Im not confusing anything. You simply cant compare the impact Beckham had on its club in 2000's to the impact Messi has in the 2020s. Its a whole different world, two decades apart. The money involved in football deals is much higher due to the impact marketing has on everything nowadays. Social media and the impact the internet has had in the last few years has been huge, you didnt see twelve year old kids getting millions of dollars a year for being good at videogames two decades ago, now you do.
Messi has almost 300M followers on social media, that alone guarantees him millions per year to any brand that signs with him, and due to relation, Barcelona gets benefitted too. Beckham was popular, yes, but 1) wasnt nearly as influential as Messi on the pitch and 2) wast as world wide known as Messi. Beckham had sponsorships too, featured in commercials, sold shirts etc, but Messi has that too, only multiplied for an X number due to the increase in media in general that we have had in the last few decades.
You open tiktok and you see Messi, you see Adidas, watch youtube and you see an ad of Ronaldo etc. Thats why wages have increased tenfold in the last two decades while you keep paying relatively the same for a dozen of eggs that you did a few decades ago. There's much more money on football now.
There is nothing "hilarious" about saying Messi is 10x more popular than Beckham was. The exposure that the showtime business and sports have nowadays literally is that much higher than back on the cable TV days. Hilarious is to post pics of Beckham with Michelle Obama as an argument, as if anybody ever said Beckham isnt popular or influential on 2021.
I know some of you are just throwing some old-men banter, but still, for anyone else that wants to discuss this seriously, the social media impact is very important to note.