December 16 – When a handshake and a photograph cost $11,000, touching greatness doesn’t cheap.
But that was the reported price of getting close to Lionel Messi during his three-day tour of India, according to the organiser’s website.
That fee supposedly bought the purchaser a brief personal meeting, a posed photo, premium seating at the event, and a signed Argentina shirt.
Local reports suggest some closed-door meetings went far beyond the headline figure, climbing to roughly $120,000 for corporations and VIPs. At the other end of the scale, tickets for the general public started at around $42 (average daily earnings in India are around $2.40).
Messi’s visit, his first to India in fourteen years, was wrapped in heavy security and high expectations. It ended in controversy. In Kolkata, a mass event at Salt Lake Stadium went seriously sideways when objects were thrown from the stands, and Messi was rushed away by his security team. Fans complained of chaotic organisation, with politicians, officials, and security forming a great, impenetrable wall between the crowd and the player they came to see.
Police have since arrested the local promoter, who is now in custody, while authorities investigate what went wrong. But the deeper issue runs beyond one failed event.
This is football’s growing divide laid bare. The sport that once sold itself as the ‘people’s game’ is increasingly split between the haves and the have-nots. A premium experience for the few. Frustration and disappointment for the many.
