In January, as Inter Miami arrived in El Salvador for its first preseason match of 2024, hundreds of cheering fans greeted the team’s convoy of pink buses, jostling past one another just to catch a glimpse of, arguably, the most famous athlete on the planet, Lionel Messi. Such an impassioned welcome in a foreign country would have been unimaginable eight months ago when Inter Miami, one of the more recent additions to Major League Soccer, was a last-place club with little global recognition beyond its minority co-owner, David Beckham. But that all changed in June when Messi announced that South Florida would become his next soccer home, forever altering the franchise’s trajectory.

His impact was immediate. A month after his arrival, Messi led Inter Miami to its first-ever trophy, at the inaugural Leagues Cup, with a dramatic penalty shootout victory. Off the field, the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner supercharged the team’s business operations, with revenue more than doubling to $118 million in 2023, from $56 million in 2022. The rapid change in fortune has fueled the club’s appreciation. Forbes estimates Inter Miami is now the second-most-valuable MLS team, worth $1.03 billion after a 72% bump from a year ago. The franchise is the second in league history to achieve a billion-dollar valuation, following in the cleated footsteps of LAFC, which did so in 2023 and remains MLS’s most valuable team, at $1.2 billion.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2024/02/02/major-league-soccers-most-valuable-teams-2024/?sh=2e6a89ef3347

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