Messi Mania is at a fever pitch — and we’re still four days away from the soccer icon’s first MLS match.

Fans packed the 18,000-seat DRV PNK Stadium in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday night for the formal announcement of Lionel Messi’s celebrated arrival to Inter Miami, an event the team called La PresentaSÍon. 

Despite no soccer being played and a torrential downpour forcing a two-hour weather delay, the rapturous crowd literally and figuratively soaked in the joyous atmosphere of the Argentinian star’s arrival to MLS.

“I am happy to have selected this city to come to, and to have picked this project,” Messi said. “We are going to share many beautiful moments together.”

Tickets to the event were free to Inter Miami season-ticket holders.

Also participating were Inter Miami co-owner and president David Beckham — whose own heralded 2007 MLS arrival in Los Angeles laid the groundwork for a move like Messi’s — and majority club owner Jorge Mas, while MLS commissioner Don Garber was on hand for perhaps the most celebrated player acquisition in league history.

“We want MLS to be a league of choice — a league of choice for players, for fans, for partners, and ultimately for investors,” Garber said. “And when you have the best player of all time making MLS his league of choice, I think it’s really a testament to where MLS is and where it’s going.”

Messi’s first on-field MLS appearance will be a July 21 Leagues Cup match against Cruz Azul. Even after a recent softening in the resale ticket market, get-in prices are still hovering near $300.

Australia’s national women’s soccer team has called out FIFA for offering far less prize money at the Women’s World Cup than it does the men’s event — just days before the 2023 edition begins in their home nation and New Zealand on Thursday.

Professional Footballers Australia — the country’s union for soccer players — released a video featuring the 23 members of Australia’s team taking exception with the $300 million pay gap between the men’s and women’s World Cups. 

“FIFA will still only offer women one-quarter as much prize money as men for the same achievement,” Australian midfielder Tameka Yallop said. 

Compared to the $440 million the men’s teams played for in Qatar last year, FIFA is paying out just $110 million to teams competing at the Women’s World Cup. The disparity comes after an ugly runup to the World Cup that saw FIFA president Gianni Infantino threaten to black out the games in some European countries due to extremely low offers for broadcasting rights.

Despite finally getting those key deals in place, FIFA has reportedly fallen $100 million short of its goal for overall broadcast fees to show this World Cup around the globe. Media payments will total $200 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. FIFA had been hoping for $300 million.

Amid the financial pains, this Women’s World Cup is on track to break an attendance record with well over 1 million fans expected to attend games — but sales in New Zealand are lagging so far behind that 20,000 free tickets are being given away.

Sports television in a key Southwest U.S. market will look quite different very soon. 

The NBA’s Phoenix Suns and WNBA’s Mercury are currently forging their own path separate from Bally Sports and bankrupt parent Diamond Sports Group, and MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks are poised to follow them.

The Suns and Mercury, owned by Mat Ishbia, completed negotiations with local broadcaster Gray Television to show non-national games over the air on the KTVK, KPHO, and KPHE TV stations. The OTA broadcasts will be supplemented by Kiswe-supported free streaming.

The deal, first announced in April, was finalized after DSG failed to match Gray Television’s bid.

The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, warned viewers on Bally Sports air Sunday that legal developments “may result in new channels for the [team’s] games to be seen.” 

DSG and the team have a twice-postponed bankruptcy court hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

Last month, the Diamondbacks and DSG said there were “ongoing and positive discussions toward finding a solution,” suggesting a reworked rights deal was developing. Nearly three weeks later, no such agreement has surfaced, and the on-air comments increasingly point to MLB taking over the team’s local rights, similar to what it’s doing in San Diego.

In recent weeks, DSG made MLB rights payments to Texas, Cleveland, Minnesota, and Cincinnati as part of the league’s collection of 94% of 2023 money due from the company. But the Phoenix developments further signal the rapidly transforming TV landscape as cord-cutting accelerates and regional sports network fortunes decline.