Lionel Messi’s media impact: How MLS, Apple can maximize his time in America
The cover is poetry. One of the most famous men in the world — maybe the most famous at that time — in full flight, eyes on the soccer ball to the right of him. The date of the magazine is June 23, 1975. The sparse wording on the front tells you everything.
“PELE’S TRIUMPHANT DEBUT: U.S. Soccer Finds a Savior”
It is impossible not to think about Pele off the announcement last week that Lionel Messi intends to come to Major League Soccer to play for Inter Miami. The arrival of Messi (worth noting is that no contract between Messi and MLS has been signed, or even finalized yet) is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for MLS to introduce its product to a new audience.
“Pressure is privilege, in my opinion,” said Taylor Twellman, the lead analyst for the Apple/MLS partnership. “If you are Apple TV or Major League Soccer or the corporate sponsors, there’s an unbelievable amount of privilege to broadcast and showcase what this league is and what this league can be with a player of this caliber.
“I’m on the record with this: This is going to be bigger than Pele with the Cosmos. Here’s why. When Pele said, ‘I’m going to go to New York,’ he introduced this country and this continent to a whole different avenue of what soccer was. However, they couldn’t take advantage of it. There was no infrastructure. There was no idea of how to manifest that energy and turn it into a league. The NASL … folded within five, six years after Pele left. Look at where MLS is right now with the stadiums, the infrastructure.
“I think Messi is going to take the league to another level. I think there’s going to be more money spent on salaries. There’s going to be eyeballs on this league they have never had. Think of everyone that loves Messi, which is tens of millions of people. They’re now going to be tuning into a league they more than likely have not watched. They’re going to see a country they more than likely have not seen. Couple that with Messi playing in Copa America 2024, which is in the United States, and then the World Cup in 2026 being in the United States, Canada and Mexico, I don’t think it’s that big of a take to say that he will do more than Pele did here in the 1970s.”
(Twellman said he doesn’t have any flights booked after July 15, so he will likely be one of the broadcasters whenever Messi decides to come. “I’m pretty confident in saying I’ll be doing some Messi games,” Twellman said.)
Messi certainly comes to MLS at a much different time than Pele. Consumer options are unlimited compared to the small channel universe of Pele’s time. That makes Messi both an opportunity and a challenge for Apple/MLS. In talking this week with Twellman and William Mao, the senior vice president of media rights consulting at Octagon, the sports consulting giant, here are some thoughts on how MLS and Apple can maximize Messi’s time in America from a media angle.
1. Turning every Messi game into an event
MLS/Apple should think in terms of Formula One, the Kentucky Derby and even WrestleMania. You want every Messi game to feel like event programming, something beyond a regular-season MLS game. Pregame broadcasts should highlight the atmosphere surrounding games at home and on the road, echoing the Formula One pre-race walk. Your pregame show must be smart on tactics, storylines and everything else a good pregame show should do, including humor. Postgames should include every Messi press conference in full. Twellman does not anticipate Messi will do many one-on-one interviews, but he does think Messi will speak in Spanish (translated to English) after games.
“Tom Brady, LeBron James, they do it all the time,” Twellman said. “Lionel Messi has to do it.”
2. Placing Miami’s games in windows that maximize a global audience
The time zone issue is real, especially with the belief (I think correctly) that Apple TV+ will get a boost globally from people who want to see Messi. (With the season half over, Apple and MLS recently reduced the price of MLS Season Pass.) Is there a sweet spot to air Inter Miami’s games that will be desirable to both North American audiences as well as audiences in Europe and South America?
“If you want Messi to encompass the global picture, then time zones becomes a huge part of that,” Twellman said. “Saturday games at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, you know what that means in Spain and other countries. That becomes difficult. Does that mean he and Inter Miami play a different schedule? Well, now you’re changing the competitive nature of the game. I think MLS is looking at everything as they should. That’s not going to change in 2023. But starting in 2024, I think Apple and MLS are really going to have to come together and say, how do we showcase this to the world? We maximize the subscription part, but we also use this as a vehicle to really showcase the league.”
Moving Inter Miami’s home games earlier in the day might be better for global viewership, but it also would bring another complication, forcing players to compete in the midday heat of a South Florida summer.
3. Attack the market that knows and follows Messi through social media
We don’t have any kind of numbers on Apple’s subscriber totals for MLS Season Pass, and the company does not run viewership through Nielsen. So we won’t get a before-and-after impact of Messi. (The Athletic reported the current negotiations with Messi said he will get some sort of revenue share on new subscriptions for the MLS Season Pass service driven by international subscribers.) But there is hard data on the impact of Messi via social media. Inter Miami now has more than eight million followers on Instagram; they had about one million prior to Messi’s announcement. That puts them in the top five among all American teams followed on the social media site.
Said Mao: “From an MLS media rights perspective, it obviously would have been more optimal if Messi’s decision came before the league struck its latest deals with Apple (and Fox), but there are still opportunities for MLS to capitalize via other commercial levers (sponsorship, ticket sales, merchandising, etc.). Though the league’s media rights deal with Apple is already done, the deal still has to perform in order for it to last the full course of its 10-year deal term … and set the table for the next deal down the line.
“Having Messi in the mix will surely boost subscribers to the MLS /Apple service, but as current performance of Season Pass has been opaque … it is difficult to put concrete numbers on the boost in subs growth that will result. That said, if one-half of one percent of Messi’s Instagram followers were to sign up for MLS Season Pass, that would represent over 2.5 million new subscribers. Given Messi reportedly receives a revenue share off new subscribers, he will be incentivized to make calls to action to engender sign-ups from his social following.”
GO DEEPER
How signing Lionel Messi will impact Inter Miami, MLS and American soccer
4. Figure out the over-the-air strategy for Messi’s games
Reach is a sexy buzzword these days as the cable industry continues to decline. One big question is how MLS should leverage its relationship with Fox to best push the Messi brand on the U.S. public. MLS has long had poor viewership for its nationally broadcast matches under previous media rights deals with traditional cable and over-the-air networks.
“It is worth considering the distribution of some of Messi’s initial MLS matches via the league’s terrestrial partnership,” Mao said. “Fox still reaches over 100 million homes (and FS1 is in roughly 70 million households). Any match on TV would automatically become a massive marketing vehicle to drive awareness to the Apple offering. Not only would the masses get to sample Messi’s greatness in-market, which in and of itself may be enough to drive adoption, but I’d expect there would also be multiple promos, on-screen bugs, and in-game callouts for MLS Season Pass.”
5. Creating an environment that prompts non-MLS rightsholders to cover his every move
Twellman believes that publications such as The Athletic, digital sites like ESPN FC, and traditional media outlets such as The Washington Post should assign reporters to cover Inter Miami on a daily or weekly basis. (I agree with him.) He is convinced that although ESPN no longer has a stake in MLS, the company will cover Messi aggressively.
“The 6 p.m. ET ‘SportsCenter’ 1,000 percent will talk about it,” Twellman said. “Scott Van Pelt? 1,000 percent talking about it. Now Stephen A. Smith and ‘First Take?’ I mean, when someone suggested the New York Rangers were the best option to win in New York, Stephen A. Smith laughed it off — and ESPN had the NHL rights. ‘First Take’ is its own animal, its own entity. They’re not going to talk about Messi, and if they do, they’re going to compare it to when LeBron said he was going to go to the Miami Heat and then the viewers are going to be left questioning what the hell is going on.
“But … the 6 p.m. ‘SportsCenter,’ they will 1,000 percent talk about Messi when it is part of the vernacular of the sports world. I think the nightly ‘SportsCenters’ will show him to the best of their ability. Will they do it any different than when I was there? Honestly, I don’t know. They may not have someone to talk about it for two minutes or whatever, but it’s still going to be part of the show. (ESPN content head) Burke Magnus wouldn’t allow it not to be talked about. But I think they’ve got to be kicking themselves a little bit that they are not part of this project that MLS has with Apple going into the World Cup.”
ESPN said this week that its plans for Messi coverage are still to be determined, but they anticipate comprehensive coverage across English and Spanish platforms.
The five-game Stanley Cup Final between the Florida Panthers and Vegas Golden Knights averaged 2.6 million viewers across TNT, TBS and truTV. That number was down significantly from last year’s ESPN/ABC presentation of Colorado’s win over Tampa Bay (4.6 million viewers). The decline should not be a surprise, though a 43 percent decline is rough. Distribution on over-the-air television (ABC) has a significant impact versus cable. Matchups, of course, matter. So do programming windows, market size (these were the No. 18 and No. 40 media markets), competition, and many other variables. Per Sportico’s Anthony Crupi: It is the second least-watched Stanley Cup Final in history — if you bypass the 2020 and 2021 series which were disrupted by COVID — behind the Ducks-Senators in 2007 (1.74 million viewers).
Warner Bros Discovery Sports PR said its NHL playoff coverage across TNT, TBS and truTV averaged 1.3 million viewers, up 23 percent vs. 2022. That number was helped by TNT’s telecast of Panthers/Bruins Game 7 on April 30 that drew 3.2 million viewers, the most watched first-round game of all-time on cable and the most watched first-round game on any network in over a decade. WBD Sports PR sent over a note that if you used just the cable viewership for the Stanley Cup Final between 2017 to 2021, this year’s series was up four percent.
Courtesy of this chart from Robert Seidman: You can see the top local markets for the Stanley Cup Final across all networks and across all five games.
Episode 311 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features CBS Champions League host Kate Abdo. In this podcast, Abdo discusses why she decided to sign with CBS Sports/Paramount+ exclusively for the long-term; how the deal with CBS Sports came together; what is unique about covering the Champions League; why the four-person studio team of Abdo, Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards has worked so well; the show’s ability to morph from light topics and tactics to racism and security issues in soccer; how Abdo sees her role on that show; Manchester City’s immediate future; Messi coming to play in MLS; covering boxing at the highest level; working the 2023 CONCACAF Nations League finals and more.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and more.
(Photo: Di Yin / Getty Images)
