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Soccer legend and newly minted World Cup champion Lionel Messi is set to join Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami CF next season, according to reports from the BBC’s Guillem Balague and soccer news-breaker Fabrizio Romano.
The move for the Argentinian comes after months of speculation of which club he will play for after his eventual departure from France’s Paris Saint-Germain. Other teams reportedly interested in Messi were Barcelona FC and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal.
According to a report from The Athletic, Apple
AAPL,
which owns the global streaming rights to MLS games, has gotten “very creative” with discussions about a potential Messi move to the MLS. Apple has discussed offering Messi a share of the revenue generated from new subscribers to MLS Season Pass, the tech giant’s Apple TV+ product to watch games, according to sources briefed on the discussions.
Apple also announced Tuesday that it is producing a documentary on Messi and his World Cup career that will debut on Apple TV+.
That same Athletic report indicated that Adidas, who also sponsors Messi in addition to the MLS, has considered a similar revenue sharing agreement with the soccer star if he came to the MLS.
Apple and Adidas did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.
If the reports are accurate, Messi would have turned down an offer from Al-Hilal that would have paid him roughly $428 million per season, the highest per season contract in the history of professional sports.
Messi has a net worth in the hundreds of millions. Last year alone he made $130 million ($65 million in salary, $65 million in endorsements), according to Forbes estimates.
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