The Lionel Messi tide continues to lift all boats in MLS when it comes to attracting new sponsorships.
Ahead of Saturday’s MLS Cup, SponsorUnited released its latest report on MLS marketing partnerships, which found sponsorship dollars for the league and its clubs rose to $665 million in 2024, up 13% from a year ago and 44% from 2022. The study observed 1,800 brands, 2,500 deals and 26,400 social posts from early February through mid-October of this year.
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Around 18% of this year’s MLS revenue was drawn from new partnerships.
Three categories—hotel, restaurant & leisure, business services and alcohol—are credited with more than $50 million of the 2024 surge, with Inter Miami’s Royal Caribbean’s jersey patch deal responsible for the lion’s share of that increase. Of course, that deal came together because Miami is home to Messi, the biggest name in soccer.
While transforming the fortunes of the league since his arrival in 2023, the 37-year-old Messi—whose Inter Miami contract expires next year, with an option for 2026—won’t be on the pitch forever. What does MLS do to please both fans and sponsors after his exit?
“You cannot just sell the athlete,” SponsorUnited founder Bob Lynch said in a video interview. “If I’m Inter Miami or MLS in general, what I’m saying to those brands in the future is, ‘We just saw massive growth, almost 50% growth in two years in revenues, that allows us to invest back in the sport.”
SponsorUnited, founded in 2018, provides data and analysis on marketing partnerships to brands and media rights holders.
Putting aside Messi, MLS players collectively have the lowest profiles among major U.S. team sports. Their names generally don’t register as much as the backup quarterback of a bad NFL team in the same market.
However, Lynch said a player with a lower profile in the U.S. doesn’t exactly have a small profile elsewhere, creating sponsor opportunities for international brands. “If you look at the top five or 10 most followed players, you’re talking Spain, Uruguay, Canada, even Italy.”
He cited as an example one of Messi’s current Inter Miami teammates, a long-time star for the Spanish national team and FC Barcelona before landing in Florida. “The average person probably doesn’t know what Jordi Alba looks like if they’re not a die-hard fan,” Lynch said, “but I also think as the country becomes even more of a melting pot, there are enough pools of people that do know these players.”
The report arrives as the LA Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls prepare to face off for the MLS Cup on Saturday. It’s the first time in a decade that two of the league’s founding clubs are in the final, and the second time in as many months that teams representing the biggest markets in the U.S. are playing for a championship, after the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the World Series.
But the Galaxy-Red Bulls title game hasn’t generated anything like the buzz of the big-market Fall Classic, and the teams don’t have the sponsorship heft of even their nearest soccer rivals. The SponsorUnited report shows the Galaxy and Red Bulls are 18th and 27th, respectively, in the number of sponsorship deals. The newer teams in both markets—LAFC and New York City FC—rank fifth and 10th in the league in that category.
Lynch said part of the contrast in New York stems from the timing of when the clubs were began play, with the Red Bulls (1996) having strong local sponsorship, while NYCFC (2015), with its ownership ties to Premier League juggernaut Manchester City, is more international.
“If you look at like the roster of NYCFC, you think of Etihad Airways and Ford; you think of brands that are both global and local,” he said.
In another major market, the Chicago Fire made a leap in total sponsorships over the past year, according to the report—from 16th in 2023 to second, just behind FC Dallas. The team has expanded outreach to business services such as legal firms, logistics and facility management. Magellan, a construction steel company, signed on as the team’s jersey patch sponsor this season.
While the Messi effect on sponsorships may not last, Lynch believes the Fire see something else on the horizon—the 2026 men’s World Cup, which is likely to make the sport “more and more relevant” for sponsors. “I think part of that strategy is, ‘Look, we just need to build relationships in the business community and pull people in to show them what this sport is about,’” he said. “So they’ve taken the approach of aggressively trying to pull those brands into their ecosystem.”
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