the likes of Ram Trucks and Budweiser.  

Notice, in this traditional formula, how far removed the player is from the sources of funding. Apple is now upending that tradition by discarding various middleman players within the money chain. Here, Apple and Messi are directly tethered: Apple sells subscriptions, and reportedly hands some of the proceeds to Messi.  

Where does this all lead? To interesting places. Speculatively, it’s possible forthcoming generations of sports fans will be monetizing player earnings in a new way. It’s not so much of a stretch to imagine that one day, fans may be invited to pay a premium for the equivalent of “Russell (Wilson) Vision,” a mechanism for seeing the game of football play out from the viewpoint of the Broncos quarterback’s helmet camera. Maybe we’ll pay $5 per month for the privilege, with Russ pocketing $1 or $2 himself.

Again, we’ll look to the tech titans to play a big role. Apple’s recent introduction of a new augmented-reality headset augurs for a day when live sports events can be seen in entirely new ways, well beyond the boundaries of today’s fixed-location cameras. Things might get even weird. The commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, has talked about incorporating player biometrics into the action: How nervous does a next-generation Jamal Murray appear to be at the free throw line, based on a real-time calculation of his heart rate? Silver thinks we might want to know.

All of this is a work-in-progress. But looking at the business relationship evolving now between a soccer superstar and a major tech player, we can start to see the possibilities take shape. Every time No. 10 rockets a ball into the back of the net.

Stewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected]