BEHIND THE PLAY #68

When I was eight years old we took our first family trip back to Scotland. I was born there but hadn’t been back since we moved to Canada when I was ten months old. My dad timed it nicely, and very intentionally so that we were there for the 1974 World Cup which Scotland had qualified for for the first time since 1958.

I really have only a handful of memories from that trip but among them is gathering in front of my grandparents TV to watch World Cup games. We had no family in Canada so there were always aunts, uncles and cousins to see and watch games with. It was my first experience of having extended family and even though it was the first time I’d seen any of them with the ability to comprehend them as family I remember it feeling warm and inviting with people excited to see us.

It was also almost certainly the first time I’d seen soccer on TV and it began an uninterrupted streak of seeing World Cup finals live on TV.

The World Cup was still not being broadcast in Canada in 1978 so my dad got us tickets to see games at the Pacific Coliseum on a a big screen there. We went to see Scotland v Holland and the final between Holland and West Germany. In 1982, CBC broadcast every game so we rented a VCR, new technology at the time and recorded nearly everyone one of them. Some of the VHS tapes exist to this day and my dad has never quite forgiven my sister for taping over the France v West Germany semi-final.

From there on in it became easier to watch the World Cup and the next one in 1986 of course featured Canada’s first participation. I was fully swept up in this having finished a year playing with the U19 national team that culminated in the 1985 Youth World Cup in the USSR.

That led to going to see two of Scotland’s games in the 1990 World Cup as part of a round the world backpacking trip with a friend that conveniently saw us hit Genoa in time to meet my uncle and his friend. He had tickets for us and being part of that atmosphere was a formative experience for me.

Through the 90’s until now, the streak of watching World Cup finals, along with most of the other games leading to it, has remained. In 2002, my wife went into labour with our youngest minutes after the opening game between France and Senegal started. I looked at her and said, “You must be kidding.” in decidedly stronger language. She wasn’t but I did get out to Commercial Drive to watch the final in the middle of the night a month later.

In 2014 I was able to go to Brazil and see eight games. An unforgettable trip through five cities with two friends for three weeks. We saw VanPersie’s flying header against Spain and James Rodriguez’s goal of the tournament in the Round of 16 against Uruguay in the Maracana.

There were serious concerns around human rights raised regarding Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup but I had been saying for a long, long time that I would go to the next World Cup that Canada qualified for. None of my friends were interested so I went with my daughter. We saw eight games, including all three of Canada’s.

We were home, as with Brazil, in time to watch the final on TV. So that’s 13 World Cup finals in a row that I have watched on TV.

And now we host. And tickets are for sale. And I am perhaps the least enthralled I’d ever been for a World Cup.

I’ll probably go but like many the pricing of tickets and the methodology behind their disbursement to the public is really off-putting. I’d had plans with another friend to go big on this World Cup. We looked at options and considered contacts we had that might be able to help us get a suite at BC Place that we would then extend access to to friends to share the cost. Suites for the first time though were not available to plebs like us. They were all bundled into corporate sponsorship packages. That should’ve tipped us off that this World Cup would be different.

Next up was Hospitality level tickets that had gone on sale almost a year ago. I put down a $500 deposit for early access. These had been available at about twice face value in previous World Cups but it turned out that they were starting at around $2000 and you had to commit to buying them for all the games at BC Place. So a pair was looking at being $28,000.

The reality is that football people no longer run FIFA and by extension the World Cup. Consultants and their in-house MBA revenue extractors have been brought in with charts telling FIFA they were leaving millions on the table. And that’s true. Much as airlines and music promoters realized at some point, they were not reaching the saturation point whereby every dollar that could possibly be had through NFT tokens, minimum buys, Right to Buy schemes and dynamic pricing could be hoovered into the tax friendly abode of FIFA headquarters in Zurich. And that would be understandable, if not necessarily cool, if FIFA were, like LiveNation, airlines and other businesses taking this approach, a corporation. Corporations, by law, must serve the financial needs of their shareholders which means profits take precedence over everything else. It’s a pretty sociopathic approach to any large scale endeavour but their leaders and lobbyists got in early and had that script written and passed into law ages ago.

But FIFA is not a corporation. It is an international non-profit organization. A self-regulating one to boot. There are no shareholders to serve and appease. Instead, here are FIFA’s stated Objectives from the FIFA Statutes.

There’s nothing here that either encourages or restrains FIFA from profit maximization aside from the fact that it is structured as a not-for-profit organization. I don’t know what Swiss laws are in this regard but if the youth soccer club that I work for conducted itself this way, (a) we would have members taking us to task and (b) at some point we would have to defend maintaining our status as a not for profit under the BC Societies Act with the relevant regulatory body.

Do we need the world’s governing body for the game to charge at least $1000 for what will likely be 66% of all tickets made available for sale? Does FIFA need to construct its own re-selling platform and take a cut from both the buyers and the sellers on every transaction after they have already pocketed the initial purchase price? Do we need FIFA to hire an ongoing stream of Hollywood stars to participate in made for TV events like the World Cup draw and announcements of host cities? Does Kevin Hart really help with FIFA’s objectives? Do we need a FIFA President who seems more intent on ingratiating himself into the world of celebrity than as the preeminent custodian of the game?

Who is going to buy these tickets here? Has anyone considered that the most recent Canadian census showed that the median household income in Vancouver is $72,000 and that more than any other major city a disproportionate amount of that income goes to shelter? There is most certainly zero correlation between ardent fans and those who can afford to see games at these prices.

I think one of the leading goals for FIFA in this World Cup is this. They want to own the record for the highest grossing single spectator event in history. The want the World Cup final to generate ticket sales over $100 million. I have no proof of this but the current record is in the neighbourhood of US$38m and belongs to either Beyonce or Rod Steward depending on which Google search result you believe. Recent Super Bowls are probably higher but given how many platforms re-sell those tickets getting an accurate final tally would be difficult. 75,000 tickets at an average of $1400 each though will take the gate past $100 million.

I have been fortunate to be at the World Cup games I mentioned and see the goals I’ve mentioned. I’m aware of that and I have a very understanding partner who has accepted my devotion to the game for 33 years now. I’ve seen many of the best players of the day and some of the greatest teams to grace the world’s fields. I felt the financial cost of that though. I intentionally cut back on other purchases to lessen the sting of flying to Brazil and Qatar to see these games. The experiences and the memories I have of them leave me with no regrets but if I felt the strain of that cost, I wonder how many more people are now going to be excluded from those games, experiences associated with them and the concomitant memories.

The experience of being there is underrated. For all the wonder I saw on World Cup pitches, I have three overriding memories and none are what you might think but each is from one of the World Cups I went to.

The first was at the 1990 World Cup. We were in the Luigi Ferraris stadium in Genoa for the Scotland vs Costa Rica game. It held no more than 35,000 with easily three quarters of those in attendance supporting Scotland.

It was the first time I’d seen Scotland play an international game. I’d heard about the Tartan Army but didn’t get the commitment to the pursuit that was involved.

When we got to Genoa though, I was excited to see a World Cup game and was glad it was Scotland. I didn’t have expectations of it being a revelatory moment.

Then the teams came out. I knew this from the noise. It started before I could see them emerge. Then the crowd burst into Flower of Scotland. Burst is both accurate and somehow insufficient. Again, not a massive stadium but the partial roof no doubt helped hem in the sound of what must have been 3,000,000 full-throated Scots in that stadium. Spine-tingling and I’m still unsure how the players’ hearts didn’t burst through their chest hearing it.

The second was in Brazil. We were seeing our only game at the Maracana and it was a doozy. Colombia v Uruguay in the Round of 16. For some reason the supporters were not separated as they’d been to this point. The crowd was a patchwork of yellow clusters and light blue clusters and they were at each other the whole game. Just in our vicinity, stewards had to step in and separate people at least five or six times. For larger kerfuffles riot police stepped in and quickly established control, dragging some supporters out when necessary.

But the moment that sticks with me actually happened before the game as we were entering.

We got through security and then scanned our tickets before going through the gate and entering the Maracana. It really did feel amazing to see a game there. I remember looking around soon after I got inside, maybe to take it in, maybe to find my friends. What I ended up seeing though was a Colombian fan who had also just entered. He was in his mid 20’s and seemed to be one of the last of his group to come in as friends were waiting for them. As soon as he got in, he did a quiet but very intense celebration of his entry. He bent over and shook his fists as if he’d scored an important goal. This lasted several seconds. I only saw when he exhaled and went back to an upright position that he had tears in his eyes. We caught each other’s glance and he immediately shook it off and composed himself as his friends, also elated, shouted to him to get over and join them.

This guy was shaken. I have to imagine that it had not been easy for him to get the ticket for this game and to get to Rio for the game. That there had been some real sacrifice to make this moment happen and he was exulting in this personal moment. It was of fundamental importance; a clear success story that would stay with him forever. And he hadn’t even got to his seat yet.

The last one is more personal. I’d seen a lot of great games, teams and goals. I’ve mentioned in previous BTP’s how lucky I’ve been that the games I’ve been to have somehow resulted in some of the most memorable goals scored in the last ten years or so. Goal voted best of the 2014 World Cup? We were there to see it. 2022 World Cup? Same. 2016 Euro. Yep, saw Shaqiri’s bike/scissor kick from outside the box against Poland. Trent’s quick corner against Barcelona at Anfield in the 2019 Champions League semi? Yes, that and also Messi’s free kick voted goal of that year’s Champions league in the first leg at the Camp Nou.

Crazy amount of luck.

But what I really wanted to see more than anything else was Canada at a World Cup and for us to score a goal and, with some luck, win a game.

We had to wait for the second game against Croatia for the goal after the unfortunate penalty miss against Belgium, which ironically ended up being the game we most deserved to win.

Phonzie made up for that penalty miss in the second minute. The TV cameras caught my reaction and it was beamed all around the world. My phone truly lit up. I’ve been sent this photo 20-30 times. Most in the minutes and hours following the goal but as late as this past year.

I had seen Canada score it’s goal in the World Cup. I’d also had six beers at Canada House earlier in the day in the hot Qatar sun so I was maybe a bit more emotional than I’d have been sober but it didn’t immediately hit me that after watching our men’s team struggle to qualify campaign after campaign, after 8-1, after not even making it the hex in this century’s World Cup qualifying tournaments, we were now up 1-0 on the team that had made it to the final of the 2018 World Cup.

No, it didn’t last but it didn’t need to. I was there. With thousands of other Canadians including my daughter and it felt fantastic.

I was at a World Cup launch event recently where Russell Teibert, Bob Lenarduzzi and Christine Sinclair were speaking. I was talking to Bob and Russell before it started and said to Russell that you really don’t get what a World Cup means to people until you go to one yourself.

Yes, the vast majority of people cannot not afford to go support their teams in Brazil and Qatar. Tickets were considered expensive for both. Cat 1 tickets were around C$275 and $300 respectively and getting and staying there was also a financial challenge for many. It’s an investment of our three most fundamental resources: time, money and emotion and you realize that once you’re in a city, and it’s stadium, for a World Cup game, that the emotional aspect is what dominates and lasts.

So why is that any different than ticket prices for the 2026 World Cup? Mainly because the average price of entry will likely be at least triple what Qatar was and that will change the demographic of the crowds. You are now selling to the top 5-10% of the population in terms of income and through that you are losing the young supporter who got to hear his country’s supporters wake the dead with a patriotic song. You are losing the supporter who probably sold a motorcycle or something else he really enjoyed or needed to see his country play a knock out game in Rio and you’re losing a guy who had checked a big box by seeing his country qualify and score their first goal in a World Cup. You’re losing me and thousands and thousands like me who set aside rational behaviour and impulse buy Cat 1 tickets at 4am because you heard there was a new ticket drop. Thousands who go and join the street parties and clog cities and go absolutely mental when our teams score.

Instead you’re getting a guy, maybe a tech bro in the Bay Area or a hedge fund manager in Connecticut, who will find out that the World Cup final is on in a couple of days and casually buy a couple of tickets for $20,000 a pop without knowing who’s actually playing. You’ll get influencers, celebrities and politicians given priority access despite, again, having little interest in the actual game beyond what it can do for their social media clout or polling numbers.

You will get something that was once important beyond dollars to millions of people and now has been treated like an exercise in short term profit maximization so callous that the remains of Pele, Beckenbauer and Maradona will turn in their grave at the sight of the shell that the world’s truly greatest sporting event has been turned into by spreadsheet peddlers, negligent guardians of the game and grifters who smelled this siphoning opportunity coming.

Next issue: Sooner rather than later