Welcome to Athletic Interest,
At the moment, it’s practically impossible to write a newsletter about the business of sports without mentioning Lionel Messi’s adventure in the USA.
After just two games, Messi has boosted Inter Miami and MLS by almost every metric.
Messi’s debut was the most-watched U.S. football game in TV history with 12.5m viewers*.
Inter Miami’s Instagram following has grown by 1100% (up to 12.4m.)
Retailers have sold out of 6 months’ worth of Inter Miami stock in 24 hours. Demand is 25x higher than estimated.
Subscriptions for the MLS season pass on Apple TV have more than tripled in just a few weeks (from 300k to 1m.)
As great as this is for the short term, what is preventing another repeat of Pelé, Beckham, or Ibrahomivich? Three legends that brought massive hype but little long-term growth to football in the U.S.
Will people still care about football in America when Messi exits?
As with most things, timing will be everything.
While those before him were planted in relatively infertile soil, Messi mania has sprouted at a time when U.S. interest in football is at an all-time high.
Messi also has a global image unseen before in MLS. His star power will not only draw in fans from South America and Europe but will also help attract top players from rival leagues.
This trifecta of local interest, global attention, and a more talented league should give MLS the opportunity to build a long-term following.
This is all perfectly timed, about three years away from the U.S. welcoming the World Cup. The close proximity of this global event to the U.S. audience will naturally grow interest in football. If MLS is able to fill the gap when the World Cup departs, it could truly become one of the biggest leagues on the planet.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, it is probably a good start if we could all just agree to make the word soccer illegal and exclusively use football from now on…
* Always take these viewing figures with a little caution, they are hard to verify and Beckham did just claim that 3.5 billion watched Messi’s unveiling ceremony last week.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🎲 F1 plans to win big in Vegas
F1 owners Liberty Media have already invested more than $500m to bring an F1 race to the Las Vegas strip and you can bet they are going to see a healthy return.
All of the bars along the strip will be charged a hefty fee for unobstructed views. The going rate is their max capacity times $1,500. Many venues could potentially be charged millions of dollars.
The local event organisers are currently offering luxury packages for well over $1 million, which include access to the race, hotels, and casinos.
Current estimates suggest that attending the full race weekend will cost an average of $3k per person.
🇫🇷 Paris 2024 to be the Games of Luxury
The oganisers of the Paris Olympics have just struck a €150m deal with luxury group LVMH. This will include a number of interesting activations:
Jewelry brand Chaumet will design the medals for both the Olympics and the Paralympics.
Moët Hennessy wines and spirits labels will provide their products in hospitality programmes.
Sephora becomes a partner of the Olympic Torch Relay, with adverts to be displayed along the relay route.
Most LVMH brands, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Berluti, will promote the Games. Some athletes will get individual sponsorship.
LVMH will also expand its community work to include sports-focused programmes.
👟 The Boot Room
📈 Unexpected Yeezy sales give Adidas hope
When Adidas cut ties with Kanye West, the sportswear brand was stuck with millions of pairs of Yeezy products that it didn’t know what to do with. Writing the entire stock off would have given Adidas a huge loss, so they decided to sell the stock and donate a large amount of the proceeds to charity.
This plan has worked out brilliantly for Adidas.
In just a few months Adidas has received more than $565M worth of orders for Yeezy products.
The company has revised its estimated operating losses to €450m (down from €700m last year.)
These optimistic financial results have boosted Adidas shares by more than 5% in recent days.
👕 Nike is selling more than Adidas at the Women’s World Cup
“Nike is selling out of World Cup merchandise faster and at a higher price point than Adidas,” explained consumer research expert Jharonne Martis to Sportico.
To be more specific:
Nike has a sellout rate of 11% for its World Cup merchandise, compared to 4% for Adidas
This follows a similar trend at the Men’s World Cup in Qatar where Nike had a sellout rate of 23% compared to 11% for Adidas.
Nike is also managing to make more sales without discounts (just a 4% average discount compared to 25% for Adidas.)
That being said, Adidas is starting at a higher price point than Nike ($84 vs $78)
Many of the brands at the World Cup will be closely following their return on investment as they look to consider further investment into Women’s Football.
📱 Social Media Madness
The news that Al-Hilal is offering Mbappé around $770m total for a one-year trip to Saudi Arabia has been dominating social media this week.
Many have made jokes that they will be forcing their very young children into football in the hope of seeing a similar return in 20 years.
But NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo is not willing to wait that long and had an interesting proposition for the Saudi team…even Mbappé enjoyed it:
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