David Beckham.
David Beckham
Co-owner and president at Inter Miami
Special Mention
Victoria Beckham’s husband appears to have a posh new stadium in his future.
The Miami City Commission voted overwhelmingly in mid-September to approve a new stadium for Inter Miami, the Major League Soccer club that David Beckham co-owns with brothers Jorge and Jose Mas. Beckham — an ex-soccer great ingrained in pop culture through among other things the movie “Bend It Like Beckham” and Hugh Grant’s prime minister character in “Love Actually” banging on about Beckham’s feet — is also the club’s president.
The stadium is not just a stadium, either. Known tentatively as Miami Freedom Park, it’s one of the largest developments planned for a Miami region awash in swaggering projects. It’s due to unfold over several dozen acres near Miami International Airport, and will include a 25,000-seat arena, a 750-key hotel, 400,000 square feet of office space, a 600,000-square-foot mall, and a 58-acre public park, according to media reports. Arquitectonica, the region’s leading architect firm, is designing the project.
The commission’s September approval of the project capped nearly a decade of planning and pining on the part of Beckham and team, and it followed by five months the same commission’s greenlight of a 99-year lease for the site. The September approval cleared the way for permit applications and construction. The franchise would be moving from a smaller stadium in Fort Lauderdale.
A timeline, though, remains unclear, and Beckham declined through the club a request for comment. But Beckham and the Mas brothers are willing to spend big on what’s already become a splashy symbol of Miami’s pandemic-era popularity (Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is a fan of the project, among other public officials).
“Just to start vertical construction on the stadium, we are going to have to spend $120 million,” Jorge Mas said during a public presentation of the plans in April, according to media reports. The owners will also owe $4.3 million in annual rent for the leased land.
It’s a lot of money, but maybe not to Beckham. The former star for Real Madrid and Manchester United inked a reported $150 million deal to tout Qatari tourism and hospitality before, during and after last year’s World Cup in the oil-rich Middle East country.
Also, in 2020, Beckham and wife Victoria Beckham (neé Spice) paid nearly $20 million for a 10,000-square-foot penthouse in the Zaha Hadid-designed One Thousand Museum tower in Downtown Miami.
One thing Beckham doesn’t have: a knighthood, which would entitle the English soccer legend to style himself Sir David. Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 awarded Beckham an Order of the British Empire, a lesser citation, for services to sports and charity. But he’s been left off every subsequent honors list, including King Charles III’s first one, released in December. —T.A.
