Hard Rock Stadium is the largest open stadium in the city of Miami. With a capacity for more than 65,000 spectators, it is the usual home of the Miami Dolphins in the NFL, in addition to hosting various important sporting events.
One of them is the 2024 Copa América, where the venue will not only see a couple of group stage matches (Panama vs. Uruguay and Argentina vs. Peru), but beyond that, it will be the stadium. where the final will be playedJuly 14.
Lionel Messi and Argentina hope to honor this last match with their presence, in the city where their soccer club lives, with Inter Miami of the MLS.
Hard Rock Stadium will also be one of the venues used for the 2026 World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada. Which leads to a logical question: Why doesn’t Inter Miami play its MLS games there?
Why doesn’t Inter Miami play at Hard Rock Stadium?
Inter Miami and Messi play home games at Chase Stadium, a venue with capacity for only about 20,000 spectators.
The particularity of Chase Stadium is not only due to its limited size, but also to its location: it is not in Miami, but in the neighboring city of Fort Lauderdale, located just under 50 kilometers away.
There are two main reasons why Inter Miami does not play at Hard Rock Stadium: the first is that Messi’s team is building its own stadium: Miami Freedom Park, which will be located in the city of Miami from 2025 .
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The second is that the owner of Hard Rock Stadium is Stephen Ross, who in turn owns Relevent Sports Group. This group, which among other events has organized the International Champions Cup – a series of friendlies with European clubs that were previously played in the United States – is a direct competitor of Soccer United Marketing of the MLS. Relevent Sports sued the United States Soccer Federation in a recent dispute, linked to the holding of LaLiga matches in North America.
With this in mind, it seems extremely unlikely that an MLS team (Inter Miami or not) will compete in a Ross-owned stadium in the near future.
