It's really regional. Where I live, baseball is the primary sport and basketball (primarily NBA) is a distant second. Many but considerably less than half of young people know who Messi is but only because he just won a world cup and even that memory is fading fast since most people didn't watch it. You'd struggle to find anyone under 60 who hadn't heard of Zuck.
That’s the US perspective. But globally the final of the World Cup (which Messi played) was seen by more than 1.5B people (compared to <200M in the Super Bowl). It is a big name.
No, it's not. Did you really think baseball was the most popular sport in America? I was talking about where I live (Taiwan).
Also, it's a safe bet that more than 1.5 billion people just between India and China have heard of Zuck given how often he's been front page media in both countries.
