00:00This is a story about having too much of a good thing.
00:03The Men's World Cup has returned to the United States this summer for the first time in over 30 years.
00:08And this time, Mexico and Canada have joined in.
00:12It's a dramatically different championship than we saw in 1994,
00:16with more teams, more matches, and a lot more money.
00:20But is there such a thing as going too far in extracting cash out of mega sports events?
00:31Manchester local Andy Milne arrived in Miami ready to cheer on England.
00:36I can't wait for that first match.
00:37When the national anthem strikes up, and I know that kickoff is two minutes away,
00:42and it's England against Croatia, and our World Cup is going to start,
00:46there's nothing like that feeling in the world.
00:49After attending his first football, or soccer in America, World Cup in 1982,
00:55this will be his tenth, and easily the most expensive.
00:58And this is me with the lads at university, with my England shirt on,
01:02eager and ready to go over there and watch the finals.
01:07So expensive, he wrote a book to help fund the trip.
01:10So in 1982, obviously a completely different era.
01:13Prices were cheap, and you didn't have to get your tickets in advance.
01:17You could queue for tickets outside the stadium.
01:19So for the final itself, I queued for three days,
01:23which maybe sounds like a terribly boring thing to do,
01:27but it's actually great fun.
01:28And then eventually I got my ticket,
01:30and the ticket came to a princely sum of 800 pesetas,
01:34which was equivalent to £4.15.
01:37I guess around about $5.
01:41It's changed a bit now.
01:42It sure has.
01:44A recent Economist report found that tickets for this year's World Cup
01:48dwarf previous versions of the event.
01:50The list price for the final match is much higher than that of other marquee sports fixtures,
01:55including the Super Bowl.
01:57And that's the list price.
01:59On FIFA's official resale platform,
02:02tickets for the final are going for far beyond face value,
02:06with the organizer taking a 30% cut.
02:08Six billion people all over the world will watch the World Cup.
02:14It's little wonder that FIFA head Gianni Infantino
02:18expects overall revenue to break the record,
02:20reaching over $11 billion,
02:24leading some to question when enough is enough.
02:28I guess my advice to Gianni Infantino,
02:30well, just make it $7 or $8 billion
02:31and put a few billion back to make this what it should be,
02:35which is a very accessible and inclusive World Cup.
02:39Peter Moore is the former CEO of Liverpool Football Club
02:42and is now part of the ownership group of football teams in California and Poland.
02:47This World Cup, it feels a little different, to say the least,
02:50because I don't think it's accessible.
02:51This is the world's game.
02:53This should be a platform for everybody that loves the game all around the world
02:57to be able to come, to afford to come,
03:00as they've done in all of the previous World Cups.
03:03And I've been fortunate to attend six World Cups.
03:05But we've got the issues of dynamic pricing, the secondary market.
03:10And basically, I think FIFA has decided that this World Cup
03:14is where they're going to make a stated $11 billion
03:17and make this a very exclusive World Cup rather than what it should be,
03:22which is an incredibly inclusive World Cup.
03:24The idea of leaving a few billion dollars in potential revenue on the table
03:28might not be a sound strategy for most businesses.
03:31But Moore says sports are different.
03:34Football has changed since I first went to Anfield with my dad in 1959.
03:38It's a very different economy.
03:40In those days, it was his five shillings through the turnstile
03:44and in you go and you stand on the terraces.
03:46Now it's a multi-hundred billion dollar business worldwide, and I get that.
03:50But you've got to balance out the fact that the people who made this game,
03:54the world's game, is the average Jack and Jill on the street.
03:58And it's not the corporate hospitality.
04:00And what we love about the game, what we love about World Cups,
04:03is the passion that comes from the stands.
04:05So it's not just filling stadiums with people, it's the right people.
04:09And by that, the average football fan who will have a trip of a lifetime
04:14to the United States, Canada, and Mexico,
04:17and you need to respect the fact that they've got this dream to do it.
04:21But right now, I worry very much that there are hundreds of thousands,
04:26if not millions of tickets, in the wrong hands.
04:28And by the way, I say the wrong hands.
04:29It's people who are speculators-type scalpers that are looking.
04:33They see these tickets as a fungible asset that they can make money on
04:38rather than the precious seat at the world's game.
04:42It's a bigger issue for football in general is that it's becoming more expensive.
04:46You've got an older fan who maybe has had that season ticket for 30, 40 years.
04:50It's the issue of how do you maintain the ability for multi-generational support.
04:55My granddad was a Liverpool fan.
04:57My dad was a Liverpool fan.
04:58I'm obviously a Liverpool fan.
04:59But more and more people are somewhat being priced out.
05:03And the energy in the stadium, for bluntly an older demographic, if you will,
05:07rather than the younger demographic that I grew up with, is starting to dwindle.
05:12And so you've got to find ways of allowing people that bring the energy,
05:16the passion, the excitement, the singing, back in there and can afford to do so.
05:22It's not just the so-called beautiful game, either.
05:25Sports team valuations are soaring and investors are seeing opportunities in a wide range of sports,
05:31from basketball to cricket, from baseball to pickleball.
05:35Cathy Carter has spent her career in commercial roles in sports,
05:39from the 1994 FIFA World Cup until recently as the former CEO of the L.A. 2028 Olympics.
05:46We obviously all know that we've seen a massive disruption in media in our country
05:51and, quite frankly, across the globe.
05:53And so, you know, you have different ways and micro-communities
05:57that actually follow different either sports teams or communities
06:01that are developed around whatever the content might be.
06:04And I'd say that has both complicated and also given opportunity to the World Cup,
06:10to what is actually happening this summer.
06:12But it does mean that there are so many ways that companies or fans can engage with the game
06:18and creates what you might say is this groundswell of commercial support for the event.
06:24And in some cases, so much more money that's at stake, both in terms of media rights.
06:29Obviously, we can talk about the ticketing, sponsorship, merchandise.
06:33I mean, we're at a scale that is very different.
06:37In 1994, we were introducing the game.
06:39And now I would say that from a World Cup standpoint,
06:44FIFA is really saying, how do we now maximize the opportunity
06:47so we can take dollars and redistribute those dollars around the world?
06:50You mentioned several revenue sources, ticket sales, media rights, merchandising, corporate sponsorships.
06:57Have they grown together or have some become larger than others?
07:01Well, listen, I'd say media rights is historically the major or the number one revenue source
07:08in this particular World Cup, given the number of tickets and certainly the pricing on the games.
07:13And that is going to break all records.
07:15I would say that the FIFA World Cup final, there's no question in my mind,
07:19that will become the largest gate in the history of any sort of event that's ever been produced,
07:23just by virtue of the premium opportunities and the overall ticket pricing, etc.
07:30While many fans will gripe about the cost of tickets to attend matches,
07:34Carter says the money made can go towards making the sport bigger and, yes, better in the long run.
07:40You know, we're a capitalist economy and, you know, we subscribe to the adage of supply and demand.
07:47I do believe that we will see many kids and many families that will still be able to go.
07:51I think it'll be through different routes.
07:53But by the same token, you know, there is a market in this country for events.
07:58There's a market in this country to buy premium.
08:01And I'd say we're seeing what the actual ceiling on that might be as a result of this World Cup.
08:07Where does the money go?
08:09I mean, in other American professional sports, it goes, frankly, a lot of it to the players.
08:13They get paid an awful lot of money.
08:14And then into the owners and the values of the team.
08:17Where does it go in the World Cup?
08:19Yeah, so that's a great question.
08:20You know, a lot of it is in support of the teams that do make it and participate.
08:25And in some cases, that funds an awful lot of their youth development programs, some of the smaller countries.
08:30It allows federations across the world to invest in the game and in the grassroots game in their countries.
08:36But it also then, a disproportionate amount will stay with FIFA, which then goes into what they do to help
08:42grow the game across the world.
08:43And whether that is investing in women's soccer is a great example.
08:48And what they've done to build the FIFA Women's World Cup into a much more significant and revenue-generating and
08:55really the level of exposure for the women's game starts to create opportunity for women that perhaps didn't exist before.
09:02And you could say that across many different areas, whether that's in the youth space or that's in the Paralympic
09:07space where you've got cerebral palsy teams, you've got beach soccer.
09:11So there's a lot of ways that they will contribute money to help the federations around the world continue to
09:17provide opportunity for kids and for those that are coming up through the system, if you will.
09:22Both Carter and Moore agree to keep up in the world of sports, like in business, you need to be
09:28strong commercially.
09:30But you also need to keep the next generation engaged.
09:33And although there may be a market for the high-priced tickets in the United States, Moore worries that the
09:38pricing might tarnish the World Cup's legacy.
09:41And damage future tournaments.
09:43When the stadiums become soulless, where there's no real atmosphere, where it becomes I'm going to an event that I
09:50want to go to because it seems like fun, rather than this is my team, this was my dad's team,
09:56this was my granddad's team.
09:57I live and die for this team.
09:59They mean everything to me.
10:00My mood, my personality is based on whether we win or lose.
10:04Those fans are being priced out.
10:06And that is a long-term price to pay that sports will have to deal with in the future if
10:11these pricing structures stay the same.
10:13As the football gets underway, Moore hopes the tournament is remembered for the action on the field and not for
10:20the cost of admission.
10:22As for whether he's attending?
10:24You know what I did?
10:24I bought a 100-inch TV for half of the price of an England ticket against Croatia.
10:29And I thought, this works.
10:31And seriously, I did.
10:32I went to Best Buy.
10:33I rationalized that this is half of the price of a Category 3 ticket to watch England against Croatia.
10:38And I bought a 100-inch TV.
10:39With all the commercial deals and billions in revenue, modern football can feel like a complex game.
10:46But the secret may lie in the simplicity.
10:49At the end of the day, it's still 11 guys in shorts and a soccer ball.
10:52I mean, that's the beauty of the game.
10:54I mean, they often say, in its simplicity, it's what makes it complex.
10:59And so, you know, I believe once the national anthems get played and the ball is put in the middle
11:05of the field, it's just 11 guys playing against the other 11 guys.
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