Can Leo Messi save the Mountain West?

A Group of 5 conference should be looking really hard at this Messi deal. They should then rip up the terms of their current media rights and try to figure out a way to incentivize talent through their conference wide media deals. “Go to Alabama and get a car or come to Colorado State and get a percentage of the media dollars you bring in on Saturday”. That's a recruiting pitch.

If you don’t believe we are in the era of player empowerment you must be reading this on AOL. Not only are we here, but with this new Messi + MLS deal, Messi just hit the big fat red launch button and took player empowerment into an entirely new stratosphere… and he might have accidentally saved the sports media rights business as well.

Now I don’t know if that handsome devil David Beckham just walked in the room and charmed all MLS owners, players, and Tim Cook in order to get this Messi deal through, but I don’t think this deal is getting the media attention it deserves. It should come as no surprise that this deal came from Beckham as he re-invented the MLS player compensation package 15 years ago (great thread on it by A Petcash) and if you look at the deal framework, Beckham simply took it to its next logical evolution. A next step that I never thought possible. And as a fan of disruption I believe this deal deserves a standing ovation. (I want to meet the man who put these PowerPoint slides together) This deal and how it has dismantled the hierarchy of media rights might be exactly what sports needs in order to save RSNs, Group of 5 media rights, Learfield, and NIL.

I am super curious on the order of operations of this deal. Did they go to Messi, the league, Apple, then the players? Apple first? The league? Regardless, everyone agreed that this would exponentially increase the size of the MLS pie for the next couple years and every lever should be pulled to make it happen, even if that meant blowing up the traditional sports media hierarchy. All parties were properly incentivized to change, push egos aside, and make what I think will be a historic move. Other sports media entities need to take notice and be willing to alter their business models and jump on the player empowerment rocketship.
Messi +MLS have demonstrated that if you want to compete in today’s sports media industry you have to be willing to abandon the traditional model. League and Player Associations have long debated over their slices of media revenue. These negotiations stripped out the creativity needed to survive and with RSNs going under, leagues and players will be splitting bankruptcy payments and subsidizing local markets instead of flourishing under today’s creator econmy. Whether it is media rights, CBA rights, or ownership egos, a deal like this could not come together in most leagues around the world and that's a shame.

This should not be the case for Group of 5 conferences. Let's take my Mountain West for example. They are headed for distinction. They want to play the traditional game and they are going to lose. It’s safe to assume that media rights are directly correlated with the talent on the field. That should be the focus of the MWC : on-field talent. How do they do that now? The MWC wants to get incremental more media dollars in order to distribute that to their drastically underfunded schools. The schools are then supposed to take those extra nickels, recruit, develop and compete against P5 schools that in the end will just buy Colorado State’s best players. That model won’t work. “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu. Let's use Messi to save the MWC.

How do we do this? Off the top of my head. First the conference and its schools would have to agree that on-field talent is priority number one. (which I am not sure they do) We then take a media growth package to CBS that chops it up so players can get compensation for their subscription attributions, essentially turning them into individual affiliates. The MWC and its schools can then tie players to a NIL + CBS & MWC media deal, making it hard to lose them to P5 schools. This allows coaches to refocus on player development instead of constant recruiting. By no means the solution or perfect, but something like this that throws the traditional media model out the window might allow the MWC to thrive while they otherwise fade into non-existence.

My hope is that this Messi + MLS deal wakes up some grumpy executives that are sitting around complaining about the attention span of “this generation”. It’s time they really lean into the influence and power of individual athletes. These athletes have enough power to lift entire teams, universities, conferences, and in select cases leagues to new heights. How do you get Ohtani to Seattle? Give him a cut of international media revenue. Want to get Caitlin Clark to play in Indiana? Give her a cut of RSN subscriptions. Want to get the NWSL expansion team? Promise players a cut of all digital media sales. How can we get Caleb Williams to come to Colorado State? Follow the Messi model.