'Messi is his own economy': Ahead of two World Cup group stage matches at Dallas Stadium, inside Lionel Messi Inc.
DALLAS Dallas-Fort Worth lost out on hosting next month’s World Cup final but was awarded something else fans can savor for generations: the spectacle of Lionel Messi.
Argentina’s global superstar will play his final two World Cup group stage matches at Dallas Stadium - against Austria on Monday and Jordan on June 27. Anticipation is at a fever pitch, especially after Messi’s three-goal performance in Tuesday’s victory over Algeria in Kansas City caused fans and analysts alike to run out of superlatives.
It’s been 62 years since the Beatles played their only concert in the Dallas area, arriving at Love Field shortly after midnight, staying at the Cabana Motor Hotel on Stemmons Expressway and performing before roughly 10,000 fans at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium.
Now Dallas welcomes an Argentine one-man supernova, performing twice on the biggest global stage.
Dan Hunt, co-chair of the FIFA North Texas World Cup Organizing Committee, told The Dallas Morning News that D-FW will be “globally recognized” for hosting Messi twice, “something that will stay with people forever.”
The significance of Messi’s presence extends beyond welcoming the player, days from his 39th birthday, widely recognized as the greatest in history. Everything Messi Inc. touches turns to gold.
How best to capture the magnitude of Messi? Assess virtually any metric to gauge his impact - attendance, viewership, sponsorships, jersey sales, social reach, etc. - and Messi, in a word, slays.
Four years removed from lifting the World Cup trophy for Argentina in Qatar, Messi still possesses an unmistakable aura, still generates dollars hand over cleat, so to speak.
He stands just 5-foot-7, 148 pounds but is a titan on Madison Avenue and beyond. Brands salivate over him, fans marvel over him, and, because of his presence, his Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami, finds itself in rarefied valuation air, more than tripling its worth - to $1.6 billion - in just three years.
“Players who change the trajectory of a league or a sport come once in a lifetime,” Camilo Durana, chief business officer at Major League Soccer, told The News. “Guys like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Lionel Messi is one of them. He has changed the direct trajectory of Major League Soccer.”
‘Messi is his own economy’
When Tiger Woods stood at his apex a generation ago, transcending the sport of golf and dominating major championships, then-Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser said, “Tiger doesn’t just move the sports cultural needle. He IS the needle.”
The same metaphor, some experts say, applies to Messi.
“Messi is his own economy,” said Kyle Sheldon, the founder and CEO of Name & Number, a soccer-specific marketing and creative agency whose client roster includes MLS, U.S. Soccer, Chelsea FC, Seattle Sounders FC and New York City FC.
“The impact he has, I actually don’t think is measurable,” Sheldon said. “I’m a believer that Messi is actually undervalued for the tens of millions that are being invested in him. I don’t know what number wouldn’t be worth an investment in Messi if you’re a brand.”
Messi’s style of play, seemingly effortless and economical, combined with his stature, not particularly tall or physically imposing, makes him captivating.
His ability to keep the ball close to his left foot - seemingly attached to his left foot - with small touches, to spot passing lanes before others see them, to rely on timing and precise placement on kicks, to curl kicks into the corners of the goal is otherworldly. His technical skill, decision-making, ability to create space that didn’t exist; it’s all part of Messi magic.
D-FW has welcomed its share of monumental stars in recent years: The Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and teammate Luka Doncic (sorry, too soon), Taylor Swift, Beyonce, the list goes on.
And D-FW has seen firsthand what Messi Mania looks like. He played in a friendly for Argentina against Mexico at AT&T Stadium in 2015 and in a preseason friendly for Inter Miami against FC Dallas at the Cotton Bowl in 2024.
But the signature performance came on Aug. 6, 2023, at Frisco’s Toyota Stadium, his first appearance against FC Dallas after joining Major League Soccer. Messi scored two goals, including a spectacular free kick in the 85th minute to tie the game at 4. He converted his penalty kick as Miami prevailed in the shootout.
“I said it then, and I’ll say it again now, this is like seeing Michael Jordan at his very best,” Hunt said, “and he’s still at a top level. Clubs all over the world would sign him in a second if they could. To have a chance to see one of the greatest two soccer players of all time, it’s Messi and Pele, and to have this opportunity is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
And also be a potential witness of history: A goal Monday would make Messi the men’s World Cup all-time scoring leader, alone atop the list.
Messi’s sponsorship portfolio includes 22 deals
Messi’s foray in the U.S. the last few years isn’t quite akin to Brazil’s legendary Pele signing with the North American Soccer League’s New York Cosmos in 1975, more of a ceremonial showcase of the icon on U.S. soil.
Plus, the understanding of and interest in soccer in this country is light-years ahead of where it was in the ‘70s or even in 1994, the last time a men’s World Cup was played in North America.
Then, U.S. sports fans were soccer-curious. Now, they are devouring the World Cup with generational fandom because of 1994.
Brands are capitalizing on that emerging popularity - and using Messi as rocket fuel.
SponsorUnited, which provides data on sponsorship and media partnerships, shared a trove of insights with The News to paint the picture of Messi’s current endorsement portfolio. Ranked by asset count, it includes 22 deals, the most of any MLS player and third among all major professional athletes:
Anheuser-Busch InBev, Lego Group, Adidas, Mastercard, Lowe’s, Cirque du Soleil, Apple TV, Konami, Mas+ by Messi, Lay’s, Hard Rock Cafe, Stanley 1913, Messi Fragrances, Duracell, Mengniu, Icons Memorabilia, Bitget, MM Winemaker, The Messi Store, Game On Product Group.
Noelle LeVeaux, the chief marketing officer for the North Texas Organizing Committee, said in April to expect upward of 80,000 people to travel from Argentina to D-FW for his matches.
Expect to see a Messi jersey or two - or 300,000 of them - in the area over the next couple weeks. Since joining MLS, Messi’s Inter Miami jersey has not only led league sales, but it has also set the highest single-day jersey sales record across all major North American sports.
“You’d be hard-pressed to go to a schoolyard anywhere in this country at this point and not see a Messi jersey,” MLS’ Durana said.
‘Anticipating a moment of magic’
The breadth and depth of his popularity globally is hard to grasp.
He has more than a half-billion - 506 million - followers on Instagram. That’s three times more than LeBron James, almost nine times more than Steph Curry and 45 times more than two-way Japanese Major League Baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani.
SponsorUnited tracked 16 brands across Messi’s social posts, totaling nearly 150 million engagements. Not only is that engagement level the most among major pro sports athletes, the company said, but it counts for more than half of all major pro sports athletes’ engagements combined.
What’s more, 92.5% of engagement activity among MLS players is from Messi alone; 56% of engagement activity among major pro sports athletes, SponsorUnited data showed.
Messi’s impact on social media has been transformational. Inter Miami’s social following has grown by more than 1,637% since his arrival in the summer of 2023. It has become the most followed North American sports team on TikTok (13.1 million followers).
Inter Miami now has 43.9 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, X, and Facebook, more than all U.S. pro sports teams except the Los Angeles Lakers (67.7 million) and Golden State Warriors (63.8 million).
And Messi, encroaching on 40, remains one of the best players on the planet.
He led Inter Miami to the club’s first MLS Cup championship in 2025, scoring a goal and two assists and earning the MLS Cup MVP. In 2025, he also was named the MLS MVP, becoming the first player in league history to win the honor in back-to-back seasons. And he was named the 2025 Golden Boot winner, having scored the most goals throughout the regular season.
“Messi brings with him an electricity unlike anything I’ve ever experienced at any sporting event over the course of my life and 20 years in professional soccer,” Sheldon said. “He is beloved, and when he receives the ball in any stadium anywhere in the world, there is a collective intake of breath where you are just anticipating a moment of magic.
“If you’ve watched the game for 50 years, you can see something you’ve never seen before.”
Messi is ‘an alien’ playing with humans
Legendary Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, in Paul Tenorio’s book, The Messi Effect, put it this way: “Messi is an alien that dedicates himself to playing with humans.”
Inter Miami’s clandestine courtship of Messi dates back to September 2019, according to the book, when a quartet of individuals, including David Beckham, flew to Barcelona to meet with Jorge Messi, Lionel’s influential father.
Following the meeting, the Inter Miami group flew their private jet to Paris, where they dined at Chez l’Ami Louis and buzzed with the energy knowing they were on the precipice of a blockbuster, of dramatically reshaping U.S. soccer.
Since he joined Inter Miami in 2023, MLS told The News that Messi’s impact has been immeasurable. Asked to quantify that impact, MLS spent a week compiling a treasure trove of metrics and data for The News.
“He was the product, in many ways, to grow the audience to tertiary fans or international fans who really weren’t diehard fans of MLS,” Bob Lynch, founder and CEO of SponsorUnited, told The News. “You essentially had a marketing arm in the form of Apple, Major League Soccer, U.S. Soccer, sort of all playing a part within that to make sure he is leveraged to the hilt in many ways.”
In what can be attributed to the coming World Cup and to a litany of emerging stars - Messi chief among them - the league is averaging 7.9 million live match viewers per week across streaming and linear platforms this season, an increase of 62% year-over-year from 2025. MLS declined to release viewership data for individual matches.
But consider Messi’ Inter Miami team, which had an estimated $600 million valuation before he arrived in mid-2023. Now the franchise leads all MLS clubs at $1.6 billion, which is ranked No. 14 on CNBC’s top 30 most valuable soccer clubs in the world. The list features seven MLS clubs as part of the top 30. It lists Inter Miami’s 2025 revenue as $215 million.
Lynch said Inter Miami operates like an NFL team in terms of sponsorship revenue and could see, within five years, generating more than $100 million in sponsorship revenue annually.
In 2022, the year before Messi arrived, Inter Miami generated $18 million in sponsorship revenue, Lynch said, ranking 15th in the league. In 2025, the club generated more than three times that - $61 million in sponsorship revenue. That is tops in MLS and more than double the average sponsorship revenue for an MLS team.
In fact, Inter Miami last year would rank among the top 10 if it were an NBA team.
“It’s very impressive given how short a period of time they’ve been able to capture the market,” Lynch said. “It opens markets to them that they couldn’t historically be doing business in. Messi allows them to talk to global companies.”
‘The pinnacle of watching soccer’
Fans can’t get enough of him.
“He came to win, he didn’t come to retire, and he’s been intense every step of the way,” MLS’ Durana said. “You probably noticed in some of the MLS regular season games, he is never subbed off. He wants to play the 90 minutes.”
So far this MLS season, three matches featuring Messi and Inter Miami have surpassed 72,000 fans, each ranking among the top 10 largest crowds in league history. Five clubs have set new single-match attendance records in 2026, all of which have included Messi and Inter Miami.
A Colorado Rapids’ attendance record of 75,673 filled Empower Field at Mile High in Denver in April. A crowd of 75,673 filled the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in February, a LAFC home attendance record. And 72,026 filled Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium in March.
Sheldon, the sponsorship expert, said filling those stadiums for Messi at bigger venues “makes their entire year” revenue-wise.
“These are teams that some of whom are only generating $15 to $25 million a year, and those games can be a gate of seven to $10 million for that single game,” he said.
Turn on a World Cup match and you’re likely to catch a Messi commercial, although he graces it more with his presence than his words.
“You think about seeing him in any commercial spot, he very rarely speaks at all, and if he does, it’s maybe a line, and it’s the case that just his presence alone is worth tens of millions of dollars to any brand,” Sheldon said. “It’s a combination of incredible ability on the field, doing things that no one has ever seen, a little aura of mystery around him, and really an image that is pretty squeaky clean.”
Sixty-two years after the Beatles came to Dallas-Fort Worth, here comes a one-man showstopper, performing twice, to be savored for generations.
“This is greatness at the end of its run, and there will not be another one like him ever,” Hunt said. “There will be great players that are names that will forever be recognized in sports, but this is the very pinnacle of watching soccer.”
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This story was originally published June 21, 2026 at 2:43 AM.