Lionel Messi is now one of the hottest football stars in the world. Being considered the representative of the football industry โ an industry known for being fabulously rich, there is no doubt that Lionel Messi owns a huge personal property. However, can you imagine the amount of $127 million in his earning per year?
Lionel Messi is the star of the Spanish football club Barcelona and the captain of the Argentinian national team. He is now the highest-paid footballer in the world with an annual payment of $127 million. In which, there is $92 million from his salary and the rest $35 million is from endorsement contracts. His net worth is reported to be approximately $400 million. Check here to see how he breaks his scoring record.
Lionel Messiโs career
Messi โ one of the most famous and richest footballers. Source: EssentiallySports
With 5’7″ tall, Lionel Messi is currently one of the shortest football stars but the footballer with the highest annual net worth. The football star was born on the 24th of June, 1987. His football career started when he joined a youth football team called โThe Machine of ’87โ. The idea of the teamโs name was that their year of birth was 1987. During 4 years of playing together, โThe Machine of ’87โ lost only a single match. When he was 13, Messi joined Barcelona football club.
Lionel Messiโs first public appearance came in October 2004 and the period of 2005-2006 season was his breakout. He contributed considerably to winning important matches against Juventus and Chelsea.ย
In his career, Lionel Messi has achieved many awards and has become the role model of many younger footballers. In his professional career, there have been more than 700 times he fights for the club Barcelona. He has scored more than 600 goals. The Argentine professional footballer has won the Ballon dโOr (one of the oldest and generally regarded as the most prestigious individual award for football players) six times, the Golden Shoe (an award that is presented each season to the leading goalscorer in league matches from the top division of every European national league) six times, and has been the top scorer in the Champion League six times.
He is also the captain of the Argentinian national team and has captained the team at the World Cup tournament four times. He played at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and took home the gold medal.
Contracts
The extraordinary richness that Lionel Messi achieved came from not only his wage but also his lucrative contract and endorsement deals. He agreed to his contract extension with Barcelona through the 2020-21 season in November 2017. And for this contract, he was expected to earn the amount of โฌ700 million.ย
Adidas
Lionel Messi also has a lifetime contract with Adidas โ one of the most famous sports clothing brands in the world. His contract is worth about $12 million per year. Currently, the football star also has endorsement contracts with Gatorade, Huawei, MasterCard. Messi has been a part of advertising campaigns with Pepsi, Gillette, and Turkish Airlines. Forbes, in 2019, listed him as one of the richest celebrities and reported that his endorsements were $35 million for that year.ย ย
Messiโs endorsement values were $35 million in 2019. Source: The thao 247
Huaweiย
The fame and reputation of Lionel Messi are no doubt real. With millions of fans worldwide, he will create excessive brand awareness for any business that has him in their advertising campaigns or endorsements or has him as their ambassador. Knowing this, in March 2016, Huawei decided to invite Lionel Messi to become its global brand ambassador. According to several reports, the Chinese Telecommunications equipment giant spent the amount of $6 million to have the football star as its ambassador.
Ooredoo
In 2013, Lionel Messi signed a contract with Ooredoo โ an international telecommunications company based in Qatar โ to be its official brand ambassador.
Layโs
A few years ago, Messi has his part in various television, print, digital, and advertising campaigns for the brand.
Apart from these endorsement contracts, some brands have Lionel Messi in their advertising campaigns such as Gatorade, Expo 2020 Dubai UAE, Pepsi, Hawkers, Tata Motors, Konami, Nike, Dolce & Gabbana, Audemars Piguet, Gillette, Sirin Labs, Mengniu Group. All of them, with the participation of this worldwide football star, were successful, bringing huge awareness as well as big revenue to the brands.
Does he take on business?
Lionel Messi has been known for the image of a pure footballer. We rarely see him showing off his lifestyle. It seems that this star is lack of desire to branch out into other venture businesses or create his own personal brand even though his fame is a valuable asset to the business.ย
Instead of pushing product lines such as underwear, shoes, and fragrances like Ronaldo, Messi chooses to invest in property. Lionel Messi invests in the Azahares del Parana project and an apartment building in the center of the city.
The scandal of tax evasion
One of the rare scandals in Lionel Messiโs life is tax evasion. In 2016, Messi and his father Jorge Horacio Messi were sentenced by a court in Spain for three counts of tax fraud. They were accused of hiding Messiโs sponsorship income in offshore companies in Belize, Uruguay and Switzerland with the tax evasion of nearly โฌ4.2 million. Following the court, Messi had to pay the fine of โฌ2 million and โฌ1.5 million was what his father supposed to pay.ย
Under Spanish law, sentences of less than two years, like the case of Messi and his father, can be served as probation. Therefore, neither the footballer nor his father had been expected to serve time. Although Lionel Messi had carried his tax responsibility, it cannot be denied that this scandal has particularly negative effects on Messi’s career.
There is no doubt that Lionel Messi is one of the richest athletes in the world. Although he is involved in several scandals, it can be witnessed that he still receives much love and support from football fans all around the world thanks to his extraordinary football talent and his modest lifestyle. Don’t forget to follow his footsteps on every match at ngoac.net, as well as the matches of the top leagues around the world.
