Lionel Messi Reaches $50 Million-A-Year Deal With Barcelona.

 

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have gone head-to-head across a broad range of categories in soccer over the past half dozen years. They’ve won the past six Fifa/Balloon d’Or awards given to the world’s best footballer with Messi nabbing four of them. They have the two biggest social media followings in the world among athletes with a combined 138 million Facebook fans. Their clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona, are the two most valuable franchises in sports. The teams are fierce rivals on the pitch competing for the La Liga title and European soccer supremacy. Their matchups are dubbed El Clasico and watched by hundreds of millions of people (an estimated 400 million watched in March or three times the global Super Bowl audience). Continue...

           The Barcelona star has a blockbuster new contract awaiting his signature.

Messi and Ronaldo also compete when it comes to money. They are the two highest earning footballers in the world with Ronaldo banking an estimated $73 million, including endorsements, in 2013. Messi’s haul: $65 million. Now Barcelona plans to close the gap between their on-pitch salaries with a new deal for Messi that is expected to match or slightly exceed Ronaldo’s $50 million annual salary with Real. Barcelona posted the following statement on its website Friday: “FC Barcelona has reached an agreement to adjust the terms in the contract binding Leo Messi to the club as a professional first team player. The revised and updated contract will be signed over the next few days.”
Messi, who turns 27 next month, can thank Ronaldo for the bump in salary. Ronaldo signed a new five-year contract in September with Real Madrid worth a gross annual value of $50 million. After taxes, Ronaldo nets roughly $24 million a year. The salaries for Messi and Ronaldo dwarf any other athletes in team sports. For comparisons sake, the top pre-tax salary in MLB this year is $25 million (Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee) and $30.5 million in the NBA (Kobe Bryant).
Messi’s deal is expected to keep him with Barca through at least 2018. It is the seventh contract in Messi’s 11 years with Barcelona. The club reportedly got a significant concession from Messi in the new pact with an agreement for Messi and Barcelona to share Messi’s image rights globally. Messi previously controlled these rights and they could mean millions of Euros for Barcelona, which turned an operating profit of $154 million on $627 million of revenue last season.
Messi is Barcelona’s all-time leading goal scorer with 354 goals, and he helped the club win 21 titles since he joined Barcelona in 2004. These include six La Liga titles and three Champions League crowns. Messi earns more than $20 million a year from sponsors including Adidas, PepsiCo, Gillette and Electronic Arts. Messi is Adidas’ biggest marketing star in its competition with Nike for global bragging rights (both companies have total soccer revenue around $2 billion). Adidas released a limited edition commemorative Messi shoe after Messi broke Barcelona’s all-time scoring record in March. It sold out within an hour in the U.S.
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