In June, Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest soccer player of all time, announced his intentions to join Inter Miami CF, then the last-place team in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference. In the month that it took for his deal to become official, some of the particulars that lured him to South Florida emerged—details that careful observers of the shifting business of sports took particular note of. Because, in addition to the reported $50-plus million deal with the club that includes an equity stake in the team, Messi had struck separate deals with some of the league’s corporate partners. The first was with Adidas—no stranger, of course, to big sports deals. The arrangement was said to offer Messi a share of any increase in the company's profits generated by his move to MLS—likely a windfall with the blush-pink number-10 jerseys soon to start flying off shelves. Another new Messi partner was perhaps more surprising: Apple, which last fall announced a 10-year deal worth a reported $2.5 billion deal to serve as...
https://www.gq.com/story/apple-sports-streaming...
