Who Owns Inter Miami?
Over the last few years, the popularity of soccer in the United States has skyrocketed. For a long time, the vast majority of American sports fans remained unengaged with association football; even huge fans of domestic sports leagues like the NBA and the NFL lacked knowledge about the rules of the beautiful game, and support for a stronger soccer presence in the US was fairly minimal.
But due to a number of factors including the recent emergence of several exciting USMNT internationals and, more than anything else, the arrival of World Cup-winning football legend Lionel Messi (and several other talented global stars) in the MLS, people in America are finally falling in love with football en masse. 17% of Americans are now fans of Major League Soccer, with season ticket sales and attendances at an all-time high and social media interactions in 2024 up by a whopping 230% on the previous season.
Several key figures and influential moments have contributed to this growth; however, you can’t downplay the role of MLS franchise Inter Miami in increasing the appetite for soccer in the States. In this article we’ll be focusing on Inter Miami's place in the landscape of US soccer, with a focus on the ownership behind this key MLS franchise.
Major League Soccer And The Creation Of Inter Miami
Many European football clubs have been around for over 150 years, providing a hub for their communities and helping shape football culture in their respective homelands. But in the States, most clubs are only a few decades old at most, with the country’s inaugural men’s professional league, Major League Soccer (MLS) first set up in 1995, as a consequence of hosting rights for the 1994 World Cup being awarded to the United States, and a domestic league structure being a key condition of that decision.
The MLS is unique in world soccer, in that it employs a franchise system. This basically means that instead of consisting of a number of independent clubs, the MLS system operates as a single entity with each team being owned by the league and its investors. Rather than being promoted to the league after winning the tier below, the league decides when to expand its number of teams and clubs are given permission to join up accordingly.
Check out our explainer piece on promotion and relegation for more information about how this franchise structure, which is designed to create a more level playing field across the board, differs from the promotion and relegation system favoured by the rest of the world.
Over the last decade, a large number of new franchises have joined the MLS, with Inter Miami, Orlando City SC, New York City FC, Atlanta United FC, Minnesota United FC, Los Angeles FC and FC Cincinatti all added since 2014. The interest in founding an MLS franchise in the Miami area dates back to the early 2000s, when Miami Fusion folded and weren't replaced. Fast forward to 2012, and MLS commissioner Don Garber was talking up a brand new expansion franchise in the Florida city more seriously than ever before.
In April 2013, discussions were held about key expansion targets and Miami emerged as a frontrunner. After years of work behind the scenes, Inter Miami were eventually awarded the 25th MLS franchise in January 2018, and they completed their first-ever season two years later in 2020. There was one well-known football figure who played a pivotal role in this development, and who remains owner of the club today.
Who Owns Inter Miami?
Many clubs across the world are owned by celebrity figures, from Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney's impactful stewardship of Wrexham AFC, to US basketball star LeBron James, who owns shares in Liverpool and AC Milan.
The man who owns Inter Miami is one of the most famous sportspeople in history, and a man who contributed greatly to the development of soccer in the States. That man is former England, Manchester United, Real Madrid and LA Galaxy star David Beckham.
Back when Beckham was set to sign for LA Galaxy — during a time when the popularity of soccer in the US was far less widespread than it is today — the creative midfielder's business manager Simon Fuller had a real brainwave. He helped negotiate a clause in Beckham's contract that would allow him to purchase an MLS expansion team for a price of $25 million at the time when his playing career came to an end. This eventually happened in April 2013, after which discussions were held between Fuller and Major League Soccer.
"When I signed my contract six, seven years ago, my manager Simon Fuller actually got a clause in the contract that enabled me to have a franchise at the end of my playing career," Beckham told CNN back in 2013. The following year, the former England star exercised that right, using his company Miami Beckham United to purchase the franchise and take up ownership of a shiny new club for Major League Soccer.
However, Beckham hasn't been on his own in this endeavor. Inter Miami CF (the club's official title, standing for Club Internacional de Futbol Miami) was set up by an ownership group involving Miami-based Bolivian businessman Marcelo Claure as well as Beckham, with Masayoshi Son and brothers Jorge and Jose Mas joining the ownership team in 2017. Jorge Mas is a Miami-based billionaire businessman and the largest shareholder of MasTech, a company of which his brother Jose is CEO.
The pair joined forces with Beckham in 2021 to buy out Claure and Son's stakes in the franchise and take over the ownership of Inter Miami CF. At this point, investment management business Ares Management also became part of the club's ownership structure.
What Has The Current Ownership Group Done For Inter Miami CF?
There's no doubt that David Beckham has had an enormous impact on domestic soccer in the United States, arguably affecting Major League Soccer as much as any one individual in the last 20 years. In a recent conversation with Rio Ferdinand on the former United defender's podcast Rio Ferdinand Presents, Beckham shone a light on how he has gone about bringing a new club to the city of Miami, and where his desire to run a club stemmed from in the first place.
"I always wanted to own a football club," he said. "I never had aspirations of being a coach or a manager… I just didn't think I'd be any good at that. When I moved to America and I had the opportunity to own a team at the end of my time at the Galaxy, I snapped it up." He continued: "It was all about picking the place. Miami didn't have a team at the time, and I always loved Miami as a city. I knew the passion of the people, I knew the diversity of what Miami had and I knew that in the future when we had a team I wanted to be able to attract some of the best players in the world, and when you're living in Miami and you've got that lifestyle, that's an important part of it, that's an important draw for players around the world."
Support for Inter Miami CF has grown exponentially since Beckham first founded the franchise, but there was one moment in particular that transformed the culture around the club overnight: the signing of World Cup-winning Argentina star and Barcelona legend Lionel Messi in July 2023. Media attention around Messi and appetite for attending Inter Miami matches went through the roof — everyone was clamouring to watch a player who had dazzled at the 2022 Qatar World Cup just months before, and who had been at the very top of European football for over 15 years.
Meanwhile, the quality Messi brought on the pitch helped lead the club to their first ever trophy, the Leagues Cup won in August 2023. They've followed that victory up by improving significantly across the board — the club won their first MLS Supporters' Shield in October 2024, after Messi scored a brace and Suarez added a header in a 3-2 final win against Columbus Crew.
11 ROUNDS. 🤯
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) August 20, 2023
Every penalty from the shootout that saw @InterMiamiCF claim the #LeaguesCup2023 crown. pic.twitter.com/mInGVgoIo1
And after topping the MLS regular season table, they're the favourites going into the MLS Cup playoffs at the end of the 2024 season. More broadly, Beckham has impacted US soccer positively by encouraging the commissioner of the league, Don Garber, to focus on growing Academy set-ups across the country, and his star status evidently plays a crucial role in bringing talented players to the MLS from abroad.
However, despite the undeniable improvement in performances and the burgeoning of a stronger football culture in Miami, Florida, the Beckham ownership has been criticised by some fans lately, and understandably so. The key thing that has got on people's nerves is ticket prices, which have been hiked substantially since Messi arrived and results started to improve (for the 2024 campaign, season ticket prices doubled).
Speaking to The Guardian recently, long-time supporter Morgan Guigon said "There's no longer a feeling that supporters matter… it's more a feeling of 'we're going to make as much money however we can'... A lot of people have had to cancel their season tickets because they can't afford it." On the matchday experience, fellow fan Mike Longin explained how the increased hype around Messi "has had a somewhat negative impact on the match experience, because so many people are only there to see Messi; they don't care about the rest of the team."
Ultimately, it's a complex issue, with Beckham and his ownership group bringing negatives as well as positives to the Miami football scene. But one thing's for sure: Inter Miami CF have changed the soccer landscape in this part of the world significantly. If you'd like to find out more about how soccer in North America has evolved in recent years, check out guide to the continent's football governing body, CONCACAF.
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