The World Cup is now finally underway, and aside from the endless string of matches with no winner, how’s that going? A stadium workers’ strike in Los Angeles was averted, and the great water bottle kerfuffle died down, but have there are least been the promised travel nightmares and budgetary fiascos?
Early signs are mixed, but not great:
- A KUOW analysis of World Cup spending concluded that Washington state is spending $120 million on hosting six matches, mostly for transit costs but also for such things as widening the pitch at the Seattle Seahawks‘ stadium. The Seattle tourism bureau only predicts $95.8 million in new tax receipts from hosting World Cup matches, meaning even the local agency inclined to take an optimistic view and ignore warnings that World Cup visitors will displace many regular tourists thinks that the public will end up taking a bath on hosting matches this summer.
- Canadian economist Moshe Lander estimates that that country will end up spending more than $1 billion to host just 12 World Cup matches, including $145 million in federal money for security alone, and there’s no indication local governments will make more than a fraction of that back in new tax receipts, leaving the entire event a “toxic money sinkhole.”
- FIFA itself is expected to bring in anywhere from $9 billion to $11.5 billion from the World Cup, though those are gross revenues, not net, and we’ll likely never know where all the money goes, because FIFA.
- As for the experience of those attending the games, hundreds of fans at New Jersey’s opening match between Brazil and Morocco (ending in a 1-1 draw) were stranded for hours outside the stadium after authorities limited the number of rideshare drivers who could make pickups, presumably to leave traffic lanes open for shuttle buses. There were reportedly no lines for the shuttle buses, though, so it sounds like the stranded fans were just those averse to taking public transit, which seems to have worked fine right up until authorities parked those buses in midtown Manhattan and celebrating New York Knicks fans promptly set fire to them.
- Fans attending the Uruguay-Saudi Arabia match in Miami (ending in a 1-1 draw) complained about parking passes costing upwards of $175 and then still leaving them with a mile and a half walk to the stadium. “I took an Uber just to save some money because that’s ridiculous,” said one Saudi Arabia fan.
- Tens of thousands of Scotland fans made it to their opening match vs. Haiti (not a draw! Scotland won 1-0) in Foxborough okay, after renting their own school buses to get around exorbitant train fares, but then got stuck in hours-long lines to get into the stadium because of poor crowd management. “There were three gates for 65,000 people,” said one Scotland fan. “It was a bit of a joke really.”
- Guadalajara avoided traffic nightmares for the South Korea-Czechia opener (a 2-1 South Korea win) by the simple expediency of ticket prices so high that there were thousands of seats left empty even in the tournament’s smallest host stadium. World Cup officials insisted that the missing fans were all standing and watching elsewhere, which, hmmm.
The World Cup story so far, then: Nobody has yet set any statues on fire, and the matches are coming off more or less as planned, although “as planned” included sky-high prices for fans and costs for taxpayers, and massive profits for FIFA. Maybe a series of games with no winners really is the best metaphor for the World Cup after all.
Two items I’d like to call out.
The first was an amusing discussion between LA and FIFA. Once they started to realize what it was going to cost them, they asked FIFA what’s in it for them.
The answer “it puts you on the map”
You know, because who knows about LA.
https://x.com/ProfBank/status/2065128285030563855
The second is that the owner of the Miami stadium secured a deal to get $15 million from the county, for hosting the games. (He also gets money from the state, but I don’t know how much)
Which means we locals are paying for the privilege of not being able to attend due to pricing.
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article268881407.html
The local, state/provincial, and federal governments all knew full well that they were going to lose a metric s— ton of money hosting this tournament. Which, in a vacuum, governments operating at a loss is hardly the end of the world; public services, funded and staffed and operated at even a functional level, will always be a major net benefit to society. But this tournament isn’t a public service from anything other than a “vibes” perspective, and all these entities should have been more honest in calling it a series of expensive festivals rather than some sort of smart taxpayer money play.
I know we’re long past the point where calling governments out on their lies is still a thing that makes a difference, but c’mon.
The World Cup may put Kansas City on the map but if an outsider looks at the map they will only see a city a crime ridden, incompetently run city. Similar to a lot of businesses whose product stinks increase the marketing budget.
I think Kansas City is ALREADY on the map – we didn’t need the World Cup for that. I mean, since 2020 we’ve won 3 Superbowls, been in 2 more, hosted the NFL draft, built the first women’s only professional soccer stadium (by the way, KC companies design most of the current US stadiums), and have a Chiefs player marrying arguably the most famous entertainer in the world (currently).
So the World Cup is just a bonus.
“Being on the map” is completely overstated as an impact that an event like this could have. If it was so permanently impactful to a city’s perception and place in the world, the likes of Manaus and Oita and Daejeon and Bloemfontein would still matter to sports fans, let alone the global population at large.
The World Cup won’t put out any fires, save any lives, solve any crimes, or inspire companies to relocate their headquarters. It’s just that somebody has to host these games, and one of these host cities has to be the smallest and/or the least-fancied of the bunch.
“Being on the map” sure worked out great for Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook
Right. My point is KC is not, as Jerry said, a “crime ridden, incompetently run city” any more than many cities. And it is, in fact, a good mid-western city.
They aren’t trying to be Boston or LA or DC or Seattle. Buts something made 4 teams choose KC as their home base, and it’s not just that travel time is less to other games (or the BBQ).
You are right that those other cities have fallen to the wayside to much of the world. I don’t suspect KC will have issues in that regard like the others (though I note that Daejeon is still quite an important in South Korea – more so than when it hosted the World Cup – and their stadium is still in use).
Which Chiefs player is marrying Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney???
People thought Colorado voters were crazy when they voted to not host the 1976 Winter Olympics in Colorado. Turns out they were pretty damn smart. The 1976 winter games went to Austria instead.
Unfortunately the lesson learned by politicians was to never again let voters make that kind of decision.
Voters in the US, maybe — lots of European cities have voted down Olympic bids. (And Boston was the 2024 US bid frontrunner until officials there pulled out.)
And Rahm Emanuel famously turned down hosting World Cup games in Chicago because FIFA’s price was too steep. It’s not like all elected officials are suckers for mega-events, just too many of them.
Today the Chicago Tribune has an editorial: “Make no mistake, Chicago should be filled with World Cup fans right now”.
“We don’t blame our friends in Kansas City one bit for stepping into the breach. But it should never have opened up in the first place.
Chicago, as you likely know, turned down FIFA’s entreaties in 2018 during the Mayor Rahm Emanuel administration and walked away from the massive North American festival now unfolding to the enhancement of our rainy June. Emanuel, aware of the potential fallout for a potential presidential candidate, has been casting his decision as one of financial responsibility, given FIFA’s contractual clause giving the organization the right to demand a domed stadium at the city’s expense, even though they said at the time that they never exercise the clause….
We should have made a deal, too. The prize was too rich to walk away angry from the table. And, frankly, had some renovation of Soldier Field gotten done as part of a World Cup negotiation, we might not now be talking about the Hammond Bears. But we digress…
Instead of Wrigleyville, Division Street or the West Loop, local media coverage has Argentinians partying in the bar at the Marriott Hotel. Sad!”
Considering most host cities are losing tens of millions hosting a handful of WC matches, I don’t think it is sad at all.
Chicago being ‘filled’ with world cup fans right now is not the same as the city covering it’s costs to be filled with world cup fans, much less turning any kind of profit on the event overall.
If Chicago were filled with WC fans, it would be because FIFA is vacuuming up all the revenue while Chicagoans are paying the costs for hosting the games.
RIP Dick Lamm
FIFA in Seattle…..locals escaped the city. Many do not respect the corruption of FIFA.