Michael Long, editorial director of SportsPro, talked about Lionel Messi topping their 50MM rankings on the Footballco Business Podcast.
With 22 football players making the list of Sportspro’s 50 most marketable athletes, Messi is the clear leader. Michael discussed the reasons football is such a powerful sport and how the superstar from Inter Miami defeated players like LeBron James, Alex Morgan, and Lewis Hamilton to claim the top spot. “We see that courtside culture, that sports and entertainment culture in the NBA and NFL, more so than anywhere else,” the statement goes back a long way. And from what I can see, Messi is now hanging out with all these other cultural icons in the sports and entertainment industries, in addition to [David] Beckham and other football greats from the past and present. That almost seems to take him into a different dimension that we haven’t really seen around Messi, and particularly not while he was spending so much time at Barcelona. However long he plays in the league, I believe he can have a commercial impact on MLS like that of David Beckham, which will undoubtedly develop towards the next World Cup, which can turn out to be a farewell melody.
Watching Messi in America creates a pretty intriguing dynamic. A combination made in heaven for marketers.
