thomas leverett weblog

World Cup 2026

So here we are about a week into the World Cup and empty seats in Guadalajara and the Bay Area have already made FIFA and the USA look bad. It's not the lack of fans, I can assure you of that on behalf of USA soccer/futbol fans. We fans are there. The money is not.

In my view it's a very complex and delicate calculation on the part of the ticket-buying public (which does not include me). Many of them buy tickets on the after-market and even that is complex, and goes all the way down to scalpers on the streets near the stadium an hour before. Many people calculate, and plan, to buy tickets on the aftermarket or from the scalpers, but, when prices are too high to begin with, they stop paying attention on the assumption that at that price, they'll never be able to get tickets even on the after-market or from scalpers. It's when they stop paying attention that you lose them, because you can lower prices yourself (which makes early buyers angry) but it won't matter because they just aren't watching. So the reality - you can see it for x amount - doesn't always match the perception - which is that you can't get in for a reasonable amount - and empty seats are the result. Everyone looks bad.

Frankly, I was most worried about terrorism, and still am. You start a war with the terrorist world and you'll get a war somehow, and this would be a most obvious venue. But we've been lucky so far.

Then, I blame travel. This is the absolute wrong time to visit the USA, I would tell any of my friends, don't come. Canada, maybe, Mexico, maybe but USA absolutely not. It's not safe and there are fascists pulling foreigners off the. street. But why come to Canada if you can't visit the USA as well? To invest a thousand or so on a trip to the Americas on top of exorbitant ticket prices just doesn't make sense if you can't stop in on friends or important places at the heart of the matter, better to wait a couple of years until it makes sense to travel. There goes about a third of your ticket revenue.

FIFA looks bad, USA looks bad, but hey it's the World Cup, only comes around once in a while.

Labels: world cup

posted by tom @ 7:09 AM