Messi to have a theme park in China

In Nanjing City and will open in 2019

Posted Saturday, October 07, 2017 by Marca.com

On Thursday, a presentation was given to officially announce that Lionel Messi's theme park will open in 2019 in Nanjing.

It will be called Messi Experience Park and promises to be a place one can spend the entire day, rather than your conventional player musuem.

The project is being spearheaded by LMM (Leo Messi Management), which handles the Argentinian player's brand, Mediapro Exhibitions, as the developing and designing company and the Chinese capital company Phoenix U-Art, the main investor.

All the parties involved were adamant in creating something unique and interactive.

The head of MediaPro, David Xirau, provided extensive details on the project, starting with why China was chosen as the location.

"Football in China is growing exponentially with the support of the authorities and Nanjing is the football capital of the country," he said.

"The project will be very large, measuring at nearly 80,000 square metres, with most of the indoor spaces being separated by a theme.

"The park will be connected to Shanghai, attracting 4-5 million visitors a year, the majority coming from tourism.

"It is expected to be operational in 2020 and will cost close to 170 million euros, beyond any investments needed for urbanisation."

Xirau believes that the timing of the project is perfect as well.

"Michael Jordan, who is already retired, is the most popular sports brand in China," he continued.

"This is a tribute to the footballing brand of Messi. The space will need to be updated eventually, but not Leo, fortunately.

"In fact, neither Pele, Cruyff or Maradona ended their influence on the sport once they retired."

MEP and its plans for any more future parks was also talked about.

"Our partner has the exclusivity to do this project in China," he stated.

"We are working to make other Messi Experience's in other places, hopefully there will be news soon."

The vision is to also make this more of a theme park and less of a museum.

"The idea is that the visitor will want to spend the whole day here," he remarked.

"The project started as a museum, but over time, after seeing the ambition of the partners and the Nanjing authorities, we saw that we needed to make it for all ages."

Finally, he touched on maybe the most important question - the price of admission.

"I do not have the final price, but it will be comparable to Disney Shanghai's price," he mused.

"But nothing is finalised yet."