Recently, an image of a jersey bearing Lionel Messi’s name has spread across the world’s media and social media, with the headline “Saudi Arabia’s football club ‘Al-Hilal’ starts selling Messi’s jersey”.
See media reports with similar claims – Evening Standard (England), Sportskeeda (India), Jamuna Tv (Bangladesh).
See some of the posts that circulated on Facebook here, here and here.
View archived versions of posts here, here and here.
Check out some of the videos circulating on YouTube with the same claim – here and here. Check out the archived versions of the videos – here and here.
Watch a TikTok video making the same claim (archive).
Fact Check
According to the Rumor Scanner’s investigation, There is no credible evidence that Messi’s jerseys are being sold in Al-Hilal’s official store, rather the claim has spread on the internet based on just one picture.
Argentine star footballer Lionel Messi left Barcelona in August 2021 and joined French football club PSG. Messi’s two-year contract with PSG will expire on June 30 this year. On the other hand, Al-Hilal is a very old professional football club in Saudi Arabia. A claim that a physical store of the club is selling the club’s jersey with Messi’s name has gone viral on the internet.
How did the investigation begin?
At the beginning of the investigation into the matter, a search on Al-Hilal’s website did not find any information regarding the sale of Messi’s jersey by Al-Hilal Club.
Moreover, no information was found in Al-Hilal Club’s official social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube).
Later, the Rumor Scanner team searched reliable international media (Marca, TYC Sports, Goal) and found no information on the matter.
Therefore, this information was not spread by Al-Hilal’s related sources or any reliable international media sources.
Investigate the source of the image being circulated
Without finding any information related to the claim from Al-Hilal’s sources or any reliable international media sources, the Rumor Scanner team started investigating the image attached to the published posts.
Searching through advanced tools and manual search, the image (archive) was found on December 31, 2022 in a Twitter account named ‘MnbrAlhilal’. Along with the photo shared, the tweet was captioned, “Messi’s jersey in Al-Hilal store.” Besides, no other detailed information was given in the tweet.
The Rumor Scanner team analyzed the image and found that the location where the image was taken could be a branch of Al-Hilal store. Because the Al-Hilal logo is clearly visible on the top of the store where the photo was taken.
However, some inconsistencies appear in the picture. The jerseys hanging on the hanger in the picture are small in size and all the jerseys are arranged on one side in the same format. But the jersey with Messi’s name is bigger than the other jerseys, but this jersey is placed with other jerseys of smaller size. Moreover, the jersey with Messi’s name is not hung in the format of the other jerseys but is hung upside down.
The twitter account named ‘MnbrAlhilal’ was also analyzed by the Rumor Scanner team.
The Twitter account is basically a fan page (this information is written in the account bio). The account regularly posts various updates on Al-Hilal. However, the Rumor Scanner team could not find any other tweets about the jersey except the one that was published about the jersey with Messi’s name on it.
Later, the Rumor Scanner team did not find any information on their Instagram account given in the Twitter account’s bio. Analysis of the WhatsApp number mentioned in the Twitter account shows that the account belongs to a marketing agency.
To know more about this, the Rumor Scanner team tried to contact the said WhatsApp number. However, no response was received from them until the publication of this report.
The Rumor Scanner team saw subsequent social media and media coverage of the photo and tweet. However, the Rumor Scanner team did not find any additional information beyond the tweet or any reliable sources in the reports.
What is the Saudi media saying about the image?
To find out about the discussed claim, by searching keywords in different languages on the website of the Saudi Arabian newspaper ‘Al-Marsd’ on January 01, we found a report titled “The secret behind the appearance of the controversial Messi T-shirt inside Al- Hilal store in Riyadh – photo” (archive).
According to the report, “The source said that a fan of the club (Al-Hilal) brought the jersey with him. He then hung it in Al-Hilal’s store and took a picture of it, in order to persuade the club’s management in the hope of signing a contract with the Argentine player. As Al-Nasr did with Cristiano Ronaldo.”
The Rumor Scanner team tried to contact ‘Al-Marsd’ to find out about this. However, no reply was received from them till the publication of this report.
What was revealed by searching Al-Hilal’s store?
The Rumor Scanner team signed into the club’s official app ‘Blu’ on January 16 to confirm whether jerseys bearing Messi’s name were being sold at Al-Hilal stores.
Although the app has player and fan jerseys, none of the jerseys have any player’s name on the back.
That is, Al-Hilal Club’s official store ‘Blu’ is not selling any jerseys with Messi’s name on them.
Later, the Rumor Scanner team searched Al-Hilal store located on Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Road in Riyadh through Jordan based Middle East’s fact checking company ‘Fatabyyano’. Also in the store, no Messi jerseys were found on display.
Fatabyyano’s fact checker Loay Khreis told RumorScanner, “Some unofficial local news sources in Saudi reported that a fan brought the jersey to request the club to sign Messi here. But there has been no official response from the club so far.”
Fatabyyano also provided the link to the report published by ‘Al-Marsd’ to Rumor Scanner.
That is, no jerseys bearing Messi’s name are being sold at Al-Hilal stores.
Can another club sell the jersey of a player contracted to one club?
According to the international football media ‘Goal’, at one time football clubs used to pay players just to play. However, to keep up with the changing times and eras, now the clubs have found a way to earn money through entertainment and brand space. As a result, a practice called ‘image rights’ has started to be practiced, including the players’ names, pictures, signatures, autographs, physiques or selling jerseys.
Under this practice, a player’s image rights held by a club cannot be used by another club. However, in this case, if the concerned player sells his image rights to a third party company, the concerned club will not have any authority over the image rights of the said player.
But in the case of Messi, his image rights remain with PSG. According to Spanish football media ‘Football Espana’, PSG earned 700 million euros in Messi’s first season at PSG through Messi’s image rights, marketing and match-day revenue.
That is, since Messi’s image rights are with PSG, no club other than PSG can sell Messi’s jersey.
Bottom Line
Based on a single unsourced photo, a claim that Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal football club has started selling Messi jerseys is circulating on the internet. However, no confirmation was found and investigations confirmed that the jersey was not being sold on Al-Hilal Store’s app, website and physical shop in Riyadh. Regarding the photo, Saudi media and a fact-checking organization reported that a fan had brought the jersey to the store to request the club to sign Messi.” That is, the news that Al-Hilal is selling Messi’s jersey in the official store is baseless.
It should be noted that a rumor of Al-Hilal offering 300 million dollars to get Lionel Messi has been heard, but Spanish football expert Guillem Balague dismissed the possibility of such a deal for now. In addition, Al-Hilal has a transfer ban in the winter, which has forced the club to withdraw from their desire to buy Ronaldo.
Incidentally, Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo signed a two-year contract with Al Nassr, another club in Saudi Arabia, on December 30, 2022.
So, the news circulating in the media and social media claiming that the official store of Al-Hilal Club in Saudi Arabia is selling Messi jerseys is false.
Sources
- Al-Hilal: Website
- MnbrAlhilal: Twitter
- Al-Marsd: The secret behind the appearance of the controversial “Messi” T-shirt inside Al-Hilal store in Riyadh – photo
- Al Hilal app: Blu
- Al-Hilal Store: Location
- Goal: What are image rights in football & how did they affect Dybala’s transfer to Tottenham?
- Statement from Fatabyyano
- Football Espana: Lionel Messi has generated Paris Saint-Germain €700m since joining the club
