Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Sporting Class: Hydration Breaks, FIFA Trials and a Condo Full of Cats About this episode Ex-ESPN president John Skipper was once the most important soccer fan in America. But then he lost the World Cup to FOX — and became a federal witness. So we wanted to know what it’s been like to watch America fall in love with the very tournament Skipper wasn’t allowed to win. And whether federal corruption trials, nine figures worth of commercials and a Trump Tower apartment full of cats can slow the spread of the world’s favorite game.
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0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 I'll give Fox credit. Fox knows how to make money.
0:10 Pablo Torre? Right after this.
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2:18 Speaker 01 Some point I will say during this that not even FIFA can mess up the World Cup and the games.
2:25 Pablo Torre? Well, I want to start there. Can we just start? Are we rolling? Let's start with that sentence, that not even FIFA can mess this up.
2:34 Speaker 01 The World Cup and its competition and the attention of the world upon it can withstand every corrupt, incompetent, silly, pompous move that FIFA makes. And it still is the most extraordinary sports competition in the world. And it's working. And by the way, I like the 48-team move. It's great.
3:02 Pablo Torre? Oh, okay. We gotta talk about tournament expansion. We gotta talk about hydration breaks. I want to talk about the business of this. I want to establish for people who are not familiar with you, John Skipper, that we are doing this episode without David Sampson here.
3:15 Speaker 01 Very sad that we're doing it without David.
3:17 Pablo Torre? Absolutely. And David would already be making fun of you. But instead, David is mourning. And we want to direct the entire sporting class audience, everybody who's ever watched either of us, any of us, to donate to the fund David has established in honor of his daughter, Kira Sampson, who died at age 28, if you had not heard, of brain cancer, glioblastoma. And we will put the link for the Kyra Fund, which is already doing remarkable fundraising work, already, in the show notes here. Please go there and donate. And in honor of David, I would like to make fun of you now.
3:54 Speaker 01 Well, certainly, somebody must do it. And he does it quite well.
4:00 Pablo Torre? Quite, quite well.
4:01 Speaker 01 And I love him for it, and it is sad. And it does put in perspective that while we are passionate about what we're talking about here, there are some things that make us understand that this is all not that important.
4:14 Pablo Torre? The perspective that we need to remind ourselves about as we talk about the most popular product on the planet, which is soccer and the World Cup, is really essential for us to establish here, as I also establish, John, that
4:31 Pablo Torre? I think at one point you were the most important soccer fan in the United States.
4:36 Speaker 01 I was the passionate fan in the United States who had a job that enabled him to act upon that passion in a way that nobody else had the opportunity to do. So it was the right person at the right time in the right place.
4:56 Pablo Torre? But the notion of you running ESPN at a time when, hey, suddenly you have the opportunity, there's actually a very small window, it turned out. When he took the job, right, it was October of 2005, a window that was in front of you to bid on this tournament. And this was, of course, many moons ago, but you were ahead of the curve with the financial resources to actually substantiate the bet.
5:21 Speaker 01 So when I asked George Bodenheimer for the job managing the content of ESPN, and I told him what I wanted to do was buy as many rights for as long as possible, and that was important, and I wanted to start by buying the World Cup. And he said, why? And I said, because soccer is someday going to be the most popular sport in the United States. Not positive that's true or not, that may be hyperbolic, but it is now the greatest single event that occurs in the United States. Not the largest audience, that's the Super Bowl, but the country is a flutter, aghast at this thing. George said to me, you know, Skip, there's always been somebody who said soccer's coming to the United States.
6:06 Pablo Torre? Yes.
6:07 Speaker 01 And I said, someday someone will be right. And it won't be because they're smarter, other people saw it earlier, other people cared more maybe, but I did understand, because I'd been to Europe and had seen the game, that it is the greatest spectator sport in the world, and the rest of the world loves it, and people here are going to love it as soon as they quit worrying about the fact that there are not that many scorers.
6:51 Pablo Torre? Watching the 26th World Cup must it must be kind of strange for you because now the thing is taking off and people are in love with the games, as you put it, because the games are so **** good.
7:08 Speaker 01 The competition is so great.
7:10 Pablo Torre? And so you're watching this stuff, we're in the knockout rounds and your bet is coming true, but it's not your network, you're not in that job and the entity that has the rights, as we need to explain here, has itself been embroiled in literal federal corruption trials in which you were a witness, which has to be a bit of an out of body experience for the celebration as well as the regret.
7:37 Speaker 01 Well, it's okay. What I have learned in this, yeah, it has a sting to it, right? Does it bother me that I cut on television and I have to watch Fox in order to see the World Cup? Yeah, hell yeah, it bothers me. Somebody asked me how they were doing in production and I finally thought of the right answer. It's the second greatest production of the World Cup ever. So they're doing okay, but it's not the greatest production of the World Cup ever. And I take pride in the fact that we at ESPN were right about this, that George supported me, we went out and did it. We built the World Cup in 06, 10 and 14. We celebrated the event, we spent a boatload of money doing stories.
8:23 Pablo Torre? I went to Brazil in 2014 for five weeks to cover a zillion games.
8:28 Speaker 01 And Wright Thompson went into the favelas to do reports and in South Africa, Saul Masakela took us inside Sueto. We had Hugh Masakela do the music. We did stories, we had documentaries, we did children programming, we had studio shows that lasted overnight. I watched the Netherlands Morocco the other night. What a game.
8:52 Speaker 01 It's over and they go to like nine hours of commercials and then I think James Corden is coming on for some reason. I'm like, why is James Corden coming on? Oh, they're gonna promote his show during the World Cup. I wanted to watch five hours of commentary to listen to people break the game down.
9:10 Pablo Torre? Because you're a fan, because you're an actual soccer fan.
9:12 Speaker 01 It happens and all the people who do sports at every network are fans of something, right? There are guys who just can't control themselves when Jim Nance talks about something like no other. I forget what it is. What is it? A tournament?
9:29 Pablo Torre? Hello friends. Yes, a tournament unlike any other.
9:34 Speaker 01 It is unlike any other.
9:35 Pablo Torre? It's the Masters, yes.
9:36 Speaker 01 More exclusionary, more misogynist like it than any other.
9:42 Pablo Torre? And that gets some people going. The azaleas and the collared shirts. This is all someone's fantasy. But yours was-
9:52 Speaker 01 Was the World Cup.
9:52 Pablo Torre? In America.
9:53 Speaker 01 In America and in a time when we could begin to compete. And that also, everything that we thought or wanted or hoped would happen in 94.
10:04 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
10:05 Speaker 01 And the people who ran it, Allen Rothenberg, Don Garber, Sunil Ghalati, did an unbelievable job. It was a great tournament, but we were not prepared to compete on the world stage. Now the country's embraced it. Everywhere you go, everybody's watching the World Cup. I'm going to my place. I go get my protein shake after I work out and these guys are like putting up a television in this little tiny store. I'm like, what are you doing? They're like, World Cup. We gotta watch the World Cup. I go to Gabriel's, which is a fancy New York restaurant where Gabriel, who owns it, would have, was disdainful of a television at the bar. But there's a television at the bar right now because all of the help
10:48 Speaker 01 is from Serbia, or a lot of the help is from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia. They wanna watch the World Cup. So it's all been embraced. It happened, what, six, 32 years after people hoped it would?
11:00 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
11:00 Speaker 01 But it's happening and soccer is just gonna boom, continue to boom in this country.
11:05 Pablo Torre? It's hard to get over how palpable it is when the entire world feels like it's focused on something.
11:13 Speaker 01 Yes.
11:13 Pablo Torre? And look, you've long had the thesis on like what the economic proposition of sports is. And frankly, from the NBA championship into the World Cup, which is like this almost exponential step change.
11:26 Speaker 01 Right.
11:26 Pablo Torre? Up. As much as I felt like, man, the world is celebrating the Knicks. We now see what it actually looks like when the United States can feel like it's in concert with the planet that you looked at and said, maybe we should pay attention to what's happening over there.
11:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, kind of a phenomenon. By the way, the country embraced the Knicks. But the world embraces this tournament. It's one of the very few things that the whole world cares about. You know, at one point they cared about the Beatles, but I'm trying to think what they care about now other than the World Cup and TikTok.
12:01 Pablo Torre? I want to establish as well, like before we get to the modern day presentation and the production of this 26th World Cup. I want to get to what it was like when you took over as the guy in charge of ESPN's content. This was back in, again, October of 2005. Because the characters that you had to encounter to navigate the world of winning the World Cup's broadcast rights are unbelievably colorful.
12:28 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
12:29 Pablo Torre? And relatedly corrupt.
12:31 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. Doesn't have to be related. In this case, it's directly correlated.
12:36 Pablo Torre? Because the tower, the literal tower you have to walk into, John, is what?
12:42 Speaker 01 Well, it's changed a little bit, right? And when I walked in 2005, you were still, they were still in Zug, not Zurich proper. But where you walk in now is a temple built for the power of football. It's got a little. Uh, short, small pitch next to it. They have a big boardroom in the basement that you go down to that is windowless and feels like should be in a James Bond movie. What was that organization? Spectre? That was the evil organization that James Bond had to? You feel like you're inspector. And that guy with the eye patch and the cigarette holder and the gray hair is in there. And it's, it's full of evil looking people.
13:24 Pablo Torre? Emilio Largo.
13:25 Speaker 01 Emilio Largo.
13:26 Pablo Torre? Who does sound like a member of the FIFA governance.
13:29 Speaker 01 I'm pretty sure he was on the executive committee. The, uh, the year they awarded it to somebody of the N S P N.
13:38 Speaker 01 Um, no, it's, look, they're, they're pompous. They think they're a national entity. I've told the story before of the security detail for Seth Blatter arguing with the security detail for, um, President Clinton about who had precedence in leaving the opening night event at the South African World Cup. They really do believe they're an extra national organization. They have this rhetoric about it and we're here to celebrate the great game around the world, spread the game around the world. And they actually accidentally do a lot of that.
14:15 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
14:16 Speaker 01 While they're busy enriching themselves and buying boats and Alpine houses in the, in the Alps at a nonprofit organization. Um, but it, it, it feels greasy when you go in. I mean, you just realize that everybody in there, um, just about everybody in there. It, there are people who care and, and who want to do it the right way. But the leadership team, uh, at the top, uh, from Mr. Blatter to Mr. Infantini, they have not missed, uh, I love.
14:50 Pablo Torre? Infantino, how dare you.
14:52 Speaker 01 Infantino, Infantini.
14:55 Speaker 01 The infantini.
14:56 Pablo Torre? God, this is where I miss David. I'm just like, your nicknames, but proceed.
15:01 Speaker 01 But you're referring, of course, to the tower, which was the Trump Tower, by the way, that Chuck Blazer, who at the time was the president, I'm not sure that's the right title, maybe executive director, commissioner, I don't know.
15:14 Pablo Torre? He was deputy secretary of Concacaf at the time, and also, yes, one of the people that you needed to win over.
15:21 Speaker 01 He, uh, we would not have acquired the World Cups in 10 and 14 were it not for the umbrage of Chuck Blazer. That umbrage was created by Seth Blatter having a handshake deal with Dick Ebersol at NBC Sports to broadcast the World Cups in 10 and 14. The, the sort of, it's sort of like a state, US senators get the right to approve judges within their state, sort of. Chuck Blazer was supposed to be able to sort of approve any media rights deals, or at least, you know, bless them, uh, before the executive committee actually did them.
16:06 Pablo Torre? Yes, he was one of the 25 members of the FIFA executive committee.
16:10 Speaker 01 Yes.
16:11 Pablo Torre? And the most powerful man in American soccer as a result.
16:14 Speaker 01 He was at the time, and what he was really furious about is NBC would have a handshake deal with Seth Blatter, but they also had always Chuck and Don Garber and Sunil Galati and the folks at FIFA always had this sort of pact that whoever gets the World Cup rights, and remember, we're getting them for free at the time, will also agree to do a deal with the MLS, because we need to build our domestic league if we're ever going to be a soccer country, so you need to do that. So not only did they do a sneaky deal, but they did it.
16:52 Speaker 01 Around MLS, which had held the rights before in soccer United Marketing to sell the World Cup.
17:00 Pablo Torre? When you said you were getting the rights for free, explain that.
17:04 Speaker 01 Well, in 06, we had the rights to the World Cup in Germany as a result of a time buy or an ad buy, right? So we supplied the slots, we did the surround programming, we carried it, we marketed it in the United States, but we did not pay a rights fee. So as recently as 06, the World Cup received no media rights money in the United States. Because that's how little this country cared about it.
17:34 Pablo Torre? Right.
17:35 Speaker 01 There were no bidders.
17:36 Pablo Torre? Well, and so all of this, the setup, this visit to Trump Tower, the visit with Chuck Blazer, this is an attempt to win the rights in 2010 and then 2014. And just the visuals, by the way, on Chuck Blazer, because I fear that you're not doing justice to him. So this is like, you know, 40,000 stories above Fifth Avenue in Trump Tower. And Chuck Blazer, John, I need you to be a writer for a little bit. What does he look like?
18:03 Speaker 01 He looks like Zeus. He is easily north of 300 pounds, probably 6'3", 6'4", an extraordinary, robust head, he looks like a cauliflower with a beard. Huge head of hair, big beard, a deep voice, always dressed, always dressed in a suit. So a powerful voice, he's easily commanding presence. He's scared, he looks a little like Burl Ives, too. Remember Burl Ives?
18:35 Pablo Torre? I'm looking up Burl Ives.
18:38 Speaker 01 But more like Zeus.
18:40 Pablo Torre? Somewhere between Burl Ives and Zeus, and according, by the way, to Vladimir Putin, per Sports Illustrated, Karl Marx.
18:47 Speaker 01 Yes, again, looked a little like Karl Marx with the big beard.
18:52 Pablo Torre? Except if Karl Marx loved...
18:55 Pablo Torre? Parrots and cats.
18:57 Speaker 01 Chuck kept parrots in his apartment. He kept cats in his apartment. He claimed, I think inaccurately, that he had invented the smiley face.
19:06 Pablo Torre? Yes.
19:07 Speaker 01 That was his cover for why he had so much money. In what was basically close to a non-paying job as the head of Condo Caff.
19:16 Pablo Torre? He had a separate apartment at $6,000 a month in Trump Tower for his cats.
19:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
19:24 Pablo Torre? And the justification for how he could afford this was he invented the yellow smiley face icon.
19:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. Which if you think about it, if you take that yellow smiley face and draw a big head of gray hair and a big beard, sort of looked like Chuck Blazer, because he did have a great old big smile. And he was charismatic and funny.
19:45 Speaker 01 And you did understand, you know how you have buttons on your trousers in the back? You did understand to button those buttons, keep your wallet close there when you went in to see Chuck Blazer.
19:55 Pablo Torre? Well, to give the sort of spoiler alert here, it turned out that Chuck Blazer, in his role at Condo Caff, was pocketing bribes and kickbacks for years, had failed to pay personal income tax on his fortunes. Eventually, notably, became a federal informant in the corruption scandal that would engulf FIFA in 2015 when the aforementioned set bladder would have to resign.
20:17 Speaker 01 Wait, you mean there was a corrupt guy who didn't pay his taxes? Was kind of a big old, big old lumbering dude with a weird haircut?
20:29 Pablo Torre? And an apartment full of duck cats.
20:30 Speaker 01 And lived in an apartment in New York City on Fifth Avenue between, what, 53rd and 54th? There still happens to be somebody who fits that description.
20:41 Pablo Torre? Oh, I see.
20:41 Speaker 01 Who still resides there.
20:42 Pablo Torre? Yeah, fewer.
20:43 Speaker 01 Has his name on the building.
20:45 Pablo Torre? Fewer animals, more gold, I think. But look, the point being that you had this vision, that you were trying to work your way through FIFA to sell, which was, we're gonna televise these things live, we're gonna do it right, we're gonna actually respect soccer fans as if they matter. And you offered what was then
21:08 Pablo Torre? An astonishing amount of money.
21:10 Speaker 01 A hundred million dollars. We offered a hundred million dollars. By the way, we were guided to that, right?
21:17 Pablo Torre? So forty million for 2010, sixty million for 2014.
21:20 Speaker 01 Yes. And we did agree to do everything live. Remember, this was still in NBC Sports. And I admire much of what they do then and much of what they do now. I've always been a vocal critic of the we're gonna take events and tape them and present them as a primetime special later. Sports events need to be live. And they were not intending to do every group game live. They didn't have the ability to do that, right? They didn't have six, eight, nine networks like we did. So we said, we'll do it all. We'll do all the women's matches. We'll do all the under twenty-three, all of the under twenty-one. We'll do all the qualifiers. I'll never forget that there was a woman from the programming department with me,
22:05 Speaker 01 a wonderful person. I won't call her name because I want to embarrass her.
22:09 Pablo Torre? Great.
22:10 Speaker 01 Who is like, John, you're like giving everything away. I'm like, I'm not giving anything away. We have like eight channels. We're gonna put these matches on at three thirty in the morning. It's great programming. We'll take off all those people who are exercising on the beach. And we'll have more room in the fishing shows and the hunting shows. So, yeah, we, I wanted to-
22:30 Pablo Torre? I just like that a guy who has your accent was like, why are we airing fishing?
22:35 Speaker 01 Fishing.
22:36 Pablo Torre? What a betrayal.
22:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:37 Pablo Torre? What a betrayal it must be for-
22:39 Speaker 01 I betrayed my people. They have my picture up at the Bass Pro Shop. If ever I walk in, they're gonna put a big hook in my behind and drag me across the parking lot.
22:49 Pablo Torre? God. But that was, that was the sales pitch was we're gonna treat this like the sport that it deserves to be. And- Look, among soccer fans, it worked.
23:04 Speaker 01 It was great. We had people who produced it, who loved football. We went to Europe and Asia and to North Africa and South America and got commentators who had lived it for 30, 40 years. We didn't try to put people who, you know, had done college basketball or baseball on the game.
23:25 Pablo Torre? You didn't have Alexi Lalas, which...
23:27 Speaker 01 Well, we had Alexi Lalas, I think.
23:29 Pablo Torre? Oh, did you?
23:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, we had Alexi Lalas.
23:31 Pablo Torre? Oh, man.
23:32 Speaker 01 And Alexi did a good job for us.
23:36 Pablo Torre? Amazing.
23:37 Speaker 01 And I have read the controversy. I was in Europe for the first two weeks. It's really hard to watch these games in Europe. Most of them are on at 1:30 and 4.
23:49 Speaker 01 But, so I don't have any comment on that. Alexi also helped us with a documentary we did. I've had a fine working relationship with Alexi, who is a challenging gentleman.
24:01 Pablo Torre? The fact that you're protecting Alexi Lalas just makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. You're the guy. You're responsible. You're responsible for Alexi Lalas. Okay, I digress. The point being that this thing, this whole broadcast, it emboldens you to feel like
24:21 Pablo Torre? we're the natural home for this.
24:23 Speaker 01 We were the right home for it. We clearly were the right home for it. And we made it a big event. We made it a big event by showing it for the big event it was. We embraced it. We put money behind it. We sent people to the events. We were all over different countries. We had stories on every country that was in the World Cup. We did something called "I Scored a Goal," in which we interviewed everybody who'd ever scored a goal in the final match of a World Cup. One person turned us down.
24:57 Pablo Torre? Who?
24:57 Speaker 01 Pele.
24:59 Pablo Torre? That mother.
25:00 Speaker 01 Well, Pele had a reasonable point and didn't see the bigger picture, which is you want to be included in this. His point was, people have been interviewing him my whole life. I'm not getting paid for it. I didn't make that much money, which he didn't. Playing football in Brazil and even for the Cosmos. We made pretty good money and he didn't want to do it. I still admire the guy and respect him, but he didn't want to do it. And he didn't. So he didn't score a goal in that World Cup.
25:29 Pablo Torre? I love that you had, though, the insane ambition of like, yeah, we're gonna just blow this out in the way that you would do a Super Bowl. And the thing that it leads to, obviously, is, I mean, I just want to spotlight the fact that it's June 23rd, 2010. It's the US and Algeria. And this feels like a turning point.
25:52 Speaker 01 I think it was a turning point. That's the game that Landon Donovan scored.
25:56 Pablo Torre? 91st minute.
25:57 Speaker 01 And the place erupted. It just sort of US soccer nation as it existed at the time.
26:05 Pablo Torre? You were there in Johannesburg? Where was it? In South Africa?
26:08 Speaker 01 It was in South Africa. And I do remember being in the tunnels going into that event. It's an old fashioned stadium, had not really been renovated. And I was with my younger son, Clay. At the time, it was about 15 years old, I think. And we got stuck in the tunnel. And I had that scary moment as a parent where you're like, I'm not sure my feet are touching the ground as we go in through this tunnel. And I've got my 15 year old, who probably was capable, more capable than I was.
26:38 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I was gonna say, knowing Clay a little bit, that feels like the reverse dynamic.
26:43 Speaker 01 But I remember going to that stadium to watch that game. And when he scored that game, that did feel like a, I don't know if it's a word, vindictory? That when you got vindicated, vindicatory?
26:56 Pablo Torre? Vindicating, but I don't know vindicatory.
27:00 Speaker 01 It's vindicatory, thank you very much.
27:01 Pablo Torre? Is an adjective here.
27:03 Speaker 01 So that was a vindicatory moment where it's like, okay, we were kind of right.
27:18 Pablo Torre? The end of June and July can be a really rough period for sports fans with football still a few months away and basketball and hockey ended. But this year, we're pretty lucky because not only is there a World Cup, there is a World Cup in our backyard. And so make sure to check out the Athletic Podcast Network to stay up to date on all things related to the World Cup. You can wake up with the Totally Football Show from LA, then dive deep into the biggest talking point of the day with the Athletic FC Podcast. And you can watch the Tifo Podcast fool around on their daily live streams in the afternoon. All shows are free to watch or listen on your favorite podcast platform. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries,
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30:22 Pablo Torre? The World Cup final in 2010, it's the most-washed men's soccer game to that point in US history. It's over 15 million people on ABC, another 8.8 on Univision. And the thesis is proven. Even outside of like what the Americans are doing, like, people wanna see this. And so, all of it brings us to the idea that it's time to renew. It's time to renew this relationship with FIFA. And for those who don't know, John, what happened? How do you explain this at a party? What happened?
30:58 Speaker 01 Oh, it's a downer at a party. You really don't want me to come to your party and get on a, uh, an exegesis about, uh, how we lost the World Cup? We lost the World Cup because members of the exco were bribed. And, uh, there was, they were going to award it to Fox. I don't know how that happened. I, by the way, I'm not accusing Fox of anything, other than being in collusion. I was in collusion with FIFA and it didn't work out. Cause they black, they, uh, backtracked on me. But we weren't paying money. Somebody paid money, I don't know who, I'm not accusing anybody.
31:38 Speaker 01 But somebody paid money to exco members so they would vote, um, for the World Cup in Qatar.
31:46 Speaker 01 Everybody was fooling themselves and lying to themselves about, I read, I was a member of the US World Cup bid committee.
31:55 Pablo Torre? Right, to bring the World Cup to the US in 2018 or 22.
31:57 Speaker 01 Right, and so we got to read the Qatari bid book, where they said, we are going to build new stadiums that are completely air conditioned, and that we'll break down when the World Cup is over and send into Africa to help build the sport. They weren't air conditioned, they had to move the World Cup to December.
32:19 Pablo Torre? Yep.
32:20 Speaker 01 That breached their contract with Fox, who appropriately was unhappy with that. They have NFL football in that part of the year, they don't need the World Cup, they have a nice big opening appropriately in the summer, that's what they had bought, so they huffed and puffed and threatened to blow FIFA's doors down. It is now documented that Jerome Vauk went to the Exco in, I forget, April of something, this is in Tariq.
32:57 Pablo Torre? Panja's.
32:58 Speaker 01 Panja's story in the New York Times, that Jerome Vauk went in and said, they're unhappy, I am going to recommend, or said, we've already made a deal, that we're going to give them the 2026 World Cup for a modest increase, so that they will not, they will not continue on, so the people that they colluded with to get the World Cup are now suing them, they're scared [BLEEP] that they will not be able to land in the United States, and without being subpoenaed and Letitia James.
33:34 Pablo Torre? The AG of New York.
33:35 Speaker 01 Dragging them in, yeah, Attorney General of New York, they're scared of that, so they decided to give it to Fox. It's ironic, of course, because they came in 94 to open up the game because they want at the US money. So then, when they finally get to the US, and should be getting US big money for media rights, they decide, well, we'll protect our own buttocks, as opposed to having what will clearly be a huge auction. Now, they had not announced US yet, so I am sort of alighting a few things.
34:08 Pablo Torre? Sure.
34:09 Speaker 01 But they probably knew it.
34:11 Pablo Torre? Well, but the point here is that-
34:13 Speaker 01 Didn't take the money.
34:14 Pablo Torre? Right.
34:14 Speaker 01 The one time they didn't take the money, ever.
34:17 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so, so just to recap, so what Fox is paying for the 26th World Cup right now is less than $500 million to air this tournament. This is per the New York Times story in May. And what experts are saying is that the rights are worth as much as three times that. And so the question becomes, how is it that FIFA didn't extract maximum money? And it drives back to this arrangement that FIFA Secretary General at the time, yes, Jerome Valk or Velka, however you want to pronounce that, depending on what part of the European Union you're in. What the New York Times reported, according to the people with direct knowledge of this meeting, is that
35:01 Pablo Torre? the FIFA Secretary General told board members that, quote, "It had been agreed to extend Fox's contract to 2026, to this World Cup, in exchange for Fox not acting against FIFA should the World Cup dates be moved." Because this thing was going to be in Qatar in '22. And a month after that, FIFA announces, hey, it's going to be in Qatar. It's going to need to be in December and November. And two months after that, and this is just the order of operations, the entire FIFA leadership winds up being removed following a sweeping Department of Justice indictment alleging nearly two decades of corruption, mostly tied to the sale of TV rights to competitions in North and South America.
35:41 Pablo Torre? And yeah, you happen to be a guy who's familiar with the inside of that courtroom as all of this was happening.
35:48 Speaker 01 I was indeed. I did testify against two gen- by the way, I did not test- you don't testify against them. You testify on behalf of the state, which has brought a case. I was not asked about their actions at all because I had no knowledge of it. I was asked, what do you know about what happened? What happened when you were there getting it? What agreement did you have with them? What happened during the bidding process? Because they were trying to prove malfeasance. I- my testimony did not prove that. I did not testify about malfeasance. I testified about our experience in which we lost the World Cup bewilderingly.
36:25 Pablo Torre? And didn't get to do the thing that you've established on the sporting class one million times, which is come in with whatever the highest bid is, plus $1.
36:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:33 Pablo Torre? You were not given that opportunity to outbid Fox, which was- Perhaps, just using the powers of logic and inference, a red flag.
36:43 Speaker 01 Um, there would, there would be no reason not to take the top bidder, who had just done a spectacular job in the World Cup in '06, shown the path to how you break it through in this country, and get to a billion dollars in rights fees for a single World Cup, which would certainly have happened this time, will happen next time. I would think they'd do a billion, half, two billion next time, which is, you know, I, I'll give Fox credit, Fox knows how to make money.
37:15 Pablo Torre? Well, let's talk about it.
37:16 Speaker 01 They made good money on the World Cup in Qatar, because Qatar subsidized the production. And they will make good money on this World Cup, because they got it for a sweetheart price. And they concentrate, they, they're very good at running their business.
37:32 Pablo Torre? Well, the things that we're watching now, you know, we're seeing a couple of innovations, right? You're a guy who said earlier that you weren't a big fan of the expansion of the field to 48 teams?
37:46 Speaker 01 I was not, I was wrong.
37:48 Pablo Torre? And you've otherwise been, which is funny to me, because you've long lobbied for the NCAA tournament to be expanded, for the college football playoff to be expanded. So your, your soccer purity led you to betray your own capitalistic vision that you have for every other sport.
38:04 Speaker 01 David will be perfect on this point.
38:06 Pablo Torre? I am feeling him inhabit my body right now.
38:09 Speaker 01 And he's right, as a fan.
38:11 Pablo Torre? Yes.
38:11 Speaker 01 I did what every fan did, which was, I don't want them to do this. I don't want them to pay the players. I don't want them to allow players to transfer. I don't want this or that. I didn't want, because I, I love my World Cup the way it was.
38:26 Pablo Torre? Yes.
38:27 Speaker 01 And I was wrong, because when they started playing, they're great, the games are great. I thought, oh, this is awful. They could play all these games and only 12 teams are gonna go out.
38:37 Pablo Torre? All these Cinderellas, why do you need the Cinderellas? And it turns out.
38:40 Speaker 01 But it's great, turns out it's great. Um, and I was wrong about that. Um, I don't know, are we gonna talk about hydration breaks?
38:47 Pablo Torre? Yes.
38:48 Speaker 01 Are you gonna call that an innovation?
38:49 Pablo Torre? I'm gonna call that a way to profit in ways that are only thinly veiled as innovation.
38:56 Speaker 01 Which that is clearly what it is. These guys are not going to keel over. They can, they can grab the bottles as they go past. They can pour it on their heads. They could take a 30 second break. This is a way to get an ad break in the first half and an ad break in the second half. We might see the innovation where they have two hydration breaks. They might just decide it's okay. We'll stop after 20 minutes. The coaches can talk to the players, but it's bull**** that this is about hydration. This is about commercials. And Fox was sure ready to go with their commercials. On the very first hydration break, bang, there's a commercial and bang, they don't get back in time for the action.
39:35 Pablo Torre? Well, this is the thing, right? So soccer, part of the purity that you clearly loved was it's uninterrupted. You're getting, you don't have these commercial breaks. And so here, what the Hollywood Reporter is saying is that according to a media buyer source, the average cost of a 30 second spot during this new innovated format is between $200,000 and $750,000, depending on, you know, is the US playing? What are the big draws? And also the stage of the tournament, the knockout stage is underway now, of course, they raise the price. But with six minutes of hydration breaks, that adds up reportedly to anywhere between $2.5 to $9 million a game.
40:17 Pablo Torre? And so you multiply that out, 104 games played, factor in that, you know, blah, blah, blah, carry the one, a half a billion dollars out of thin air.
40:27 Speaker 01 And I assume that the sales force is in the market now telling people what the hydration breaks in the final will cost. And that will be a seven figure sum of money.
40:39 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
40:40 Speaker 01 It'll cost a million dollars apiece.
40:41 Pablo Torre? And are you begrudgingly impressed?
40:44 Speaker 01 No, I don't think that's an innovation that makes the game better. It make, all it does is create more revenue for a corrupt organization that is a nonprofit, as I always remind people, with a nonprofit with billions of dollars in the bank and executives, all of whom have a very good sized boat.
41:04 Pablo Torre? Well, Johnny Infantino for the record says, quote, "This is not a financial issue for us. For us is purely a sporting matter."
41:11 Speaker 01 He is so full of ****.
41:14 Speaker 01 I mean, the pompous way in which he pronounces these things.
41:18 Pablo Torre? Saying all commercial agreements were signed in advance. There's no additional revenue here. This is a total misunderstanding of how it is that we are profiting.
41:25 Speaker 01 And he just decided he is concerned about the help from these players. Not concerned when he wants to create another new tournament, which means they'll play 120 games a year.
41:34 Pablo Torre? Not concerned when they were putting the World Cup in Qatar.
41:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
41:38 Pablo Torre? Something about heat being a problem.
41:40 Speaker 01 How about we go up to Norway and play next time? Where it's a little cooler and you won't need a hydration break. And take a little cut in the money you get from the host nation.
41:49 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and for those not keeping score at home, 2034, we're looking at Saudi Arabia.
41:54 Speaker 01 Gee.
41:55 Pablo Torre? A notably temperate.
41:57 Speaker 01 They've probably figured out that air conditioning thing by now.
42:00 Pablo Torre? Yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, they were, yes. USAID might be gone, but don't worry. FIFA is gonna export air conditioning after they use it throughout the Middle East to all of the developing countries in the world.
42:10 Speaker 01 You do know there is a rotation of countries that get the World Cup.
42:16 Pablo Torre? Explain.
42:17 Speaker 01 Meaning they've always sort of said, okay, next time is Africa's time, next time is Oceania's time, next time is South America. Well, in order to get the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia, which was another inside deal, by the way, and I doubt any money changed hands there. Um, they had to cross off, um, South America. So we have opening games in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. Then oddly enough, there's gonna be a couple of games in, so that takes care of South America. It'll be a couple of games in Europe. They're gonna play in Portugal and Spain.
42:58 Pablo Torre? Right.
42:59 Speaker 01 And they're gonna play a couple, a few games in Morocco.
43:02 Pablo Torre? Mm hmm.
43:02 Speaker 01 In Africa.
43:03 Pablo Torre? 2030.
43:03 Speaker 01 So click, we're through Africa, we're through South America, we're through Europe, we can go back to the Middle East. I guess Infantini is gonna tell everybody, we're celebrating the World Cup. It's innovative around the world. We got South America and we got Northern Africa and we've got Europe involved. This is a great new way to do the World Cup. The best way to do the World Cup is to go to a great soccer nation. And let people be able to drive around in a car to go from place to place. Think how expensive it's gonna be to follow your team. When they're not just in Dal- or they're in, you're in Scotland, you're Scottish, and you're come to Boston, then you gotta go to Miami for a game. Now you're gonna get to go to Montevideo for the first game.
43:48 Speaker 01 And then maybe the second game, you can go to Lisbon. And then you could go to Marrakech for a game.
43:54 Pablo Torre? Just take the boat. You just take your boat.
43:56 Speaker 01 It's just gonna become, you know, a World Cup for plutocrats. Who can afford to get around to all these places?
44:04 Pablo Torre? Well, this is, and this is where we get to the paradox, which is, a World Cup for plutocrats is, of course, what we're on some level already watching. And yet, because the games are so fucking good, it's also the rise of the African diaspora.
44:21 Speaker 01 Yes.
44:22 Pablo Torre? In which you're watching a country like Morocco, just one example alongside Ghana, I mean, you can go down the list. And you can say to yourself, this is actually something like the global village of our planet, paying attention to countries that we otherwise don't care about, but we are celebrating in a way that feels almost refreshing and meaningful.
44:43 Speaker 01 And, and this is astonishing right now in New York. This has been such a great-
44:47 Pablo Torre? Cape Verde, just being now this player we pay attention to.
44:50 Speaker 01 Well, New York has a Cape Verdean community. I don't know if it's Verdean, but they have a Cape Verde community. A friend of mine went out with a friend of his to, to watch Morocco-Netherlands play in Little Morocco.
45:04 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
45:04 Speaker 01 Which I think is, is it Jackson Heights? I forget where it is, but there's a Little Morocco, there's a Little Cape Verde, there's a Little Uruguay. In my neighborhood, in the West Village, I went to a restaurant I usually, one of my, that I frequent, and they're having a Colombian watching party because somebody has bought the restaurant out to watch the Colombia game.
45:24 Pablo Torre? Yes, Astoria, by the way, in Queens, is, is, it seems, it seems, the designated place to go watch and celebrate and eat Morocco. Yeah. But this is, this is, this is something that I think is quite encouraging in spite of the oligarchy.
45:42 Speaker 01 It is. Look, it is ultimately the people's game and they-
45:47 Pablo Torre? It's a hell of a product for that reason.
45:48 Speaker 01 And they vote every four years that we love this tournament. They, it has been, again, it's why I was wrong about the 48 teams. It's been lovely to see the fans from Cape Verde and the fans from other countries who've never been before. It's great to see Scotland back in the World Cup and it's just, there's no begrudging.
46:09 Pablo Torre? It's great to see King Abdullah II of Jordan visit a Jordanian restaurant in Richardson, Texas.
46:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, and by the way, while they got beat, the Jordanians in the last game they played acquitted themselves very well. They, they have good players. The other thing this tournament has shown is that there are good players everywhere. And while the US is gonna have enough good players to be a national power, you kinda don't take any team for granted in this World Cup.
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47:48 Pablo Torre? Speaking of being taken for granted, there is a bit of an update, a postscript, to this whole FIFA federal corruption case, which you, again, were a state's witness in. Because, and I just gotta read what the US Attorney said on behalf of the Justice Department, which in May decided to give up the case against two of the defendants, one of whom is the former CEO of Fox International Channels. And this is what US Attorney Joseph Nacella told the judge, quote, "It is focused," the Justice Department, "focused on other matters now, like homeland security, narco-terrorism, gang violence, and human trafficking."
48:32 Pablo Torre? These are some of the things that they're saying. "We don't have time to look into these quaint matters that one John Skipper may care about. We gotta stop narco-terrorism."
48:43 Speaker 01 This is, you know, always in an event like the World Cup, it reminds you of the great nations of the world and that some people speak English and some don't. So you might need that translated. I think that is, some very powerful people called the White House, lobbied them, promised a campaign contribution, and we got a call that we needed to drop these lawsuits before anybody...
49:05 Pablo Torre? How dare you hypothesize?
49:07 Speaker 01 Before anybody is embarrassed. This happened right before the World Cup, right?
49:11 Pablo Torre? Yes, this was in May.
49:13 Speaker 01 You wanna clear that out, and you just gotta think about, well, who could be embarrassed? And I'm not gonna personally make any accusations, but you can probably figure out the likely parties, many of whom are friendly with this president.
49:25 Pablo Torre? Well, the Solicitor General of the United States, D. John Sauer, also requested the dismissal of the two indictments, and four other defendants in the case have come forward since to ask that their convictions be dropped as well, arguing that the Justice Department is showing that no crimes were ever committed. And, you know, so it is, that maybe we can all get this cleaned up.
49:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, nobody broke into the Capitol on January 6th either. And I love the name, E. John Sauer?
49:51 Pablo Torre? D.
49:53 Speaker 01 D. John Sauer? De-John Sauer.
49:55 Pablo Torre? D.
49:56 Speaker 01 That sounds like an island down in South Carolina. I'm going to De-John Sauer and have a little vacation with my family.
50:04 Speaker 01 I'm assuming it's S A U E R.
50:06 Pablo Torre? S A U E R.
50:07 Speaker 01 Not S O U R.
50:09 Pablo Torre? Correct. And I suppose I should add this note as well, which is in the reporting here. Since the FIFA investigation began in secret 16 years ago, because again, this was a sprawling federal case, looking into this thing that was just in plain sight. Prosecutors had netted more than 30 convictions and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and restitution. And now, of course, the story of what this is, they are, via this administration, attempting to revise it. But you mentioned, perhaps inadvertently, radicalization. And.
50:43 Speaker 01 If it was not only inadvertent, I don't even know I did it.
50:46 Pablo Torre? You mentioned January 6th, and it does feel like what we're watching is the radicalization of now soccer fans in America. And I wonder if some part of you is delighted that despite all of this, despite the story that is intertwined with corruption and apartments for cats and arrests and oligarchs' boats and plutocrats and attempts to undo prosecutions for corruption, that you can watch these broadcasts and be like, you know what? I see myself in some of what's happening here.
51:26 Speaker 01 You remember, of course, Pablo, when it was not uncommon for critics of the sport to suggest that it was boring and awful and to suggest that it was basically a socialist enterprise.
51:41 Pablo Torre? Correct.
51:41 Speaker 01 Right? You needed to look at American tackle football. Now, that's a capitalist sport. You're conquering territory. That's what it's about. And people, big, powerful people call the plays so you can gain 10 yards. But, and they accuse soccer of being socialist, right? It's collective action of a bunch of people who aren't having to listen to a coach yell at them the whole game because the coach can't be heard. So it actually is a collective of players who do most of the decision making as opposed Chuck Klosterman's book is brilliant about this.
52:16 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
52:17 Speaker 01 His book on football where he talks about why. Football is the supreme sport in this country. That it does reflect a lot of the values of this country, the past history, including powerful people being in charge. Powerful people up in the booth who are, I call it, an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. We're in charge, not those damn players. Who would want to put the people in charge?
52:42 Pablo Torre? There is a top-down militaristic aspect, yes. To American tackle football, as you call it.
52:47 Speaker 01 And it's a, it's a great game on television, as Chuck also points out in his book.
52:51 Pablo Torre? So many, so many commercials.
52:53 Speaker 01 It is, it is.
52:55 Pablo Torre? No, it's made for attention spans being challenged in this era, yes.
52:59 Speaker 01 It's made for the way we live. It's okay. It's made for being able to go to the refrigerator and get a beer and not miss anything. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not insidious or, or evil or anything. It's great. It's fun to watch. Uh, and when I watch it, I enjoy it. So I'm not, I, I can.
53:18 Pablo Torre? Do you?
53:18 Speaker 01 I do, until I think about how many of those people are not gonna be, are gonna have CTE when they're 52 years old.
53:27 Pablo Torre? Sure.
53:27 Speaker 01 That is a hard problem, uh, that does trouble me a bit and does interfere with my fandom.
53:33 Pablo Torre? The whole consensual concussions thing does ruin the vibe at a party.
53:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. Call me crazy, but when I see people smoking cigarettes now, I'm like, it's not a good idea.
53:46 Speaker 01 Well, I grew up in an era where people still sort of said, I don't think you can really conclusively prove that cigarettes cause lung cancer.
53:55 Pablo Torre? And now, look at you.
53:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, now I know. I quit, I quit smoking.
53:59 Pablo Torre? You're, you're a soccer-loving, clean-living, quit-smoking.
54:03 Speaker 01 Socialist.
54:04 Pablo Torre? Guy who drinks protein shakes and is selling socialism back to America.
54:10 Speaker 01 Sorry David wasn't here to, uh, to correct me on some of this stuff. I miss him for that reason.
54:24 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
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