Beckham earns $25m from World Cup as Inter Miami nears $1.5bn value

David Beckham is reportedly set to make up to $25m from the current World Cup despite taking zero active part in the tournament. This figure makes him the highest-earning individual from the event, demonstrating how modern sports wealth is increasingly generated through brand saturation rather than athletic performance.

The financial engine driving this windfall is Inter Miami, the football franchise Beckham co-owns. The club is now estimated to be worth almost $1.5bn (£1.1bn). That valuation has been fundamentally reshaped by the 2023 arrival of Lionel Messi, whose contract runs until 2028, acting as a massive magnet for global sponsorship and broadcast revenue.

Beckham's ubiquity on American television screens—selling everything from beer to mattresses—has turned him into a living commercial asset. Forbes recently published an article warning gravely of overreach, raising questions of whether his fame has outgrown the market. Yet the US advertising sector continues to absorb his presence, treating his persona as a high-yield investment.

While Beckham serves as the public face, the underlying commercial and political infrastructure belongs to his billionaire business partners, the Cuban-American brothers Jorge and Jose Mas Santos. Their family company, Mastech Industries, generated its wealth in communications and construction. These are the precise industries required to build the new Freedom Park Arena currently rising in the city, further consolidating the ownership group's local dominance.

The Mas family's structural power in Miami is inseparable from the club's business success. Their late father, Jorge Mas Sr, fought at the Bay of Pigs before building the family fortune and acting as a patron to Boris Yeltsin. For European observers, the Inter Miami model reveals how US sports franchises operate as integrated real estate and geopolitical vehicles rather than standalone football clubs.

By aligning his global celebrity with the Mas family's deep local capital, Beckham has created a formidable commercial enterprise. As the World Cup arrives in Miami, the combined force of his advertising ubiquity, Messi's presence, and the Mas family's construction empire illustrates the sheer scale of the American leisure economy.