A video showing a sea of crowd in the United States' Milwaukee to celebrate the Bucks' NBA Finals win is viral with a false claim that it shows Paris Saint-Germain fans waiting outside Paris Airport to welcome footballer Lionel Messi.
Thousands of PSG fans on August 10 gathered to greet Messi, who arrived in Paris to reportedly finalise on a two-year deal with the football club Paris St Germain. The deal will see the Argentine player receive a €25 million signing-on fee and earn €25 million a year with the option of an additional year. The Messi recently broke down while addressing his farewell press conference, after confirming that he was leaving Barcelona after 21 years.
The caption with the viral video reads , "PSG fans at the airport Yeah, Leo Messi is bigger than any sport".
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Fact Check
BOOM observed a clearer version of the video and noticed a name of a store "The Mecca Sports Bar And Grill" written on a building in one of its frames.
We then ran a keyword search on Google Maps, which led us to an image of the same place on Google Maps - Mecca Sports Bar and Grill, Milwaukee in the US state of Wisconsin.
Below is a screen-to-screen comparison between the visuals from the viral video and the image of The Mecca Sports Bar And Grill store located at Milwaukee. This showed that the video is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Taking cue from this, we ran a keyword search and found a similar video uploaded on National Basketball Association (NBA's) official YouTube channel on July 21, 2021. The caption with the video states, "The Deer District Right Before Tip!" The match was held between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phenix Suns in front of a packed audience at Deer District's Fiserv Forum. After Milwaukee's win Bucks fans were reported to be jubilant and in a celebratory mood. Read more here.
The same video was uploaded on NBA's Twitter account .
A Live Blog published by NBA on July 21 reported about the gathering.
An image of a huge crowd of fans gathered in Milwaukee on July 20 during the games was also used to report on the rising number of COVID cases post the matches. Read more here.
(Additional Reporting: Sujith A)
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