Boardroom met up with Inter Miami exec Xavier Asensi to discuss all the moves that brought Lionel Messi to Major League Soccer
As more than 80,000 fans packed New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium last month for Argentina’s Copa America semifinal win over Canada, hundreds, if not thousands, of pink number 10 Inter Miami jerseys speckled a sea of blue and white Argentine kits.
Two days after witnessing Lionel Messi score a goal for his home country, I traveled down to South Beach as Inter Miami unveiled its latest in a slew of luxury partnerships, bringing Audi into the fold to join a who’s who of aspirational sponsors. The partnership launch party at the One Hotel featured a DJ, custom cocktails, a sushi making station, and more attendees wearing pink than North Shore High on a Wednesday. The following day, reporters got to test drive new pink Audi vehicles adorned with Inter Miami’s herons logo.
Of course Messi, the greatest player to ever compete in the world’s most popular sport, has completely changed Inter Miami’s trajectory in the year-plus since he first stepped foot on the pitch for the club, scoring in Major League Soccer’s first ever Leagues Cup match in spectacular fashion on July 21, 2023. Inter Miami was the world’s most-Googled sports team in 2023, and Messi became the first athlete born outside the US to win Time‘s Athlete of the Year award. After generating $66 million of revenue in 2022, Inter Miami said it’s projecting $200 million in 2024.
One of the main orchestrators of Miami’s shocking Messi signing last year was Xavier Asensi, Inter’s president of business operations, who joined the club from Messi’s longtime club FC Barcelona in 2021. In an in-depth conversation, Asensi discussed how he helped Inter Miami not only bring Messi aboard but prepared the club to maximize its once-in-a-lifetime chance to skyrocket from a mere mortal MLS team to one of the world’s most recognizable global clubs.
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How Inter Miami Landed Lionel Messi
Inter Miami had the misfortune of launching as an MLS expansion club in 2020, playing its first ever game in a COVID bubble that July after the world shut down less than a week before its scheduled debut. Miami, led by owner Jorge Mas, approached Asensi with its enterprising short and long-term plans. The longtime Barcelona exec couldn’t believe it, loving Mas’ attitude.
“They were aiming for and willing to be extremely ambitious in a good way,” Asensi told Boardroom. “The more we talked, the more engaged I was with the project to where I basically could not say no.”
Asensi arrived from Barcá in 2021 with a straightforward yet purposeful soccer business philosophy, a simple circle: The better players you have, the better your chances to score goals. The more goals you score, the better your chances are to win. The more games you win, the better chances you have to win championships. The more championships you win, the more chances you have to engage with fans. The more people you engage with, the better your chances to increase revenue. And the more revenue you have, the better chances you have to bring in better players.
Emboldened by a determined ownership group led by Mas, his brother Jose, and the legendary David Beckham, Asensi believed that players could be drawn to Miami for the quality of life, the ascendant growth of the sport in America, and even the bold choice to make pink the team’s primary color. What Inter Miami dreamt of, to go with its relentless ambition, was angling and positioning itself to be ready to secure the GOAT, if and when the opportunity emerged.
Asensi was born and raised in Barcelona and spent 11 years at FCB, working and being on the same team with a legendary generation of players, led by Messi, who grew up at the club’s academies and won dozens of championships and trophies. Inter Miami started out reaching out to Messi’s camp, though so many things had to go right for the team’s pursuit to succeed. That included Barcelona’s inability to re-sign Messi before the 2021-2022 season due to financial fair play rules, forcing him to sign a two-year contract with Paris Saint-Germain, as well as winning the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar with Argentina and seemingly making it easier for him to start a new chapter in his career and life.
“On my end, I was in a privileged position of being in a place where we coexisted for more than a decade,” Asensi said, “So that experience and information was valuable in a way of approaching certain topics. On the managerial end [with Inter Miami], if we were thinking in a traditional way of signing players, there’s no way on earth that we would’ve been successful. We needed to be creative, and we put together a whole environment for him to have an easier decision when the time came. I want to think that it gave him peace of mind that he was able to talk with someone that understood the situation.”
As Messi’s PSG contract was running out in 2023 with a second disappointing campaign, the wheels were in motion behind the scenes for Inter Miami to actually pull off one of the biggest moves in soccer history. Then the club, led by Asensi, had to put itself in the best position commercially to level up the business along with the roster, which was about to add whom he called the ultimate game changer.
“As you can imagine, we were planning with privileged information,” Asensi said. “So we knew certain things before, and didn’t get caught by surprise. But we needed to keep doing what we were doing, but better, faster, and heavier, putting everyone in the right position to capitalize on the attention and demand.”
The Messi Effect
Overnight, Asensi said Inter Miami transformed from an MLS club to a global property when the club announced the Messi signing on July 15, 2023. Messi brought former teammates Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba with him to South Florida. While Messi and company were busy winning the first ever Leagues Cup, Asensi and company were hard at work bringing in massive business deals.
“There were a lot of companies we were talking with who were maybe responding in 36 hours and all of a sudden they’re responding in 30 minutes,” Asensi said. “But you have to be ready. And I’m a firm believer in being proactive rather than reactive.”
In just under 13 months, Inter Miami brought in 10 major multi-year partnerships, including Audi. Royal Caribbean joined as the front of jersey sponsor and Fracht signed as the sleeve sponsor, breaking all-time MLS record prices in each category, the team said. JPMorgan Chase purchased naming rights to the team’s temporary stadium in Fort Lauderdale while the team constructs its 26,000-seat future home of Miami Freedom Park. Duracell, Tudor, Lowe’s, and Visa also partnered with the club, allowing Inter Miami’s revenue to skyrocket and helping Asensi execute his philosophic circle for soccer success. The team said more significant pacts are on the horizon.
Even this year, Inter Miami bolstered its global bona fides in January and February with a huge international tour, playing matches in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and Japan, in part helping Messi’s jersey to be the top seller in the world across Adidas’ portfolio. Asensi said another international tour is coming for the 2025 preseason.
Only the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers have more Instagram followers than Inter’s 17.1 million among American sports teams. And despite the average season ticket price more than doubling going into the 2024 season, Inter Miami sold out its new season ticket offerings and secured renewals at a club-record 90% rate, the team said.
In May, Forbes valued Inter Miami at $1.03 billion, a 72% increase from last year and one of just 18 billion-dollar global soccer franchises, behind only LAFC in MLS. Inter Miami is atop the MLS regular season standings this year, looking to win their first Supporters Shield and MLS Cup as it simultaneously defends its Leagues Cup title and tries to qualify for next year’s FIFA Club World Cup in the US.
“Imagine two years ago people talking about seeing our pink soccer jerseys in New York, Indonesia, Japan, Europe, Africa, Asia. This is mind blowing,” Asensi said. “What happened surpassed what we were thinking. Everything changed from operations and security to viewership, attention, interest, love, hate. We are living in a completely different reality that we were back in 2020, 21, 22.”
While there’s clearly a before and after with Inter Miami when it comes to Lionel Messi, Asensi helped lead the charge in having not just the right combination of audacity, ambition, skill, and luck to sign the GOAT, but to be in the best position possible to have each part of the club grow together in lockstep. One year into the Messi era, the club’s goals and objectives in this growth stage are far from complete.
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