Football and the Memory Economy: Lessons From a Mexico City Exhibition

On October 1, 2026, according to the organizers' announcement, the doors of the Palacio Postal in Mexico City's historic centre opened for the exhibition “Amor eterno: por siempre Juan Gabriel”. Inside is the personal collection of the late singer Juan Gabriel — who died in 2026 yet whose voice still fills millions of Spanish-speaking homes. The exhibition is scheduled to run until January 2027 and is presented by three parties: Correos de México (the state postal service), the Museo Juan Gabriel and the Fundación Juan Gabriel. A karaoke room called “Palacio del Despecho” has been built so visitors can sing the old love songs again; a documentary projection recalls the 2026 concert at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

I stood before the queue and thought of something else entirely: football stadiums. This exhibition runs on a formula that many European clubs have already adopted — turning collective memory into a year-round revenue stream that does not depend on the fixture list. The pitch may fall silent, but the city's heartbeat still keeps time with the ball. That holds for a city living on the memory of someone gone, and equally for a club living on its own memory.

Context: when matchday revenue is no longer enough

For more than a decade, Europe's big clubs have faced twin pressure. Transfer fees and wage bills have grown faster than revenue, while financial fair-play rules — UEFA's FFP and later the Premier League's PSR — force them to balance income and spending. Tickets, broadcasting rights and shirt sponsorship remain the three familiar pillars. Yet a fourth pillar is quietly growing: non-matchday revenue, including museums, stadium tours and the commercial use of legends' images.

Based on my experience watching matches and training sessions, most fans see a club only through the 90 minutes on the pitch. But a club operates 365 days a year. Between matches, the stadium still stands there — an expensive fixed asset, and by business logic a fixed asset must earn every day. That is why club museums exist, why stadium tours are run, and why legends are brought back to the centre of the brand.

Looking to Mexico, the Juan Gabriel model makes one thing clear: when a heritage brand meets a public venue and an organisation representing the deceased, money can flow for months, even years. Football clubs have all three ingredients. They have simply not always exploited them systematically.

One telling detail: the exhibition's announcement mentions “dates, times and ticket price”, yet the published content gives no specific price. For a heritage event, the ticket price is the variable that decides whether it is a cultural service or a revenue machine. This is the data gap any analyst must fill before drawing conclusions.

The core: four layers of football's heritage economy

The first layer is the museum and the stadium tour. Real Madrid runs the Bernabéu Tour, one of the most visited attractions in Madrid; revenue from it has been reported by the international sports press at tens of millions of euros a year. Barcelona has the Camp Nou Experience and a museum regarded as a major cultural destination in Catalonia. Manchester United runs a museum and tour at Old Trafford; Bayern Munich has the FC Bayern Erlebniswelt; Liverpool and Juventus operate similar spaces. For a big club this is high-margin, stable income that barely depends on results. A match can be won or lost; a stadium tour sells tickets every day.

The second layer is the stadium as a year-round events venue. After the Bernabéu was redeveloped, Real Madrid has staged concerts, commercial events and even American football games on a retractable pitch. The club turns an asset used only a few dozen days a year into a multi-purpose theatre. In essence this is the same logic as the Palacio Postal opening its doors for a months-long exhibition: using an iconic building to generate revenue beyond its original function. In Asia, the big stadiums of Japan and South Korea are beginning to follow, though on a smaller scale.

The third layer, and the most valuable, is the exploitation of legends' intellectual property. Reissued shirts, documentaries, digital content, signed product lines, and the licensing of the images of retired or deceased players. Johan Cruyff is bound to Barcelona's identity; Alfredo Di Stéfano to Real Madrid; Francesco Totti to Roma; Paolo Maldini to Milan; Steven Gerrard to Liverpool. Such names do not lose value over time — in many cases they gain it as the generation that watched them grows up and gains spending power. For legends who have passed away, such as Diego Maradona or Pelé, image rights become a carefully managed estate asset.

The fourth layer is the anniversary campaign. A centenary year, the anniversary of a title, a season of remembrance for a legend. These are milestones planned years in advance, when collective emotion and revenue peak together. In football people forget the score, but they never forget the look in a player's eyes after a goal conceded — nor the feeling of standing in a stand that chants the name of someone gone.

Beyond those four layers lies a less-discussed foundation: the archive. The rights to historic matches, immortal goals and moments captured across decades are the raw material for documentaries, social-media content and digital memory packages. A club with a strong archive can reuse it endlessly, in countless formats, at almost no marginal cost.

At the operational level, many clubs have partnered with city tourism bodies to place the stadium on the destination map. Visitors buy tour tickets, stay in hotels, eat and shop around the area — the benefit spills beyond the club. Local authorities have reason to support it, and the club gains a free marketing channel. It is a model a public building such as the Palacio Postal is also pursuing by opening its doors to a months-long exhibition.

What stands out in the Juan Gabriel model is the division of roles. Correos de México provides the venue — an iconic public building. The Museo Juan Gabriel provides the content — the personal collection. The Fundación Juan Gabriel provides legitimacy — the right to represent a deceased person's heritage. Three parties, three functions, one product. Football clubs can map this directly: the stadium is the venue, the club museum is the content, and the former-players' association or a legend's family fund is the source of legitimacy.

In Vietnam, this story is still at an early stage. The memory of the generations of players who built the national game's reputation largely lives in fans' recollections and in archive footage, rather than being organised into a visitor product or a proper merchandise line. That gap is both a risk — memory fading — and an opportunity for clubs willing to invest in a museum and heritage space.

The contrarian angle: museums are undervalued as cost centres

A common view in football management is that museums and stadium tours are merely public-relations tools, a cost to polish the image. That view leads many clubs to treat them as cost centres, and so they miss the biggest part of the value.

The contrarian view rests on a simple fact: of the four layers above, the most profitable is not the entrance ticket. Ticket sales have a ceiling — visitor numbers are capped by capacity and location. The real profit lies in licensing legends' image and brand rights, which can be replicated endlessly without additional physical space. An exhibition in Mexico City sells tickets for a few months; a licensed image can appear on products in dozens of countries for years.

Yet the most valuable layer is also the most legally and ethically complex. While a player is alive, his image rights belong to him and his agent. When he dies, those rights usually pass to the family or a heritage fund. This is where the Juan Gabriel model leaves its clearest lesson: the presence of the Fundación Juan Gabriel shows that commercialising a deceased person's image almost always requires formal consent from the estate's representatives. Without that consent, any commercial campaign faces dispute risk.

Every contract is a parting and a rebirth. For a deceased legend, the contract is no longer the player's business but that of his family, lawyers and the brand. Clubs that understand this early build lasting partnerships; clubs that ignore it face litigation or a stalled anniversary campaign.

Another rarely mentioned paradox: over-commercialising memory can destroy the very value it wants to sell. If every corner of the stadium becomes a merchandise stall, the sacred emotion is diluted. The line between honouring and exploiting is thin, and the fans — sensitive to anything fake — will be the final judges.

The takeaway: heritage needs a keeper, not just a seller

Stars are not born on the pitch; they are raised from forgotten soil. And after they leave, the memory of them also needs raising — by a museum, a stadium tour, a fund, or a carefully prepared anniversary campaign.

What is worth watching in the coming period is whether clubs move from selling tour tickets to building a dedicated heritage department: one that manages legends' image rights, relationships with deceased players' families, and a long-term anniversary calendar. Whoever does this will hold a revenue stream independent of the score — and a reason for the next generation to walk into the stadium even when the team is losing.