The Beckham clause: $25m and a football club from nothing

In January 2007, David Beckham signed for LA Galaxy. The press spent months talking about a 250-million-dollar contract. The figure was misleading, and in any case it was not the important part: buried in that contract was a clause which, sixteen years later, would end up putting Lionel Messi in Florida.

The 250 million that was not a salary

The deal was announced on 11 January 2007 and took effect on 1 July, when his Real Madrid contract expired. His base salary was 6.5 million dollars a year.

The 250 million that circulated was a projection of total earnings: sponsorships, image rights and a share of what the Galaxy took in from shirts, tickets and advertising. It was never a wage. The curious part is that the projection was about right: in 2012, Forbes calculated that Beckham had earned around 255 million dollars across his six MLS years once everything was added up.

His first appearance in a Galaxy shirt came on 21 July 2007, in a friendly against Chelsea at the Home Depot Center. He came on in the 78th minute and his team lost 1-0. His first competitive league match followed on 9 August, also from the bench.

The rule that carries his name

MLS operates under a strict salary cap, and Beckham's wages blew straight through it. To make the signing possible, the league created the Designated Player in 2007 — a mechanism everybody knows as the Beckham Rule.

It works simply enough: a club may sign a player earning above the maximum, but only a fixed amount counts against the salary cap. In 2007 that amount was 400,000 dollars; the owner pays the rest personally. It began as one player per club and today it is up to three, with a maximum budget charge of around 683,750 dollars in 2026.

That rule is why MLS has been able to sign Thierry Henry, Kaká, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Messi and Thomas Müller. The league's entire star policy grows out of an exception written for one footballer.

The clause

And then there was the small print. Beckham's contract included the right to buy an MLS expansion franchise at a fixed price of 25 million dollars. It was not an option at the market rate of the day: it was a closed price, agreed in 2007, to be exercised whenever he chose once the playing contract was done.

He exercised it on 5 February 2014, shortly after retiring. Getting onto a pitch took considerably longer: the project stalled for years over a stadium, and the franchise was not formally awarded until 29 January 2018, as the league's 25th club. Inter Miami were founded that year and began play in 2020.

To see what that fixed price was worth, look at what the league charged afterwards: 325 million dollars from Charlotte FC in 2019 and a reported 500 million from San Diego FC in 2023 — reported, because MLS never officially confirms these figures. Beckham's option ended up costing roughly a twentieth of the going rate for entry.

Closing the circle

Messi announced his decision publicly on 7 June 2023 and signed on 15 July. He debuted on 21 July against Cruz Azul in the Leagues Cup: on early in the second half, he won the match with a free kick from around twenty-five yards in the 94th minute.

A month later, on 19 August 2023 at Geodis Park in Nashville, Inter Miami won that tournament. It finished 1-1 — Messi scoring in the 23rd minute, Fafà Picault equalising in the 57th — and the shootout ran to an eleventh round, where the takers were the two goalkeepers: Drake Callender scored his and then saved Elliot Panicco's. 10-9, and the first trophy in the club's history.

"Inter Miami exist because in 2007 somebody put a purchase option into the contract of a 31-year-old midfielder."

There is one more number that puts the clause in perspective. Inter Miami have since been valued at around a billion dollars by the outlets that estimate such things — a figure the club has never confirmed, and which should be read as an estimate rather than a price. Either way, the gap between what the option cost and what the asset became is the single most lucrative piece of small print in the history of American sport.

Beckham, for the record, had a modest but real playing career in MLS: six seasons, 98 regular-season appearances, 18 goals and two MLS Cups, in 2011 and 2012. He won the last of them in his final match for the Galaxy.

• Simulate the MLS regular season and build both conference tables.
• Fill in the playoff bracket and decide who lifts MLS Cup.
• Simulate the Leagues Cup too, with its MLS and Liga MX tables.
• Change any result and watch everything rearrange instantly.

"Open the MLS simulator and decide how far Inter Miami go."