How Lionel Messi became a billionaire

CULTURE · PORTRAIT

Few names cross from sport into business as naturally as Lionel Messi’s. Widely regarded as the finest footballer of his generation, and for many of any generation, he has achieved something rarer than a trophy: he has turned a playing career into a fortune estimated at more than $1 billion, built on contracts, equity and a personal brand that outgrew the stadium long ago.

He crossed that line in 2026, joining a very small group of athletes, active or retired, whose wealth runs to ten figures. Salary and bonuses since 2007 account for more than $700 million of it. The rest is the work of a quieter discipline.

The Barcelona years

The foundations were laid at Barcelona, the club that formed him and where he spent two decades, earning salaries among the highest in world football and collecting the titles that sustained his commercial value. In 2009 he was earning around $12 million a year; by the end of his time in Catalonia, that figure had multiplied many times over. The move to Paris Saint-Germain in 2021, and then to Inter Miami in 2023, extended the equation, adding new contracts to an expanding web of commercial agreements.

Miami, and a stake in the game

The Inter Miami deal was structured less like a salary than a partnership. He reportedly turned down an offer from Saudi Arabia worth around $400 million a year to go to Florida instead. The club’s co-owner, Jorge Mas, has put Messi’s total annual compensation at $70 million to $80 million, combining player pay with equity rights. The agreement includes an option to buy a stake in the club, which has risen sharply in value since his arrival, and was widely reported to include a share of revenue from new subscriptions to the league’s streaming package on Apple TV.

In October 2025 he extended his contract through the 2028 season. It is the kind of structure that places him alongside Michael Jordan and LeBron James, whose fortunes were made as much by ownership as by wages.

Sponsorship as architecture

Adidas has been with him since 2006, and in 2017 the relationship became a lifetime agreement. Around it sit partnerships with brands from soft drinks to payments, and his own businesses: Más+ by Messi, a sports drink launched in 2024, and an investment in the Argentine restaurant chain El Club de la Milanesa as it expands abroad.

Hospitality and property form the most deliberate layer. His MiM Hotels venture operates in Spain, and in December 2024 he listed Edificio Rostower Socimi, a real estate investment company valued at around $232 million and holding several hotels, on a Spanish exchange. Football itself has become an asset class too: he co-owns the Uruguayan club Deportivo LSM with Luis Suárez, and has moved to acquire Cornellà, a lower-division Spanish side.

After the last match for Argentina

The summer of 2026 closed one chapter. Argentina reached the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium on 19 July and lost 1-0 to Spain after extra time. On 31 August, at 39, Messi announced his retirement from international football after two decades and more than 185 appearances as his country’s record scorer. He remains at Inter Miami.

The diversification matters precisely now. Hotels, equity, clubs and royalties reduce the dependence on what happens on a pitch, and carry the fortune well beyond the final whistle. Messi is part of a broader shift in elite sport, in which the athlete stops being an employee and becomes a shareholder in his own commercial empire.

Few names cross from sport into business so naturally. The billion is less a reward for the goals than evidence of a second career, conducted in boardrooms, that has only just begun.

GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.