The offer was ten times bigger. It lost.
In June 2023 Lionel Messi turned down a reported 1.6 billion dollars.
Saudi Arabia had put somewhere between 400 and 600 million a year in front of him. Inter Miami came in at up to 60 million.
On the number, this was not close.
He signed with Miami.
For a while I read that story the way it was mostly told, as a decision about lifestyle and family. Then I looked at what the deal was actually made of, and it stopped being a lifestyle story.
Miami could not win on salary.
So they did not build a salary.
They built a base contract with the club, a share of revenue from new international subscriptions to MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, a share of the increase in Adidas profit connected to his arrival, and an option to buy an ownership stake in the club for the years after he stops playing.
Apple had signed a ten-year, 2.5 billion dollar broadcast agreement with the league. Adidas was the league's largest apparel partner. Neither of them was the buyer. Both of them paid.
Here the story turns.
A deal can only be assembled that way when someone knows what the money is for.
The signal was the shape of the offer that failed
I am not interested in guessing what was in his head. The observable part is enough.
An offer ten times larger had been made, and it had not closed the deal.
That is information. It says the goal was not being paid by the bigger number. Something in it was made of things a salary cannot buy: what happens after the career ends, where the family lives, what he owns rather than what he earns.
Miami read that, and then they went and found people who could pay in those currencies.
A number is a measure of a goal
This is the part I keep coming back to.
Five percent is a number.
Five percent is not yet a goal.
Percentage or absolute. Across every category or three of them. Once, or every year from now. Balanced somewhere else in the account, or not. Held against volume, or against terms, or against the relationship we will still need in eighteen months.
Until those are answered, the whole team is walking into the room with a figure and no shared idea of what the figure is for.
And a team that only knows the figure can only compete on the figure. When someone offers more, we have nothing left to trade with. When we cannot match, we lose.
Miami had the smaller number and more room, because they knew what they were paying for.
No one could have signed it alone
The other thing in this deal is easy to walk past.
Inter Miami could not pay it by themselves. The league had to agree. Apple had to agree. Adidas had to agree.
Four organisations, one signature, and the deal existed only because all of them were solving for the same goal.
I think about that whenever I hear that a position is aligned internally. Aligned can mean everyone has heard the number. It can also mean everyone would describe the goal the same way under pressure, months later, when the terms have moved and someone has to decide alone in a room.
Those are two different things, and the second one is what carries a deal.
What I would take from it
Before the next important negotiation, one question, asked out loud, to the people who will be in the room:
What is this number for.
If the answers come back different, the negotiation has already started, and it is happening on our side of the table.
Results in negotiation are not a coincidence.
Be well, Tina
In September I run Negotiation Navigator Reviews. Two hours, one deal you have already closed, and we look at what the goal was before the first meeting and what it had become by the time it was signed. You can run it alone with the tool, or with me.
#TheHumanSignal #PerformanceReDefined #OwnershipMindset
