This summer, the World Cup is being staged on U.S. soil for the second time. When it was last here, in 1994, soccer sat at the margins of the American market. That is no longer true.
Apple signed an exclusive streaming agreement with Major League Soccer in 2022, reported at around $2.5 billion.
Since Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami in 2023, league attendance has reached record levels, averaging more than 23,000 a match in 2024, and Forbes now values Inter Miami above every other MLS club at $1.35 billion. The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball still dominate the landscape, but soccer is no longer a fringe asset, and the wealth that travels with it is increasingly landing in U.S. cities.
For luxury agents, that means meeting more of these clients. The instructive part is not the money on display. It is how the money behaves once the cameras stop.
And the pattern is not confined to soccer. It runs through the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball just as clearly.
Over the past years, I have advised ultra-high-net-worth clients across Europe and on cross-border transactions involving major U.S. markets, and one observation holds more often than agents expect: The clients with the most money are frequently the slowest to buy. Understanding why is what separates an advisor from a salesperson.
They buy careers 1st, homes 2nd
An elite sporting career is built on movement. Clubs change, teams change, countries change, tax residency changes and family needs change, often with little notice. A trade or a transfer can be agreed in days. Property has to support that life rather than constrain it.
A trophy purchase made in the middle of a contract can create rigidity at exactly the point when the client needs flexibility. For many athletes, renting the operational home is not a smaller transaction or a missed sale. It is the correct strategy.
High income is not the same as a reason to buy
The central mistake in reading athlete wealth is to confuse visible income with settled capital. Extraordinary earnings do not mean every decision should be made at once. A purchase at this level sits beneath a wider set of questions: tax exposure across jurisdictions, currency, long-term residency, family planning and the eventual exit.
Buying too early can lock in cost and friction if the client moves team or country within a year. The strongest advisors recognize the difference between the ability to buy and the right reason to buy.
The rental is part of the strategy, not the consolation prize
Many agents treat a rental as a holding pattern. Elite clients often see it as the point. During the playing years, privacy, security, proximity to training and the freedom to move tend to matter more than ownership.
A well-chosen rental delivers everything the client needs and removes the burden of having to sell if circumstances change. Securing that rental is frequently how the relationship begins and how trust is earned. The purchase, when it comes, tends to come later, and it tends to come to the advisor who handled the rental well.
The decision is cross-border
Luxury real estate at this level is rarely a single-city conversation. These clients hold income, assets and residency across several jurisdictions, and they weigh education, taxation, residency, lifestyle and long-term family goals before deciding where to place capital.
Based in London, I regularly work with families whose property decisions move between countries and currencies, with Brazil, Iberia and major U.S. cities all in the same conversation. The agent who understands these corridors, and the structuring and exit planning that sit behind them, rather than only the local market, can stay useful to the client wherever the career leads.
Ask better questions
If you want to work with elite athletes and internationally mobile clients, the opening conversation should change.
- Establish where the client sits in their career.
- Understand how long they realistically expect to stay.
- Find out who else advises them, because there is almost always a lawyer, a tax advisor and often a family office in the picture.
- Clarify what role this property is meant to play within the wider wealth strategy.
Those answers matter more than what the client says they want to buy, and they signal that you understand the brief.
Be the advisor, not the salesperson
The best agents in this market understand timing. Some of the largest transactions begin with a rental. Others begin with a single market conversation years before anything is bought. The job is not to push a sale. It is to understand where the client is today, where they are heading and to be the steady point of contact across the arc.
A playing career is short. The relationship can be long, and it often outlasts the sport, because the family usually settles somewhere once the playing years end.
The World Cup will introduce millions of new American fans to the world’s best players, and the same expansion is drawing globally mobile wealth into the U.S. market. For luxury agents, the greater opportunity is understanding how that wealth actually behaves once the cameras stop.
The clients are internationally mobile, their decisions are cross-border, and their property choices extend far beyond any single market. The agents who grasp that will be the ones who win the relationship that lasts.
All July, it’s Luxury Month, and we’re going deep — surveying the market, spotlighting the top producers who own it and bringing you the playbook for breaking into high-end deals. The month caps off at Luxury Connect in San Diego, where we’ll announce this year’s Golden I Club honorees.
Rubens Brotto is a Partner at Nest Seekers International and Managing Director of Super Prime International.
