Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami only a little over 3 months ago. Since he joined, the MLS team have not only benefitted from his performance but also from the brand name that is ‘Messi’. Messi’s inclusion in the team has seen Miami sell the most number of jerseys this season in North America. Adidas have had to push themselves with the demand of 700,000 units for Messi jerseys. Adidas football section’s senior director Tor Southard even said that the shirt sales have overtaken their historic clubs who are their clients.
Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami back in July. There were many rumours before he announced that he was moving to the United States. Hence, the moment Messi announced his decision, Adidas received an overwhelming amount of jersey orders. Apparently, they received half a million orders from suppliers and retail stores for the No. 10 shirt with Messi’s name. It’s been a little over 3 months since Messi arrived at the MLS club. The sales now have overtaken several huge historic European clubs.
Apparently, Miami reached record sales within 48 hours of the launch of the shirts. By this time, apparently, 700,000 shirts had been sold. As per reports, the demands exceeded anything Adidas ever expected. It surpassed when it was announced that Christiano Ronaldo was coming back to Manchester United. It has also surpassed Adidas’ sales of Argentina’s new shirts with 3 stars following the World Cup win. They previously had to ship 400,000 Argentina 3-star shirts in the gap of three months.
Adidas football section’s senior director Tor Southard said in an interview, “It is difficult to exaggerate the demand that Messi has created. Official sales have exceeded all the benchmarks that Adidas coulld have imagined.” Adidas have some of Europe’s top clubs as their clients and apparently, the shirt sales surpassed them. He added, “The Inter Miami shirt is ahead of the five historic European clubs that the brand has traditionally considered the crown jewels of its illustrious portfolio: Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Arsenal.”
In terms of sales of individual players in the MLS, there’s no prize for guessing who is leading that list. Lionel Messi occupies the 1st position with Sergio Busquets who joined a few weeks after Messi, in 13th place. Unfortunately, Jordi Alba who joined his former Barcelona teammates at the club, has not been able to crack the top 25 in sales. However, another of their teammate, Josef Martinez cracked the list in 21st place. The former Inter Miami captain has recently left the club.
While Miami were struggling to supply as per the demands of Messi shirts, the sales of their previous season’s shirts have gone down. It seems, Miami have cracked the code to that as well. They have added Messi’s name and jersey number to their white home jersey from 2020 to drive up the sales. Besides shirts, Messi’s arrival has seen Miami’s ticket sales go up at both home and away matches. Miami became the first team in MLS to house over 30,000 fans on average in away matches.
