How the 1994 World Cup Transformed the Business of Football Forever

The last time the World Cup came to the US was 1994. Before then, the World Cup was an enormously popular event with surprisingly limited commercial significance; the 1990 tournament in Italy, for instance, lost money for broadcasters. But that all changed in 1994, when American companies sought to make their mark in the form of advertisements and sponsorships: firms like McDonalds, Mastercard, and General Motors saw the potential to reach a global audience through one of the world's most watched sports events. Today, we speak with Joey D'Urso — a freelance sports journalist and author of the recent book More Than A Shirt: How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, Money and Power — about the 1994 World Cup and this year's competition, which is being held jointly, by the US, Canada, and Mexico. We also talk about other surprising stories of corporate and geopolitical influence in the world of football. Read more: Unilever, Pepsi Tap Celebrities, Players During World Cup https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-23/world-cup-ads-prove-bonanza-for-networks-tricky-for-marketers?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article Mexico’s Sheinbaum Invites Merlín the Duck to National Palace Amid Soccer Craze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-22/sheinbaum-taps-viral-duck-s-star-power-amid-world-cup-frenzy?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News http://bloomberg.com/ subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots https://www.bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots?in_source=oddlotspodcast Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter http://bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots https://discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Joe Weisenthal?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Tracy and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and need to know what's moving markets and why. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and research get you up to speed on what matters and what to watch next. About the time it takes to grab a coffee, so search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 1:07Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news.

• 2:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 2:11Tracy Alloway?

  And I'm Tracy Alloway.

• 2:13Joe Weisenthal?

  First of all, are we calling it football or soccer? Well, we just think, you know, I'm fine with either. I've accepted whatever. I don't feel strongly, but just for like consistency's sake, I guess we'll just call it football on this episode.

• 2:23Tracy Alloway?

  Uh, if you want, that's fine with me. I like that you're defining the terms beforehand.

• 2:27Joe Weisenthal?

  This is important. As long as we all are operating on the same, I'm happy to call it football. Busy time, obviously, coming back to the US.

• 2:34Tracy Alloway?

  In the sports, the sports world.

• 2:36Joe Weisenthal?

  The sports world. Um, I think when you landed back from our recent trip to Asia, it was like literally like the final minutes of the Knicks winning.

• 2:44Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, it was nuts. I was driving through lower Manhattan and everyone was spilling out into the streets, watching the game through like the windows of bars and stuff. And then of course, when they won, you could hear the entire city just go nuts.

• 2:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Tracy Alloway?

  So part of me is like, why aren't we doing a basketball episode?

• 2:59Joe Weisenthal?

  Right.

• 2:59Tracy Alloway?

  Because it feels very much like New York is actually focused on basketball at the moment, even though we obviously have a very big football slash soccer event.

• 3:08Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. And I was, I was walking through my neighborhood. I live in the East Village last night. Like everyone, it's very festive time in the city. Everyone was like sitting out in like outdoor bars and stuff, like watching whatever World Cup match was on last time, obviously.

• 3:21Tracy Alloway?

  Whatever World Cup match.

• 3:22Joe Weisenthal?

  I forget what was airing.

• 3:23Tracy Alloway?

  Well, to be fair.

• 3:24Joe Weisenthal?

  Yes.

• 3:25Tracy Alloway?

  You could lose track in this particular World Cup because it's the biggest ever World Cup.

• 3:31Joe Weisenthal?

  Wait, what does it mean?

• 3:32Tracy Alloway?

  So it means they have like the most teams playing the most games ever.

• 3:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Really?

• 3:36Tracy Alloway?

  I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's almost 50 teams versus previously it was about 30 teams, 32 teams.

• 3:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, I always sort of assumed that it was like fixed.

• 3:46Tracy Alloway?

  FIFA argued that this is about making the game even bigger, you know, diversity and inclusion and all of that. But if you were going to be cynical, and some people would argue you should be cynical when it comes to FIFA, you could argue that it's about selling more ads.

• 4:01Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 4:02Tracy Alloway?

  Selling more tickets to more games and also internal politics. So currying favor with some smaller nations for political reasons, all of that.

• 4:11Joe Weisenthal?

  Since actually, because I was sort of wondering, no offense to any of like, I was like,

• 4:15Tracy Alloway?

  We're gonna offend so many people in this episode. I can already tell.

• 4:18Joe Weisenthal?

  I was like, oh, it's pretty impressive that like, Kurosawa made the World Cup and so forth.

• 4:22Tracy Alloway?

  Did you see the Cape Verde game?

• 4:23Joe Weisenthal?

  The Cape Verde game, right.

• 4:25Tracy Alloway?

  So that was insane. So, okay, so part of the concern with FIFA expanding this to like 50 teams is that, well, you don't get the same, I guess, intensity that you would in a World Cup with a smaller group.

• 4:37Joe Weisenthal?

  That makes sense.

• 4:37Tracy Alloway?

  And you get all these meaningless games like Kurosawa versus Germany.

• 4:41Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Tracy Alloway?

  But then Cape Verde played Spain and it wasn't a dead rubber game. It ended up like being kind of an upset because Spain are supposed to be favorites for the entire cup.

• 4:51Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I know. It was, yeah, it was, yeah.

• 4:52Tracy Alloway?

  And so now I'm proud to say I'm a diehard Cape Verde fan and I really want this whole like dead rubber thing to just blow up in FIFA's face.

• 5:03Joe Weisenthal?

  You know, one thing I'm aware of with football in general is that we could have an entire podcast on the money side of it. And like, you know, people always say, oh, you should really do an episode on how like, you know, whatever team and whatever league in Europe is now permanently going to be relegated because they've signed these financials. And it's like, you know what? I, that sounds like really fascinating to me. But unless we go like really deep in it, that almost sounds like too niche, you know? And so.

• 5:33Tracy Alloway?

  You know, we had a really good newsletter all about this last year.

• 5:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, yeah, we did, right?

• 5:37Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, yeah, all about like.

• 5:38Joe Weisenthal?

  Whatever. What's?

• 5:39Tracy Alloway?

  Financial engineering in specifically European football.

• 5:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 5:42Tracy Alloway?

  But yeah, there's a lot of, let's say, money influence slash money games being played in football at the moment.

• 5:49Joe Weisenthal?

  There's so many angles that we could attack it from. I just, earlier in the year, I went to my first Champions League match. I saw Atletico Madrid versus Arsenal in the Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid. Amazing experience. Had the vibe to me of like an American, like Big 12 college football match, which I think is an amazing energy, et cetera.

• 6:09Tracy Alloway?

  Again, we are gonna offend so many people with this episode.

• 6:12Joe Weisenthal?

  I say there's a compliment. Anyway. Let's get into money. I'll say one more thing about football, which is that I've never like really gotten hooked on it, but I've always thought the jerseys are the coolest of any sport. Particular, I liked when more of the jerseys had um physical collars on them. I think that's gone out of style a little bit, but I still love like those old jerseys that had like the flapped collars on them. And I just think they look cool as hell.

• 6:35Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 6:36Joe Weisenthal?

  And somehow on a football jersey, it doesn't offend me when I see ads the way it does like if I see an ad on a good American baseball jersey. I was like, oh, it's sort of like debasing. It looks, to me, it looks fine.

• 6:47Tracy Alloway?

  Why? Do you just expect it?

• 6:49Joe Weisenthal?

  I don't know. Maybe it's like a subtle chauvinism or something like that, or it's like, oh, it looks fine to see these corporate logos. Now, when I look at an NBA jersey with a logo, it's like, they're sort of debasing this sport. I don't know.

• 7:01Tracy Alloway?

  But you just come to expect money to debase football. That makes sense.

• 7:06Joe Weisenthal?

  We're gonna be talking about whether money has injected vitality or expanded the game or debased it or whatever, or at least how the massive amounts of money have changed the game. I'm very excited to bring on the perfect guest. We're gonna be speaking with freelance football journalist Joey D'Urso, and he has a new book out called More Than a Shirt: How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, Money, and Power. So Joey, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. Big fan of the pod.

• 7:32Joe Weisenthal?

  I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll say like, do you have any hunch as to why it is that someone like myself is okay with seeing ads on a football kit versus other sports? Like, do you have any sort of intuition about why maybe we come to expect that or that's sort of cool?

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Well, is it, is one sort of deep in your soul and your personal identity and you just feel it in a way that?

• 7:54Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, maybe that's just it. Maybe like I don't have like the sort of, you know, I grew up as like a Detroit Tiger fan, for example. And if I saw like a big ad for like OpenAI or something out there, I wouldn't be that into it or crypto.com or whatever, which seems to advertise everywhere. Maybe it's just that. Maybe it's just like what's in my soul or not.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's an interesting question. Which sporting culture is more commercial, corporate, capitalist, and which isn't? Because obviously, the US in most respects is far more capitalistic than in Europe. But there's actually funny some ways to invert that. One is sponsorship, and one is like this draft system, which to us feels like communism. For us, you know, it's just the rich teams buy all the best players, and that's how it happens, and the rich get richer.

• 8:31Tracy Alloway?

  Okay, so Joey, I can't help but notice that we're doing a football podcast, but you are in fact wearing a baseball shirt, which maybe says something about the difficulties.

• 8:42Joe Weisenthal?

  It's a Coney Island Cyclones shirt, which I love. Anyone who comes and visits New York has to go to a Cyclones game.

• 8:47Tracy Alloway?

  But soccer has historically had some difficulty with breaking through into the US, right? So it's getting bigger now. We have the MLS, we have all of that. We now have a World Cup that's taking place in the US. But we had one previously, and that was kind of an uphill battle to break into that particular market.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, soccer in the US has quite a big, a long history, but it was basically wiped out by the Wall Street crash. So it was big in big industrial cities before that, big in kind of Philadelphia, New Jersey. And then it was wiped out because it was deeply linked to these industries that were hit so badly in 1929. And then it was kind of in the wilderness for half a century. America's own sports became really big. But yeah, it was sort of getting bigger and bigger. You know, Pele came to play for the New York Cosmos in the 70s. Beckenbauer as well, it was like the place to be.

• 9:35Tracy Alloway?

  My husband used to work for the Cosmos.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Really?

• 9:37Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, he was a youth coach.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  Really?

• 9:38Tracy Alloway?

  Yep.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  But yeah, USA 94, FIFA had long wanted to bring the World Cup to the US, even though no one really cared in the US about the sport. But because of money, because of business, because the world's biggest companies, the world's richest people, the world's biggest pool of wealthy consumers are in the US. And, you know, the sort of footballing snobs of Europe, of which I'm probably sometimes one of them, probably turned their nose up at going to the US. Italia 90 is very romanticized. And England, as you know, Pavarotti and the beautiful sights of Rome.

• 10:04Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  These gauche Americans, what are they doing with our beautiful World Cup? But it was kind of a success in many metrics. The grounds were full. Lots of, I think, the Hispanic population would have helped a lot there. But a lot of just curious Americans, like women's football was huge in the US before it was big in Europe. So a lot of, there was a lot of interest because of that. I think it was the Olympics before that that was big. So in 94, loads of massive American corporations made their debut at the World Cup. They paid up to $20 million to get involved, which might not seem a lot in the scale of football now, but certainly was back then. You had McDonald's, it was their first ever global sponsorship. You had General Motors for the first time. Mastercard, who had a sort of pilot in 1998. To a long term commitment. It was a big commercial success like Harvard Business School, wrote case studies about it. Despite the fact most Americans weren't interested,

• 10:49Speaker 03

  the opening game was interrupted by the OJ Simpson car chase. But yeah, massive deal in World Cup history for commercial rather than necessarily football reasons.

• 10:56Joe Weisenthal?

  First of all, I had not realized that actually there was a long football tradition in the United States prior to the crash. We could have probably done an entire episode just on that. But I do also remember like as a kid in like the eighties, like hearing about this guy named Pelé. You know, Trump is a big Pelé fan. Um, well. That's pretty good. Yeah, I thank you. Thank you. But what were the Cosmos? And I was like, what league was that even?

• 11:23Speaker 03

  So that was, I believe it was the NASL, the North American Soccer League. But it was kind of an exhibit. It was kind of the Pelé show and, you know, the Cosmos would go around to these different teams. And when Pelé left, it all sort of fell apart pretty quickly. It was losing lots of money. And the US is just such a deep, rich sporting market. You know, there are like four, the big four, which would be American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey. It's hard to penetrate that. And it's very unusual. You know, Australia, I was there recently. It's maybe the closest parallel, but in Europe, in every European country, you know, I like cricket. You guys probably think that's incredibly obscure and sort of fusty British, but like cricket is tiny compared to football, as is rugby and all these other sports we have. Football is completely dominant in the vast majority of the world. The US is a wild exception.

• 12:04Joe Weisenthal?

  So let's talk about that 94 World Cup. So like, what was the lead up to that 94 World Cup in terms of making the case that it should be in the US? Like, how long was that? I remember that World Cup, but like, how long was that in the works and the fights? And what had to happen for the World Cup to finally go in 1994 to the US?

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it was a long time. It was like the mid eighties. It had lots of build up time. I mean, the US, as we're seeing now, it doesn't need to build loads of stadiums, right? That's one huge advantage it has. Unlike, you know, South Africa in 2010 built all these white elephant stadiums. And in many cases, that was a wonderful World Cup, end of apartheid Mandela, but financially, a bit of a basket case. So the US was ready, even if it wasn't a big footballing country. But what it had to do was set up its own league because it did not have a professional soccer league at that point. So we set up the MLS because of that. So real kind of. Boring desert at the time that it was preparing to host the World Cup in ninety four.

• 12:54Tracy Alloway?

  So just to clarify, when it comes to, I guess, US commercial advertisers, what exactly were they trying to achieve here? Because if soccer isn't that big in the US at that time in nineteen ninety four, I assume they're not necessarily trying to target the American market. Like, maybe it's great that you're trying to popularize the game more in the country. But if you're an advertiser, I imagine sponsoring the World Cup in ninety four is more about tapping into that global audience that you're describing.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Yes, if you Coca-Cola and you want to sell it in Africa and Asia, it's the best billboard you could possibly imagine. It's been built and, you know, whole villages in parts of the world where people don't necessarily have electricity at home will be, will be watching it. It's the biggest advertising event in the world by far. But before ninety four, it just wasn't really commercialized that ruthlessly, you know. Tournaments lost money. There's a great story from, I think it's in the seventy four World Cup in Mexico. This tailor, like a guy who sews clothes somewhere in London, just bought half the advertising boards on the stadium in Mexico City. Just because like no one else had thought of it and he offered them like a nominal amount of money and they were like, yeah, sure. And like, when I do my research into the sort of history of football shirts and sponsorship, the early days are often just kind of like that. A team will win some massive trophy with the local beer company on it. And then three years later, there'll be no logo because it's literally just like some guy.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  There's no process, there's no marketing department, there's no anything. So I suppose football FIFA were just leaving millions, billions of pounds on the table. Of course, there is a flip side that if you ruthlessly commercialize it to within an inch of its life, you're potentially risking harming the product itself. But that's maybe a separate podcast.

• 14:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I suppose that's a separate.

• 14:26Tracy Alloway?

  No, I want to get into that later.

• 14:28Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, we could. Yeah, we should get into that in the current state a little bit more. But talk more about some of these deals and how big they were and how unusual they were. So you go from like, okay, a tailor and one World Cup to then a few World Cups later, it's Coca-Cola and it's the biggest.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they were like twenty million dollar deals and this kind of thing.

• 14:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, so talk about like, who were some of the big sponsors and like, you know.

• 14:50Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, what was the pitch to them?

• 14:52Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, yeah. And what were some of these deals that they signed in nineteen ninety four?

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this guy, Anne Rothenberg, who was the kind of the guy running the bid and he was very, he came from an NBA background and he was very. Commercially minded and he turned it into this big commercial event, I think, very effectively. But yeah, the sponsors are, you know, like the ones we see now, like Coca-Cola, like Visa, these huge multinational corporations that the world cops hadn't really seen in the same extent before, and American companies, which is what we see now.

• 15:32Tracy Alloway?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 16:40Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 17:21Tracy Alloway?

  So I want to go back to something you said about the 1990 World Cup. And you mentioned that it was lionized, or I guess looms large in a lot of people's football memories, especially in Europe. What actually makes a World Cup successful? Like, what is that essence that you can point to that means you can say something like, oh, people love the 1990 World Cup versus, I don't know, I don't want to name any specific World Cups as absolute failures, but you could pluck a few examples, I suppose.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Well, I think the two big things are, A, your team winning or doing really well, and B, being in your twenties. Like, like most things in life, you look back on it, and I suppose lots of people who, you know, look back on 1990, who are in positions of power at the moment, and that's wonderful. For me, 2018 in England, we're in Russia, and England did surprisingly well after being dreadful for 20 years, and the sun shone every day for three months, and it was just a party in England, which was fun. So I think a lot of it is that, like, social, cultural stuff. But, you know, on the broader sense, exciting games, close games, but like, moments and people, you know, you look back to like Diego Maradona, and do you know about the Hand of God in 1996?

• 18:29Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, beautiful, that was 86. That was, in 1990, that was the first World Cup I paid attention to and I, like, I knew about. And then he had a pretty disappointing 1990 World Cup. Like, it was, Argentina was pretty mediocre that year, right? But I was, like, pretty obsessed with, like, Maradona that year, and I was sort of, as a young kid, disappointed that, that he didn't, wasn't, couldn't bring back the magic.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think particularly as the game extends, so I'm from, you know, an English background where I went, I've been going to see my club Aston Villa since I was like, four years old, and it's so, like, deeply in my blood that, you know, like, but that's a tiny, I think that's a minority of the people who watch the World Cup. Most people are from, you know, parts of the world where they might tune in once every four years, and it's all about, you know, those characters and memories and people. And, you know, I'm thinking about 1990, the famous one in England would be Gaz's Tears. I don't know if that means anything to you, but Paul Gascoigne, the sort of maverick Englishman who was like, pretty sort of chaotic personal life, and he- Was brilliant, but sort of very flawed. And he got a yellow card in the semifinal against Germany. That meant he couldn't play in the final and he cried. And it's like Gaz's tears is this sort of, it's like a part of Britain's national story, like the sort of romantic view of football in that way.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  And, you know, England didn't get to the semifinal. England lost that semifinal to Germany on penalties, which then happened again six years later. And this idea of like losing to Germany every time is like a very deep in the kind of national myth. And every country has its own, like I've just been in Argentina and like eighty six with Maradona. And, you know, twenty twenty two with Messi. The interesting one is nineteen seventy eight when Argentina won the World Cup under military dictatorship. As people were being tortured like a mile down the road. And that's kind of slightly airbrushed out of the, the story, but like, yeah, these people, these characters, I think is what really makes World Cups over anything else.

• 20:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Someone told me, I, this is probably fake, but it's like one of those things that people say. Apparently some extraordinary number of people in England have nineteen sixty six as their a pin card for their ATM machine. And that like you could just guess the ones pinned because the last time England won the World Cup.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Oh, totally. Yeah.

• 20:24Tracy Alloway?

  This was something that always used to happen. If for the ten years that I was in the UK, every time there was a World Cup, people would get really excited about bringing back the trophy and you would get all the analysts at the banks with the sell side research. And if they really wanted to get a bunch of clients happy, they would say that England was gonna win the World Cup.

• 20:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Statistical model. Yeah. Football's coming home, right?

• 20:48Tracy Alloway?

  That's right. That's right. Yeah.

• 20:49Joe Weisenthal?

  I know a few, I know a few facts. Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Which is a kind of slightly misunderstood slogan, I think, because it's seen as this arrogance or this like, we invented it and we're this imperial people who are gonna colonize you and win everything, which is, it's actually this sort of extremely sort of self-deprecating to the point of like melancholic thing about how we never win anything. And it's all really miserable, which is sort of our national character, I suppose.

• 21:09Tracy Alloway?

  And so I know to some extent, we're talking about vibes and it's hard to pinpoint those exactly, but I'm really interested in the contrast between the nineteen ninety World Cup and nineteen ninety four. So you go from a very European, not that commercialized event to something that is much more American. And there's a lot more focus on actually generating money. So how did? Those two events stack up against each other. This is what I'm trying to get at.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, and then you hit this sort of, well, I mean, it's sort of the beginning. USA is the beginning of a process. It's the beginning of this exponential curve where like people are throwing around the figure 12 billion for this World Cup. When three World Cups ago, it was it was half that. It's many billions more than Qatar. So the USA is not massive, but it's the beginning of the exponential curve in which the figure that what, you know, the 1990 World Cup in Italy like lost money. The USA 94 is this beginning of, I think maybe people didn't realize at the time what a commercial success it could be and how much money was potentially on the table from World Cups themselves. And that's when you lead it to FIFA itself, becoming this much more ruthlessly commercial body.

• 22:11Joe Weisenthal?

  Maybe the right way to think about the compare and contrast is not 1990 versus 1994, but 1990 in Italy versus 1998 in France, both hosted by European stalwart soccer nations. How did those two differ with 1994, having split them in the middle? And how much more commercialized and different was 1998 versus 1990?

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Much more commercial and you have these big sponsors, much more prominent in the stadium. So already much more commercial. I mean, the interesting thing about 1998 is that France now feels like a stalwart football nation. It kind of wasn't before 1998. And then in France, you, because it's a story of economic history and industrialization, that France industrialized later than England. And it was a country where most of its people lived in villages rather than towns and cities. And football is everywhere and always a game of the city. It was spread by trams and trains inside cities. It was initially a child of the weekend, the first week workers to get weekends in industrial England were the people who played organized football first. The Saturday 3pm slot. France industrialized later, so it did not have that same culture. And there are pockets of it, you know, Saint-Etienne, an industrial town in the south of France.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  But really, France was not a big football country deep into the, even 1998. And then that changed overnight, but still even now, you know, you go to a small French city and it's just not a thing that people talk about in a way that it is in in England and in Spain and Italy.

• 23:29Tracy Alloway?

  Can I ask a very basic question? So you've said the word exponential a number of times in terms of the commercialization of the World Cup. FIFA is a not-for-profit, right? Like technically, it's a not-for-profit.

• 23:42Joe Weisenthal?

  We're debating this over the weekend, like what is FIFA?

• 23:45Tracy Alloway?

  It's supposed to reinvest its money like back into the sport. So what actually?

• 23:51Tracy Alloway?

  You know, basic question here, but what's driving the urge to generate money from advertising revenue?

• 23:57Speaker 03

  So FIFA is a vehicle for funneling money from advertisers and TV to member associations. There are 200 and something member associations that make up FIFA. They vote for the president, Gianni Infantino. The World Cup is this huge bonanza of cash, both in terms of ticketing. So ticketing as this multi-billion dollar thing is completely new. I mean, I'm sure you've heard a lot about ticket prices and lots of Europeans are in outrage about that. Americans say that's just, you know, capitalism, baby or whatever. But like, it's like $2, $3 billion now, which is completely new. And the advertising as well. FIFA is the kind of middleman and then that money goes to member associations. And it's one member, one vote. So if you're England, Brazil, Germany, you have the same vote as Cape Verde, Suriname.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  And it means that these countries have incredibly glitzy facilities and it means that they tend to reelect the president.

• 24:46Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay, so that makes sense. So in terms of corporate structure, is the Premier League, is that a for-profit organization? Or is that yet another sort of nonprofit layer that sits above a bunch of privately owned clubs which are for profit?

• 25:01Speaker 03

  That's correct. Yeah, it's a member association and it votes for its members.

• 25:04Joe Weisenthal?

  What about the MLS? Is that the similar structure where the MLS is a sort of nominally non-

• 25:11Speaker 03

  It's a franchise system.

• 25:12Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, it's a franchise system.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  So the US sports model, which is where a franchise system where there's no promotion and relegation, which of course is deeply part of European sports. It means that the valuations of clubs are much lower because you can get relegated. And Tottenham Hotspur, who are a very big club in England, extremely close, came close to getting relegated, which means you fall out of the Premier League and into the league below.

• 25:33Tracy Alloway?

  My husband is a Spurs fan, so this has been a painful year.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Don't want to bring up any trauma. I read stuff around the time saying that even that Spurs came close to relegation is going to harm the valuation of Manchester United and Chelsea and these other teams because it feels possible in a way it didn't a year ago. We just felt they were like too big to fail.

• 25:51Joe Weisenthal?

  I hadn't thought about that, that basically like that puts an implicit lid that there's a left tail outcome for a club, any club ownership that is just not possible in an entity like Major League Baseball or obviously Major League Soccer, where you just permanently have that spot at the top. That's super interesting.

• 26:08Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, there's, there's real stakes.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  And relegation is obviously very unlikely, but Champions League football, so the top four or five teams in England go on to play in the Champions League, the European wide competition, which is hugely lucrative. And my team Aston Villa, who are punching way above their weight at the moment and have qualified this year. But that means there's not a spot for, you know, Chelsea haven't qualified this year. Manchester United have gone several years without qualifying, they have this year. But that's a like left tail risk, which is really quite likely and means that you're not going to get that huge pot of money next year and the odds are pretty high.

• 26:38Joe Weisenthal?

  The flip side is that teams in lower rated leagues could have that right sale outcome.

• 26:43Tracy Alloway?

  They can be promoted.

• 26:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Do you remember we did that episode years and years ago with that Bitcoiner who bought like a team in like Bedford, England or something like that, the fifth team down with like his Bitcoin profits and he had dreams of like bringing them up. You know, like you could have like sort of like entrepreneurial football entrepreneurs who like bring their teams up.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Or ransom, right?

• 27:02Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, so like it does seem like, you know, I think it would be more exciting. I actually have a old friend or kind of a friend who owns a US soccer club in a smaller league and he wants the US to introduce like relegation and promotion on this idea that maybe that club could one day be a bigger, more valuable thing, but I have no idea if that could ever happen.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Well, I guess the members would have to vote for it at the same, you know, in any other league. And it's a bit kind of Turkey's voting for Christmas.

• 27:27Tracy Alloway?

  Okay, since we're on the topic of the Premier League and also right and left tail outcomes, so you write across your coverage, a lot about the influence of geopolitics on football, right? And I think at this point, everyone is familiar with the term sports washing. So the idea that certain governments, certain people, certain companies will sponsor a football team to make themselves look good and maybe distract from other scandals. One thing that's interesting to me now is it kind of feels like sports washing can also go in the other direction where you can end up having geopolitical vulnerabilities. So if I think about Chelsea, you know, Chelsea basically lost their sugar daddy, for lack of a better word, in the form of Abramovich.

• 28:12Tracy Alloway?

  And I think at some point, there was talk about maybe sanctions in the UK against the Emirates and obviously Manchester United owned by By Americans and I imagine for some British people, Americans aren't that popular right now. Does the influence of sports washing go in the other way?

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, Chelsea, yes, it was very embarrassing for them. Abramovich was sanctioned by the American government, but fundamentally, Chelsea had won one league title before he came in in the early 2000s. They won five in the 18 or 19 years after that. So I don't think they'll be, you know, would they have taken that as a Chelsea fan at the start? I basically think, and this is maybe putting myself out of a job, no one cares that much.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  No one, like, people don't become a sports team to grapple with geopolitics. And it's kind of pretty terrible sometimes, I think, because like Newcastle United is probably the most egregious example because they're literally owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. And yeah, like, that's been, I think, used as a propaganda vehicle for an autocratic state. And yeah, it's pretty bad, but I don't think fans care. And Newcastle United is like a very working class club with a really proud history and this sort of quite, you know, town that's had a rough few decades and a very proud, a very amazing institution. And it's a very clever move for the Saudi Investment Fund to buy it because it has so much sort of authenticity and credibility.

• 29:26Joe Weisenthal?

  Was there some team that has Gazprom on their logo? Like on their kid?

• 29:30Speaker 03

  Well, God, you teed me up because that's the first, whole first chapter of my book.

• 29:34Joe Weisenthal?

  Which, which team was that?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  That's Scholka in Gelsenkirchen in Germany, where I travel and speak to lots of people. So, yeah, the great thing there was they had Gazprom on their shirts. And when I went there, two years after the invasion of Ukraine, lots of people were wearing blue stickers over the Gazprom logo because they were shamed by it. But yeah, Russian gas and German politics were deeply entwined for decades. Best exhibited in the shirt of Scholka and politicians and executives would wine and dine there. Germany was buying cheap gas from Russia, so both sides were getting something out of it because Germany doesn't have much natural resources. Russia needed the cash. It all came crashing down in 2022. The one team that does still have Gazprom on their shirts is Red Star Belgrade in Serbia, who also play in European competitions.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  But of course, Serbia is much more pally with Russia than the rest of Europe, so they don't see a problem there.

• 30:23Joe Weisenthal?

  So who, who did, did, did that team have to, did they get a new sponsor?

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Scholka. Well, they lost loads of money overnight. It was like 10 million. And they've they've been kind of declining for a while, but it was almost the straw that broke the camel's back and they went down to the second division in Germany, which was terrible for them because they're a huge club. So they took a huge financial hit from losing that sponsorship.

• 30:58Speaker 01

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• 32:22Tracy Alloway?

  So, speaking of jersey history, I guess, one of the things that's come up in the current World Cup is Haiti's jersey. So I think they had to redesign it because FIFA said it was too political. You're not allowed to have political slogans or like political meanings, and Haiti apparently have a little graphic of men during the Haitian Revolution, and one of them was like a very famous war hero, but not even explicitly like maybe a very famous war hero. And I find this really interesting because obviously there's a lot of judgment involved when you say whether a jersey is political or not, and no one is going after like the Netherlands for wearing orange and promoting Protestantism or something like that. So like, how do they make those calls? And does it feel like

• 33:07Tracy Alloway?

  they're picking on maybe smaller countries with fewer resources to fight against some of these decisions?

• 33:13Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, all these things are just kind of arbitrary judgment calls, you know, and there's a thing that football associations are constantly grappling with because people that have ripped their shirts off to have something to do with Israel-Palestine, or and I can see why, but then when the Russia-Ukraine stuff happened in England, the kind of whole football community united around we support Ukraine and flags and whatever else. So these things are often can seem hypocritical, can seem contradictory. Those decisions, it's just some person somewhere, you know, how do you objectively make a call like that? But um yeah, you're right to flag the Netherlands, and it's a really interesting one. I've actually on Instagram been doing a series that's like why each country plays in each color. And Haiti is that they play in red and blue because it was the French Tricolore, and when they overthrew the French, you know, the slaveholder, incredible slave revolution in Haiti, and

• 33:56Speaker 03

  they ripped the whites out of the flag, just to be left with blue and red. The Netherlands in the orange, the story is William of Orange, who's kind of the founding father of the Netherlands. But in, I don't know if you know the association of orange in Northern Ireland and Scotland, of the Protestantism and sectarianism, and the Club Rangers, which represents the Protestant Unionist half of Glasgow, while Celtic is the Irish Republican half. They play in orange, and it's quite inflammatory because it's associated with these sort of sectarian things. So yeah, the same shirt, the same color, but no one would say that about a Netherlands national shirt, even though the origin of the story is similar. It's just these things have different Meanings in different contexts, I suppose.

• 34:33Joe Weisenthal?

  Tell us about the Jersey in Colombia that had a murdered drug dealer on it.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that was Envigado FC on the outskirts of Medellin, which the city, which of course gave the world Pablo Escobar. But these days is a lovely place to visit. I'd recommend it to anyone as a tourist.

• 34:47Joe Weisenthal?

  Heard everyone says it's amazing.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  It's great and just chilled and like great food, great vibes. But in the, it was the, it was the highest murder rate in the history of organized statistics was Medellin in the eighties. Like it was just people were being gunned down left, right and center because Pablo Escobar and his cocaine cartel was running the show. But football was kind of a tool of all this and Escobar owned the one club in Medellin, but other cartels own clubs in Cali and other Colombian cities. But the story I was interested in was a bit later than that, was so Escobar was killed in the early nineties. And one of the offshoots from this cartel was in Envigado. And this guy was killed, you know, drug bosses are liable to get killed and his son. As a loving tribute to his father, because they own this football club, put his face on the back. So on the back of the shirt was this like silhouette of this man's face. He was like a murdered drug cartel leader.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  And I went to a game there in the sort of humid stadium in the middle of the day and I saw one, I was, I was like, I've made it this far. I really hope I get to see this shirt and right at the end, I saw it on the back because it's quite old. It's like 10 years old. But they were sanctioned by the American government. They were on this thing, the Clinton list. Which is when foreign entities can't deal with US companies. So that means like banks and everything else. It's really tricky to be on that list if you're sanctioned. So they had no sponsor for a while after that. So they had like the silhouette of the drug cartel leader, no sponsor because they were sanctioned by the Americans. And now they're owned by someone else and they're just, we should say, a normal football team.

• 36:08Tracy Alloway?

  How much do those jerseys actually sell for now? Can you get them off eBay or something? I imagine they're worth a lot of money.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I mean, that one's just an incredibly obscure one that I found because I like the story, but some of them, oh, hundreds and hundreds. It's a huge industry now. And the nostalgia of it, people want the kind of nineties ones from when they were kids and yeah, it's huge industry.

• 36:26Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, obviously people like football jerseys and my personal favorite for this World Cup is the away kit for Curacao. Which is this really nice pastel yellow that I think I could get away with. But if I go to try to buy it, that's selling for like three. $300 now.

• 36:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, it is nice.

• 36:43Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, and I think some of the other, some of the other popular jerseys, like one of the Japan ones that has like stripes on it. That one's also very cute.

• 36:51Joe Weisenthal?

  It's the real hits of choice.

• 36:52Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, they're really, they're really hard to find now and they're selling for a lot of money. What does that actually mean for fans? You know, if I'm a Kurosawa fan and I can't get my hands on an away jersey unless I pay up like $300, that seems not ideal.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's interesting to hear a lot because, I mean, it's supply and demand, right? You know, they're selling the price so they can get away with it, but in England, you get like politicians standing up and talking about how much a disgrace it is that the shirt is priced at that level. I mean, it's something that it means so much to people, but and it's interesting, this sort of the conflict between supply and demand and football, I think, is something that we're seeing a lot at the moment with this World Cup. Because, you know, Arsenal, who just won the league, who are in London, who are really popular, a ticket there is like 60 pounds, maybe like $80. And they're just impossible, they're impossible to get. You need points, like if you're just a random person from the US who wanted to go to an Arsenal game next season, you just can't. You might be able to buy on the secondary market, which is completely unregulated, you might get scammed. What they absolutely do not do is raise it to the market clearing price and charge $1,000 for it.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Like, that just doesn't happen because it's so deeply ingrained in sort of European sporting culture that that's like wrong. Whereas the US takes a different approach and this is what we've seen at this World Cup.

• 38:02Joe Weisenthal?

  When I was in, when we were in Madrid, I did, you know, I got into that.

• 38:05Tracy Alloway?

  Did you get a jersey?

• 38:06Joe Weisenthal?

  I didn't get a jersey, but you know, when I went on StubHub to buy my ticket and I got really stressed because as soon as I bought the ticket, I got that pop up that said away fans will not be allowed into the stadium. And I was like, what if they think I'm an away fan? I don't speak Spanish, like I got like, are they going to give me a lie detector test? So I went and I bought a scarf of Atleti and I wore that to the stadium. So that is like, and then I felt okay and I got in, no problem. And everyone was like, oh, be careful with your StubHub ticket, that might be fake, but I was able to get in. So my son is a big Messi fan and he has a pink Messi jersey. But then today on the walk to school, he asked me if Messi was a goalie or not.

• 38:44Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, my God.

• 38:45Joe Weisenthal?

  So I was like, I was like, so he has this conception that there is this person in the world named Messi and he has. Who he really likes. Who he really likes, but evidently quite clear. I mean, he's young. He like does not actually know anything about him. He just knows that there is this existence and likes the jersey. But like, why is my son drawn to this pink jersey?

• 39:03Speaker 03

  Well, a very clever bit of marketing from also David Beckham is a part owner of, and that's an interesting sort of financial story because when he joined LA Galaxy in 2007.

• 39:13Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Someone put into his contract, whether it was him or he was maybe very well advised, that he would have the ownership rights when a new franchise was introduced into MLS. And that became into Miami. And I believe he paid like $25 million, I think, which is basically just a huge bargain. That's what now worth so many times more than that. And Beckham, or again, maybe someone advising Beckham, settled on pink. Partly because apparently Miami is really pink or the buildings are pink, pink vibes.

• 39:37Joe Weisenthal?

  There is.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  But also because basically no other team plays in pink. There's so many teams play in red. Palermo in Italy playing pink, but that's, you know, quite niche, but no one. So pink is just so iconic. You just need to see like the collar under a shirt and you know, instantly. So it's a very clever bit of marketing. But I was interesting you say about your son and Messi because football coming from Europe, the, the club is the first point of reference. And that was certainly my own upbringing. And if your favorite player leaves, well, you kind of hate them when they come back for another team. It's all about the club and that's what you identify with first. Whereas as football is becoming this bigger global thing, it's the, the individuals and Messi and Ronaldo who are both, you know, way past their best. And it's possible that this tournament, they could be not very good. Who knows? But the individual is now more important globally than the club, which is new.

• 40:22Joe Weisenthal?

  Interesting.

• 40:23Tracy Alloway?

  Just going back to commercialization of the World Cup. So, you know, we've been talking a lot about advertisers and extending, you know, the number of games played. In order to expand, I guess, the number of eyeballs on the game and all of that. There are other ways that FIFA is catering to the American market. So for instance, we now have mandated water breaks.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:46Tracy Alloway?

  Which basically turns the game into like quarters, right? That something that looks a lot more like an American football game than it used to. How far could we go in terms of the Americanization of, I guess, you know, traditionally European slash world football?

• 41:05Speaker 03

  So the other strange thing to me is games start late. They start like, not really late, they just start like five minutes late, which never happens in Europe. And even in the, you know, these cultures like Italy, Spain, Argentina, where everyone's like late all the time and that's part of the culture, football never kicks off late.

• 41:18Tracy Alloway?

  You gotta build up the suspense in America. Keep them guessing.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe. But it's like, I'm sitting on my sofa being like, where are they? Like, you know, I've got stuff to do.

• 41:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, because they're like announcing and someone's singing the National Anthem and then someone, yeah, that does seem like an American thing where there's not real much connection to the nominal time of the sporting event and the actual kickoff or tip off.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  But the hydration thing, I mean, I try, I'm trying desperately not to be sort of European traditionalist shouting at cloud, but hydration breaks are bad, I think. They're really bad because they completely break up the flow of the game. I've been watching a few where it was kind of really exciting. You maybe had like an underdog hit against the ropes, like playing really well, and then it completely takes the pace out of everything. And I get it, if it's 40 degrees, like in Texas, fine. But they're doing it in these air-conditioned stadiums. They're doing it in Toronto when it was like raining. It's unnecessary and I think it's really damaging. And I think like, the rules of the game have barely changed in 120 years. It would be instantly recognizable if you went back to 1900. And it's a precious thing. And I think if you meddle with it a bit, you risk kind of ruining the whole experience.

• 42:18Joe Weisenthal?

  I have to say, going to the game in Madrid, I really liked basically knowing what time the game was gonna end. You know, you get there at a certain time, 45 minutes, plus a couple minutes, break, 45 minutes plus a couple minutes, game's over. And I thought like for planning my night, it was just very nice to not have to concern is this gonna go, you know? I guess there could have been like penalty kicks or something like that or overtime, but.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  But even then, like it could be two and a half hours, that's the absolute maximum.

• 42:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Tracy Alloway?

  Wait, this actually just reminded me, when MLS was just getting off the ground, didn't they have like something where if you were doing penalty shootouts, you had to like dribble for ages and it was supposed to make it more exciting?

• 42:58Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 43:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, you liked it?

• 43:00Speaker 03

  I love it. Yeah. American innovation done right. I mean, it's so cool. If you watch on YouTube, you see these guys with these like really baggy shirts and they all just look like, some of those players were like college players, you know, who ended up playing for the national team. And the way you do it is you get the ball like maybe around the halfway line and you just sort of run at the goal. Yeah. But it makes it much more even. It's harder to score. So it's like a fifty, like a hockey, I think a hockey penalty is like fifty fifty. But a football penalty is like eighty percent and it means most of the time it goes in. When it doesn't, it's like devastating for the person who misses. But it's a much more, yeah, it's fun. It's exciting. I'm well up for that. Like, you know, let the Americans do their thing. It's better.

• 43:35Tracy Alloway?

  Now I have to run something by both of you. So I had an idea for making football more exciting for Americans. So the complaint that you always hear, or at least

• 43:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Low scoring.

• 43:44Tracy Alloway?

  That my dad says, right, they don't score enough goals. Never mind that in the last Super Bowl, there were like two meaningful touchdowns or something, but whatever. There aren't enough goals in soccer. So what if you started awarding points for a corner? So if you get one point per corner, successful corner, and then you get three points for a goal.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm unconvinced about that. But the Spain game was thrilling and that was nil nil.

• 44:10Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  When you've got Germany.

• 44:12Tracy Alloway?

  I don't buy into this criticism, by the way.

• 44:14Joe Weisenthal?

  You know what I, you know what I.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  The tension, the tension makes it.

• 44:17Joe Weisenthal?

  You know what I was introduced to? Our producer Kel showed me this before the athletic game, which I'd never seen, that there is this very like predictive, essentially, I don't know, machine learning, AI type thing. Where at any given moment, there's like the swing and you can see like who has the momentum. What are these charts called?

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Uh, like the momentum chart. Yeah, that's.

• 44:35Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, the momentum charts. And you could say like, so that you could see like, a team in this position would have scored a goal like seventy percent.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  XG.

• 44:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. And I was thinking maybe a nice way to add some more attention is that in the event of a draw, that you award the victory to the team that had the greater momentum throughout the game.

• 44:56Tracy Alloway?

  No, why wouldn't you just have a penalty shootout?

• 44:58Joe Weisenthal?

  No, because then you just encourage attacking play throughout so that you're rewarded in the event of a draw. You, what do you think about that proposal? That in the event of a draw?

• 45:07Speaker 03

  So X.

• 45:08Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  XG, yeah.

• 45:10Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, that's the tiebreaker. Exactly. So the tiebreaker is expected goals and therefore you're rewarded for having played consistent attacking play throughout the game. Even if, you know, it didn't materialize and the ball went off the post or something like that. What do you think about that?

• 45:25Speaker 03

  But when the team wins on it, so expected goals, which measures how good. But when team lose with a better XG, that's the thrill of it, right? That's why you get more.

• 45:33Joe Weisenthal?

  Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. No, that's exciting. And I totally get that. And you're like, we should like. The if one team had better XG, but the other team got more goals, fine, that's exciting. But in the event of a tie, you go to the XG and then you like, rather than like this sort of very defensive.

• 45:47Tracy Alloway?

  People would find some way to game that too. And also people are already up in arms about the VAR stuff. Yeah. And by the way, I still can't say VAR without thinking of value at risk.

• 45:58Joe Weisenthal?

  I thought that was exciting. During the game, there were two times where the referees went back and looked at a call that was made on the field. And I found it.

• 46:06Tracy Alloway?

  That was the interesting part for you.

• 46:08Joe Weisenthal?

  The energy in the stadium was incredibly high waiting for those referee reviews. And I sort of thought it added to the fun of like being in the stadium while we were waiting for the calls.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  I think it's got better.

• 46:20Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  I think it sped up. I think at the beginning, there are a lot of teething pains and it was often really slow and often people in the stadiums. What they're doing better at now is communicating to the people in the stadium. Cause I've been in a stadium where it just goes on for like five minutes. People are like texting their friends, saying, what's going on? Are you watching on TV? So it has got better. I think there are still like huge problems with, a lot of these calls are fundamentally subjective, right?

• 46:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Like an offside is objective, but so you know, is a foul, a foul, is a handball, you know, if it bangs you on your shoulder there, it's not a foul. But if it's your, the things cannot be perfected through data or whatever else. So there will always be that tension there.

• 46:55Joe Weisenthal?

  It's funny. He mentions texting people who are watching on TV. So many of the fans that I saw were watching broadcasts on their phone during the game. So that they would have like a little like stream on their phone. And so during the call.

• 47:08Tracy Alloway?

  That's sad.

• 47:09Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, whatever. But that they were like getting more commentary and stuff like that, that.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  No, that's wrong.

• 47:15Tracy Alloway?

  And also, okay, but on this note. You mentioned energy just then. How do we get a proper chant culture going in American football? Or football which takes place in America? And I think even in the UK, some of the chanting is starting to go away a little bit, which is very disappointing.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I think. I think it's partly to do with the sort of who is in the crowd, you know, it's much more of a sort of big family event in the in the in the US potentially or the UK is becoming more so, whereas previously it would have just been mainly kind of big groups of young men. Who probably just chant more than families, to be honest, and that's changed, and that's probably a good thing for the most part, but certainly the culture has changed quite a bit. But yeah, I mean, some of these songs, some of these songs in English football have like a century of history. But yeah, I've been to a couple of MLS games and I thought the atmosphere was pretty good. I went to the New York Red Bulls and I was, I don't know, expecting a sort of.

• 48:03Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  The US, this energy drink company, and it was pretty good. Like, I was impressed.

• 48:07Tracy Alloway?

  The Cosmos games were always really good because people would bring like drum sets and stuff, but in terms of chanting, I have to say, in my experience, the ultimate champions are actually Japanese baseball teams.

• 48:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Oh, yeah, I've heard.

• 48:18Tracy Alloway?

  They do it like perfectly in unison.

• 48:20Joe Weisenthal?

  I really, really want to go to a Japanese major league baseball game.

• 48:24Tracy Alloway?

  If you like the Cyclones.

• 48:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 48:25Tracy Alloway?

  It's great.

• 48:26Joe Weisenthal?

  I know, that's definitely high up on. Actually, one last question. My understanding, so obviously football has become more popular in the United States today in twenty twenty six than it was in nineteen ninety four. My understanding, and tell me if I'm wrong, is that if you go to like a typical American football fan, there will be some people who are like really into. They'll have their favorite Premier League team or their favorite European team that they're really into, or there'll be some who are like really into the MLS, but that there isn't a lot of crossover. That's still like you're sort of either into European football or American MLS, but not really, you're like kind of one or the other. Is that the case?

• 49:02Speaker 03

  I think that's true, and the MLS has real pockets. I think like in the Northwest, in Portland and Seattle, it's long been big. There are other places where it's particularly strong. And yeah, and I think there is sometimes a bit of a sort of culture war between, I mean, you get this in in in Europe or in England, of teams who support their small local team versus the big team on TV.

• 49:18Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  But I think one interesting thing with European leagues is that the English league is currently like eating everyone else's lunch. It's just like becoming this sort of winner takes all. All the TV revenue is flowing there and it's really harming sort of Spain and Italy and these huge football institutions like AC Milan have less money than these like tiny English teams, which.

• 49:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I feel like you don't hear about the Bundesliga at all anymore, right?

• 49:39Speaker 03

  Well, Bayern Munich just win it every year, so it's kind of boring.

• 49:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay, well, anyway.

• 49:43Tracy Alloway?

  I just want to go back to the big. Will FIFA kill the golden goose?

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 49:48Tracy Alloway?

  Question. It's sad. In my head, I'm doing a goal golden pun, but you can't even tell on the podcast. So I apologize for mentioning that at all. But how far can you actually push commercialization? And as we see FIFA especially try to make more space for advertisers through, they haven't said this explicitly when they talk about the hydration breaks. They say it's for the welfare of the players and all of that. But like, it certainly looks like they're making defined space for ads. At what point does it mean that you start to lose some of the magic of the sport? I'm sure you've been asked this question a ton and you probably thought about it a ton.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I think it can happen. I think it probably, I basically think the World Cup is like, well, for me, it's like the pinnacle of human civilization and the greatest cultural event on earth. And it is the biggest cultural event on earth by an absolute mile. So I think it's pretty hard to mess it up. Like, you just need two teams, a pitch, get some fans in. You know, it's not some great, like, you don't need to think too hard about how to do it in four years' time. But the more you meddle with it, the more you tinker at the edges. I don't think the whole thing would come like crashing down overnight. But I do think if you keep meddling with it, then children will become less into it than their parents did. And very slowly, you could sort of chip away at the edges of it. There obviously is so much more attention distractions these days that someone sitting still for two hours is like harder to convince them to do. But yeah, I think in the short term, like, they can probably rinse even more cash out of it, to be honest,

• 51:12Speaker 03

  because it's just such a perfect event.

• 51:14Joe Weisenthal?

  All right, Joey D'Urso, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. I'm glad we got a World Cup episode in. There's so much going on in the world right now. But it could have easily done a bunch of a million AI episodes. And I'm glad we covered the World Cup and you were the perfect guest. So thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

• 51:43Joe Weisenthal?

  Tracy, that was a lot of fun, many interesting points. I thought one thing I thought was interesting is the idea of the fandom of the player rather than the team emerging over time. You get these global superstars like a Messi or a Ronaldo or maybe like a Beckham.

• 51:59Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, but then the rhetoric is you're not a real fan.

• 52:01Joe Weisenthal?

  No, you're not, but like, you know, like from the perspective, then they like take their money with them from one city to another. I could see that really changing the game or sort of like changing the nature of like people's relationship with the sport.

• 52:13Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, but again, like if I was going to be cynical about this, it makes it even more about the money.

• 52:20Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm not defending it. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm saying that's an interesting shift in how people.

• 52:24Tracy Alloway?

  Right. And I'm saying that an effect of that will be that whoever has the most money and can afford like the best player just gets them and gets even bigger, even more money. And it's this like self-reinforcing cycle, which is what we're seeing in a lot of European football at the moment. By the way, material culture trivia for you on the pink jersey point.

• 52:46Joe Weisenthal?

  Go on.

• 52:46Tracy Alloway?

  Did you know that pink used to be much more of a gender neutral color, even more of a masculine color than a feminine color?

• 52:52Joe Weisenthal?

  Really? What, do you have any idea when that changed?

• 52:55Tracy Alloway?

  I think in the like early to mid 1900s. Kind of interesting.

• 52:59Joe Weisenthal?

  I'd like to learn more about that. We should also have Joy on back again, maybe in quieter days. Talk about the connection between football and the stock market crash of the 1920s.

• 53:09Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, that was interesting.

• 53:10Joe Weisenthal?

  I had no idea. Maybe I'll go find, I'll Google that and read more on that, but I'm very curious about that. But no, it was, it was a really fun conversation.

• 53:20Tracy Alloway?

  Who are you supporting in the World Cup?

• 53:22Joe Weisenthal?

  I don't know. You know what? I've really been like so busy. I just like, like, you know, we've been traveling and the Knicks. And so I'm like, I need this weekend. We're recording this on.

• 53:31Tracy Alloway?

  Really think about it?

• 53:32Joe Weisenthal?

  No, no, for real. Like I haven't watched a World Cup match yet. So it's June, we're recording this on June 16th. I need this weekend to like sort of reset every, or this week to reset and sort of get my bearings. It's like, okay, what World Cup matches am I gonna, I just have not had that, had the mental. Space to allocate like, you know, I remember like in 2010, I was gonna bring it up. I loved that one with the vuvuzelas. That was the one in South Africa. Vuvuzelas? Oh, that was, I loved that one. And like everyone in Brooklyn with their, I thought that was great.

• 53:59Tracy Alloway?

  That's my nightmare, being in a football stadium with someone with a vuvuzela like behind me.

• 54:04Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Tracy Alloway?

  What do the Cape Verde jerseys actually look like? Wait, I want to see. Ah, they're blue. Ah, could be better. Still, Cape Verde for the, for the win. Shall we leave it there?

• 54:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Let's leave it there.

• 54:19Tracy Alloway?

  This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 54:24Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. You can follow our guest, Joey Derso. He's at Joseph M. Derso and check out his book, More Than a Shirt: How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, Money, and Power. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armadas, Joe Bennett at Dashbot, Keel Brooks at Keel Brooks, and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots for the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 54:56Tracy Alloway?

  And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we do sports talk, I guess, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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