BEHIND THE PLAY #69

I usually cobble together notes for this newsletter through the week and try to put them into something cohesive the night before they are auto-sent to subscribers in the morning. The timing of the last issue couldn’t have been more comical.

I got into the FIFA World Cup Visa Pre-Sale Draw: here’s what it was like

After a bit of vitriol regarding the FIFA World Cup ticketing strategy in the previous BTP, I found myself in possession of an email an hour after it was sent to you. It was my invitation to participate in the VISA pre-sale draw which apparently 4.5 million people had entered. At that time, I wasn’t aware of anyone, personally, who had made it in. My slot was a couple days later. I set about researching.

I really have no interest in travelling to the US these days. I know I’m not alone but your mileage may vary so not an important detail. This principle though was tested by the opportunity to get early doors World Cup tickets.

My compromise was that I’d try to get tickets to the Final if they are available at a reasonable price (I know, good one). Everything else on my list was in Canada aside from one Mexico City game.

My entry time was 8am. I’d read it helped if you actually entered the queue a couple hours before that as entry seemed to be based on when you did so. So I was up around 5:30am and staked a spot in the queue before 6am.

Bedlam in a crowd is tactile. By definition its contagious. Bedlam online is subjective and frustrating, yet experienced in isolation. When I got in I quickly discovered only about half of what I’d learned from online forums was applicable or even accurate. Tickets were appearing and disappearing very quickly. It was likely designed to be this way to facilitate people buying games they didn’t necessarily want due to FOMO. Prices were also changing quickly and and often or just disappeared as the ticket allotment for this sales window sold out. Getting a ticket for pretty much any game in Mexico was impossible. Only wheelchair access seats available. It should be noted that there were many of these pre-sale windows and in total only 15% of all tickets that will be sold were spread amongst them.

I started chucking tickets in my cart. Once you do that a timer starts. I’m not even sure in retrospect if it was ten or fifteen minutes we were given to make the purchase before they were released back into the wild but everything about the experience seemed to be designed to dis-orient and disappoint. Once your purchase goes through you are promptly kicked out of the portal and have to wait (16 minutes in my case) to get back in. When I finally got back in everything for Vancouver and Toronto games was gone. I didn’t get anymore tickets on my follow up visit to the portal and called it a morning.

In the end, I got four Category 2 tickets for three games at BC Place.

Match 6 is two unknown teams that will be set at the draw on December 5. Match 51 is Canada vs someone and Match 85 is the Round of 32 game that will feature Canada if they come first in their round robin group. A friend of mine got in a week later. He ended up not getting any tickets at all as the games he wanted were all taken.

There were no tickets for the final available in my window. The re-sale market currently has them available starting at US$32,000 and going up to $81,000.

My tickets averaged a touch over C$500 each. If I put them up for sale on the re-sale platform now at the current lowest price being asked for for the same game and category I’d make just over $12,000 profit and that’s after FIFA take their 15% cut from me (and another 15% from the buyer).

In short the process is manic and unpredictable but it does work. A much larger share of the tickets goes on sale in November in what is being described as a lottery. Not sure how that will work with dynamic pricing but I sense that FIFA is prioritizing strategies that push people back into their re-selling platform so they can make an additional 30% off of tickets they’ve already sold at least once.

The math is music to an MBA’s ears. Sell a ticket for $500. That ticket holder then re-sells it for $1500 netting FIFA another $500 and doubling their revenue on the same ticket.

Am I happy with what I’ve got? Yes but I hate this whole process and that FIFA has apparently made it a goal to gross $3 billion from ticketing from this World Cup.

So in light of the last BTP, you can call me a hypocrite, a pragmatist or a nutjob but there’s a World Cup on in my city and I’m going despite my annoyance with what FIFA and it’s showcase event have become.

Plan B: Europe! Now!

I didn’t expect to get into that Visa Pre-Sale though and I had already said to a friend that I was in the mood to bin the whole thing and plan a soccer road trip to Europe to catch a bunch of games instead. That’s probably getting pushed down the road for some time now but I did spend some time looking at options for that.

So here you go, for all you World Cup refuse-niks, BTP is now your soccer travel agent. Here’s a load of interesting games starting in a few days and going through to December. Pick what looks good and grab some of the great deals on flights to Europe that are flying around these days.

You can easily see 5-7 games in a quick ten day jaunt. Tickets will of course vary tremendously by price and availability but will almost certainly cost you less than World Cup tickets.

Colour coding:

• Green means top notch city, stadium, competition and/or fixture

• Yellow means a notch below that.

• Grey means I don’t really know but sounds cool:)

Handicapping and predicting the NSL playoffs

The first regular season for the Northern Super League wrapped up this weekend. Massive kudos to all those who pulled this off. I’d really thought they’d left it too late to get a 2025 season started but through very capable leadership and determination they did it. Not only did they do it but there hasn’t been a single major gaffe, organizationally, that has diminished the glow around this league. While I’m sure there some moments behind the scenes that caused some issues to pull off the first true professional Canadian women’s soccer league is an outstanding accomplishment.

Looking to the playoffs, here’s some info for those looking to handicap the matchups and pick the eventual winner from the four teams left competing. As the teams were all brand new and some took longer to grow into what their coaches wanted them to play like I think for the purposes of the playoffs its more important to focus on how they finished rather than how they started.

How many points did the teams get in their last five games of the season?

1. Toronto: 13pts from three home games and two away; four wins and one draw

2. Ottawa: 9pts from two home games and three away; lost two of last three

3. Rise: 7pts from one home game and four away games; only lost of last four which were all away games

4. Roses: 4pts from three home games and two away; lost three of last four games

Toronto won the league and became the NSL’s first winner of the Supporters’ Shield. On first look they did so handily finishing 12 points ahead of Ottawa. On closer look though it was mainly because of Toronto’s consistent ability to get points against the two bottom teams that explained the gap.

Points dropped by top four teams to the bottom two:

1. Roses: 15pts

2. Rise: 12 pts

3. Ottawa: 10pts

4. Toronto: 2pts

AFC Toronto picked up 8-13 points on the other three simply by dominating Calgary Wild and Halifax Tides. This suggests that the differences between the four teams in the playoffs may not be as big as the league standings suggest.

When you look at how these teams did against each other its much closer.

Points dropped to others teams in the top four:

1. Ottawa: 26

2. Rise: 24

3. Toronto: 22

4. Roses: 21

This clearly makes the point that in head to head competition the top four are well matched against each other and these are likely to be closely contested games.

Lastly, how did the teams facing each other in the semi finals do against each other. Teams all played each other five times

AFC Toronto vs Montreal Roses: Toronto won three and Montreal won two. Only one goal had more than a one goal spread and that was a 2-0 for Toronto.

Vancouver Rise v Ottawa Rapids: Both teams won twice and drew once. Goal difference edge goes to Ottawa with 11 scored to the Rise’s 8.

My picks:

Toronto over Montreal and Vancouver over Ottawa.

Toronto over Vancouver in the final owing mainly to home city advantage (game being played in Toronto but at BMO Field, not Toronto’s regular home field of York Lions Stadium) and the fact that Toronto psychologically spanked them 7-0 the last time they met.

Next Issue

Issue #70 should be out in about a week. Already got some stuff partially written and plan to do something on the Canada Soccer Business announcement about they want to take over the soccer world here and how great that will be for everyone.

Will Cromack has already written something really good about that. You can subscribe to his Substack here and read it.

And while I’m recommending things, Jim Easton ‘Rethink Football’ is excellent. Writes almost as well as he played. Hit the link to read his stuff.