Pod Insights Planet Money Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.? About this episode As the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer – the top men’s professional soccer league in the U. S. and Canada – has been scrambling to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity when average American sports fans suddenly cared a lot about soccer.
In between World Cup matches, NPR Sports Correspondent Becky Sullivan has been following Major League Soccer executives as they try to figure out how best to get a foot in the door with sports fans in the U. S.
In this episode, we tag along to see if U. S. and Canadian professional soccer can harness 2026 for the mythical World Cup bump in soccer interest. What strategies are teams using? And does it stand a chance to work?
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from University of Buffalo, where five decades of AI research is producing advancements that put people first. Tackling real-world problems for progress, not profit. Empowering, not replacing. Learn how the University of Buffalo is using AI responsibly to create a better, brighter future for all at buffalo.edu/NPR.
0:23 Speaker 01 This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:28 Speaker 02 A few weeks ago, we accidentally recorded world history. I was calling up my friend for an interview.
0:37 Speaker 03 Jenny.
0:37 Speaker 02 Hi, Becky. How are you? NPR sports correspondent there, Becky Sullivan. Becky had found the oddest watch party for the World Cup.
0:47 Speaker 03 Hi, Kenny. I'm on a barge.
0:50 Speaker 02 You're on a barge?
0:51 Speaker 03 I'm on a barge here in Seattle.
0:53 Speaker 02 Like a boat, like a really, like a working boat?
0:58 Speaker 03 It is even more working than I could have ever dreamed.
1:03 Speaker 02 Becky is at a World Cup watch party in Seattle. In fact, this is the official watch party hosted by Seattle's Major League Soccer team, their MLS team. Now, MLS, as many of you know, is the top men's professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. But also, maybe many of you don't know that, which I suppose is why a team like the Seattle Sounders have decided to convert a commercial shipping container barge into a welcoming space where people can watch World Cup matches. So you're on a boat, a really big boat.
1:37 Speaker 03 I'm on a boat.
1:37 Speaker 02 Now, you want to set the scene? Just describe it a little bit for me.
1:39 Speaker 03 This is a boat. This is an actual barge. The interior of the barge has been transformed into this, like, beer garden watch party situation. Like, down on the deck of the barge is, like, turf. There are, like, families. I'm, like, watching a toddler kick around a soccer ball. And then at the end of it is a gigantic screen set up with big gigantic speakers. Surely you can hear behind me.
2:05 Speaker 02 And on that gigantic screen and through those speakers is Uruguay versus Cape Verde. It's, in fact, Cape Verde's first-ever World Cup.
2:13 Speaker 03 And Uruguay is the big, big, big favorite, but the game has just started. Uruguay has a corner kick, it looks like.
2:21 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:22 Speaker 03 And we'll see.
2:24 Speaker 02 Now, even if you've never watched a soccer match in your life, this whole scene, it is part of one of the most fascinating realtime business case studies you are going to find. Because Major League Soccer, MLS, is facing what we here at Planet Money have come to call a real big problemtunity. The problem, part of this, is that in most countries, soccer is the number one sport. It's not really even a competition. But in the US, it is so far from being most people's favorite sport to watch. And even if it is your favorite sport, like, is MLS your favorite version of soccer that you love to watch? But the opportunity right now is that Major League Soccer has the World Cup in town.
3:08 Speaker 02 It's happening, and the US is one of the hosts. And that seems like a once-in-a-generation chance if all these MLS teams can somehow find a way to capture all of this World Cup attention for their local MLS clubs.
3:24 Speaker 03 Yes, there's a lot of different ways that MLS teams are thinking about capitalizing on this World Cup. And so we have, we have a Cabo Verde goal. We got a Cape Verde goal. They are up 1-0 in Uruguay.
3:37 Speaker 02 Oh, OK.
3:40 Speaker 02 Cape Verde scored their first-ever World Cup goal in history. Oh, my goodness. Becky is about shaking. Are you near a life preserver?
3:50 Speaker 03 There might be a little movement, but that could also just be the winds.
3:52 Speaker 02 Oh, my goodness. There is nothing like that World Cup feeling. Now, the question is, can Major League Soccer in the US find a way to bottle that up? And hold on to some of that very profitable glow? Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone, and joining us for this episode, she has disembarked the soccer barge. She has her, her land legs back. It is NPR's Becky Sullivan.
4:20 Speaker 03 Wow, it's so nice to be here. Hello, Kenny, what's going on?
4:24 Speaker 02 Becky has been zigzagging the country, covering the World Cup for NPR. How many cities have you been to at this point? Five?
4:31 Speaker 03 Uh, seven?
4:33 Speaker 02 Seven. And along the way, Becky noticed something and got in touch with us at Planet Money.
4:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, basically, as I was going all over the place, you know, even before the World Cup, but certainly now that it's going on, I kept seeing all of these MLS teams sort of scrambling to find a way, basically to take advantage of it. I mean, it just seemed so clearly like this real time experiment happening just off screen on the edges of this huge thing that everybody's paying attention to. And so I thought it was the perfect Planet Money story.
5:01 Speaker 02 And so today on the show, Becky has brought us pretty unusual access to this real time experiment as all these MLS teams see if they can find a way to turn World Cup fever into obsession for their own local American soccer teams and Canadian. There are a few of those in MLS, too.
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6:32 Speaker 02 The only other time the US has hosted a men's World Cup was in 1994, and it is widely credited for giving soccer in the United States a huge bump.
6:43 Speaker 03 And actually, notably, I mean, one of the conditions of the US even being awarded the 94 World Cup in the first place was that it had to use the momentum from the event to launch a top-tier men's professional outdoor soccer league in the United States. And so, two years after the World Cup.
6:58 Speaker 05 And we are underway. Major League Soccer has begun.
7:02 Speaker 03 MLS launched with no shortage of dramatic proclamations at that first broadcast.
7:07 Speaker 05 There are very few times where you feel the chill go up your spine. This is perhaps the biggest day in the history of US soccer. Still looking for our first shot on goal.
7:18 Speaker 02 Whoa, can you feel it, Becky?
7:20 Speaker 03 I can feel it.
7:21 Speaker 02 Spoiler, it's like 88 minutes before someone scores a goal in that match. It takes a long time.
7:26 Speaker 03 Welcome to soccer, baby.
7:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:28 Speaker 03 And since then, MLS has done a lot of obvious things to grow the sport and compete with the other major professional sports leagues here in the United States. I mean, the league itself has grown a lot. They've gone from 10 teams back in 96, they now have 30, which is the same number as baseball and basketball. And they've also gone from just actually a few dozen games on TV each season to now, of course, every game is televised. And so, everybody's talking about this World Cup here in 2026 as another opportunity for that kind of transformation. But it seemed to me that these sort of relatively obvious things that MLS could do to try to bring itself on the same level as the other big sports leagues, those are already done. It's already on TV. They already have 30 teams. And so, my question was, what do they do now?
8:08 Speaker 02 Score more is the answer. No, just kidding, just kidding. And so, that is why Becky has been talking to all kinds of really high-level soccer executives about their strategies to capitalize on the World Cup. And let's start with the first strategy here, what I have come to call the "field of dreams", the "if we build it, they will come" strategy.
8:32 Speaker 06 One of the most important fans that we need to be is actually that core sport fan, that sort of soccer loose fan, like, yeah, I'm interested in soccer. Show me it's better than these other things.
8:44 Speaker 03 This is Brian Bolello. He is the president of the MLS team in the Boston area. They're called the New England Revolution and the team is owned by the Kraft family, who also own the New England Patriots.
8:55 Speaker 06 We have to win that experience versus football, versus baseball, versus hockey, versus basketball, right? And I think the World Cup actually is a great way of doing that.
9:04 Speaker 02 And actually, quick, quick funny story that Brian's been thinking about lately, because it has to do with his strategy for how to capture the energy of the World Cup and show people that it maybe can compete with their favorite sport.
9:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, so you should know that the New England Stadium has a bunch of photos on the wall in the office area of famous events that have been held at their stadium. And so Brian remembers on one of his first days on his job, he noticed that one of those photos was from the 1994 World Cup, specifically from this match between Greece and Argentina.
9:36 Speaker 06 And there's a picture of Simeone, Batistuta and Maradona celebrating a goal. And I'm looking at it and I was like, are you kidding me? That's me.
9:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. In the background of the photo is a very young Brian. As an MIT undergrad, he had volunteered to work at the 1994 World Cup, where apparently the uniform was some weird military beret situation. But yeah, there he was in that photo.
10:02 Speaker 06 19-year-old me in the first row in my full brown uniform with my purple beret. I'm leaning over the side, like, am I going like this?
10:12 Speaker 03 Like, he's just fully celebrating the goal along with Maradona and all the fans and absolutely not doing whatever job he was supposed to be doing.
10:21 Speaker 06 Probably wasn't doing a great job back then, but. You know.
10:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, this photo, it is a kind of aspiration, I would say. You know, back in 1994, Brian was a kid who liked playing soccer, but but he had not fully realized what watching soccer in person at a World Cup with all those international fans would be like.
10:41 Speaker 06 This is a level of passion that exists for this sport around the world. And it is, sorry, but it is a higher level of passion than we see from our domestic sports here.
10:51 Speaker 02 And so Brian's strategy boils down to this. He thinks the World Cup could unlock an unfathomable reservoir of passion for American sports fans, but they need to witness the game in person like he did and get a chance to literally celebrate a goal with Diego Maradona or Lionel Messi or whoever it is they might see this time.
11:16 Speaker 03 And this is why the key to Brian's strategy in terms of the New England Revolution is to have the World Cup specifically come to his town. He was super active in lobbying to get the Revolution Stadium selected as a World Cup venue. Like, I mean, years of meetings, slide decks, press interviews, tours of the stadium, that kind of thing. And it all paid off because the Boston area got to host seven matches, including a quarterfinal.
11:40 Speaker 06 So I do think the World Cup will really open up, you know, that that sort of soccer curious sports fan in a way that in 94, I don't think those fans were open to that. There was like, ah, soccer sucks. I don't like soccer. You know, that doesn't really exist as much anymore. We're now sort of like, yeah, I'm interested in soccer. Show me it's better than these other things. And I think the World Cup can highlight that passion, that energy.
12:05 Speaker 02 And sure, an MLS match is definitely not a World Cup match. It's true, but Brian feels like the MLS atmosphere can have some of that passion, that energy.
12:17 Speaker 03 Plus, the tickets are a lot less expensive than the World Cup.
12:21 Speaker 02 They dad, that is definitely true. Yes.
12:22 Speaker 03 So Brian is betting that if people get hooked on live soccer from the World Cup, his MLS product can scratch that itch.
12:29 Speaker 02 And yeah, this is the most direct strategy. It is very Field of Dreams, like if we build it, they will come. Or, or I suppose more accurately, it is if we bring the FIFA World Cup to the greater Boston area, general sports fans may decide they actually do like soccer, but you know, that's a little less pithy. If we build it, they will come. We're going with that.
12:50 Speaker 03 But here's the thing, Kenny. What do you do if your city did not get any World Cup matches?
12:55 Speaker 02 Hmm. Good question, Becky.
12:57 Speaker 07 At the end of the day, this is the biggest sporting event in the world that takes place once every four years, and it's not happening in Chicago.
13:07 Speaker 03 This is Dave Baldwin. He is the president of Chicago's MLS team, the Chicago Fire.
13:13 Speaker 02 So the city of Chicago, eight years ago, under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, decided very intentionally it was not worth it to be a host city. So the MLS club there, the Chicago Fire, could not just do what the New England Revolution did and just use the momentum from a local World Cup match to sell soccer.
13:32 Speaker 07 And we had a decision to make, just kind of to bury our head in the sand and just watch on TV like everyone else, or the other one was to really rally behind it, put some dollars behind it.
13:41 Speaker 03 The Chicago Fire, I think, actually pretty quickly came to the conclusion that they should not bury their head in the sand. But this question of what they should do, some of that became Dan Moriarty's problem to figure out.
13:52 Speaker 02 Dan is the chief marketing officer for the Chicago Fire.
13:56 Speaker 05 Internally, we use the line, give Chicago the World Cup summer it deserves. And so we, we started looking at all of our options and all of the crazy things that we could do.
14:03 Speaker 02 We will get to the reason Dan is speaking from a kind of a loud place, but first, some of those crazy ideas that they could do, because they're, they're interesting because of the puzzle that Dan and the Chicago Fire had to deal with. So they decided to spend about $2 or $3 million to do something during the World Cup. But, but to decide what that something should be, they first had to decide, like, who is the most valuable customer to target with all of this money?
14:29 Speaker 03 Right. Because in professional sports, financially at least, not all fans are created equal. A disproportionate chunk of revenue often comes from rich companies. Because teams can sell them sponsorship opportunities in corporate suites that are worth a lot more than an everyday fan like you, Kenny, or me coming to one game. So one idea Dan and his staff battered around was maybe put all the chips in on big executives in Chicago.
14:53 Speaker 06 Like flying the 25 biggest CEOs in the in the city out to the World Cup final on a private jet.
15:00 Speaker 02 Very fun, but that is a strategy that would be sort of like use the money to target just a couple dozen very wealthy potential customers. Now, on the total opposite end of the spectrum was a purely populist approach. Like, what if the Chicago Fire used their money to generate as much attention from regular Chicago people as humanly possible?
15:23 Speaker 06 Like running our own World Cup fantasy in Chicago only and putting a million dollar prize on it.
15:29 Speaker 03 And basically, that idea was give away a million bucks, like March Madness brackets, but for the World Cup. And I think credit where credit's due, that would get a lot of people's attention.
15:38 Speaker 02 Yes, the possible problem there is whose attention are you getting exactly?
15:43 Speaker 03 Right.
15:44 Speaker 02 It would be anyone interested in winning a million dollars, which is everyone, not just people who might be good soccer fans in the long term.
15:52 Speaker 03 So ultimately, the Chicago Fire decided that the best thing to do was neither of those things, but instead to spend over $2 million to throw basically one of the biggest World Cup watch parties in a non-host city. And so Dan, to come back to why he is talking to us from somewhere a little noisy, he gave me a tour of that party space.
16:12 Speaker 06 So yeah, so where we are right now, this will be the watch party area. So you can see you've got bars in here, bars outside, probably 30 TVs.
16:20 Speaker 03 So they have rented out this entire bar that is way more than just a normal bar. It essentially takes up an entire city block in Chicago. The inside alone would already be just a gigantic sports bar, one of the biggest you've ever seen. There's also this huge outdoor area. It's essentially this giant beer garden centered around what essentially looks like they've taken the Jumbotron from the arena where the Chicago Bulls play and just set it on the ground in the middle, showing games on all four sides. It is so much bigger than the watch party that was on the barge.
16:48 Speaker 02 It would sink a barge, that Jumbotron, so I'm glad that's not what's happening there. And when we talked to the president of the Chicago Fire, Dave Baldwin, about this strategy, throwing a giant party, he had a delightful and perhaps surprising comparison.
17:03 Speaker 07 I sort of compare converting non-soccer fans to soccer fans to my experience when I go shopping at Costco, which is, I never knew that I needed 800 teriyaki meatballs, but I was walking through the line, I had a chance to sample it, I said, oh my gosh, this is amazing, I gotta go buy one of those giant boxes, right?
17:20 Speaker 03 And so, we are going to call the Chicago Fire's World Cup strategy, the Costco sampling strategy.
17:26 Speaker 02 Yes, we were gonna call it the teriyaki meatball strategy, and we still might. We reserve the right. But yes, that gigantic party, that is all about the samples. You get people to come to, I mean, of course, share their email address and phone number with the team, but also to let those people know things like, hey, here's some Chicago Fire players that are in the World Cup, here are some local collaborations with artists making killer merch.
17:49 Speaker 03 And ideally for the Fire, they are selling soccer to people, kind of like a bulk product. I mean, they're hoping to convince people to, you know, not just come to one game, but to eventually become season ticket holders, buy merch for years to come, that kind of thing.
18:03 Speaker 02 And, I mean, look, it is true that a lot of the MLS teams around the country, they are doing smaller versions of this, you know, big old watch parties. And on the face, okay, kind of obvious. But I will say, it does take advantage of something a tad more advanced, which is harnessing what we would call the network effects of sports fandom. You know, some products become more valuable as more and more people buy into them. Sports, I would argue, is one of these. It's simply more fun to live and die with a team when you're doing it with other fans. And holding a big old watch party shows potential new fans, potential new customers for your soccer team, that there is a network that they get
18:42 Speaker 02 to join. So, will any of this work? Will any of these MLS clubs, using their Costco strategy, their build it and they will come strategy, will any of this actually work? Well, People have actually studied what happens to domestic soccer leagues in a country after it hosts a World Cup or a big tournament. And the answer is, Becky?
19:03 Speaker 03 It's mixed, honestly. I mean, here's the thing. This study found that sometimes domestic leagues did see a bump in attendance, but sometimes the bump went away after a little while, like it disappeared. And in some countries somehow, like Italy in 1990, they somehow saw a negative effect.
19:19 Speaker 02 Less attendance.
19:19 Speaker 03 Fewer people came in the years after.
19:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:21 Speaker 03 And so maybe people had used up all of their soccer energy and money on the big tournament matches. I don't know. But the point is, there is actually no guarantee at all that just having the World Cup in your country will help you as the domestic soccer league. And so I think you can argue that that's why these teams are spending so much money to do whatever they can to try to bring in new fans.
19:43 Speaker 02 Yes. But may we pose, what if the best way, the most valuable way to use this 2026 World Cup has nothing to do with converting new fans, nothing to do with with fans at all? Arguably, the most important World Cup audience? After the break.
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21:26 Speaker 02 So far, we've talked to specific MLS clubs about how they're trying to use the World Cup, but our final stop is MLS, like the actual organization headquartered in New York City.
21:38 Speaker 03 We called up MLS's chief business officer, Camilo Duran.
21:41 Speaker 05 I think in North America in particular, we have the sense that the Super Bowl is sort of this enormous event that does about 200 million viewers worldwide. The World Cup final in Qatar alone did 1.5 billion viewers. And so we knew that for our sport, this was a unique opportunity.
21:58 Speaker 02 Camilo told us that MLS is spending the most they've ever spent on marketing in the entire history of their league, tens of millions of dollars to try and take advantage of the World Cup.
22:09 Speaker 03 And the centerpiece of the campaign that they're running is to buy some very, very, very expensive commercial spots during the World Cup semifinals and final.
22:18 Speaker 05 And what I love is, is the campaign and the statement we're making. It is, thanks, world, we'll take it from here. And it is a bold statement of the confidence that we have in our league and our product.
22:30 Speaker 02 Thanks, world, we'll take it from here. I do think is fun, but I will say, if they had tried to pull this 20 years ago, it would have been laughable for MLS to be like, thanks, World Cup, we've got it from here, MLS will handle things.
22:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, and to explain that, I mean, it's because MLS is still very much not given the same sort of respect. It's not viewed in the same way as the sort of older, more established, more popular leagues in countries like England or Spain or Italy or Germany. I mean, maybe also Brazil and Argentina, depending on who you ask, who knows? But you get the point. Basically, it's newer, it's younger, it's not there yet.
23:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, the reputation is very much Europe is where the world's best players play, but when big stars are past their prime, still want to make a little Money, then they join major league soccer teams where they can, you know, play on easy mode and because of this reputation. I think there are lots of potential fans who are choosing to spend their sports time and money elsewhere.
23:26 Speaker 03 Now that said, there has been one very enormous consequential development that seems to be starting to change that reputation here for MLS. Three years ago, a guy named Lionel Messi signed with an MLS team. He's a little old, but still very, very good. And here he was coming to Florida to play in major league soccer.
23:45 Speaker 05 I think few people I'd say have the ability to change the trajectory of a league, and Lionel Messi is one of them, right up there with Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods.
23:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:53 Speaker 05 What Messi's arrival did and what this World Cup, we believe, will do is it'll encourage more players to come.
24:00 Speaker 03 And this, this gets us to maybe the most important potential audience for MLS during the World Cup. MLS has a once in a lifetime chance to show the world's biggest stars what life could be like in this league.
24:13 Speaker 02 Of course, there is still the question, like, how do you use the World Cup to do that? And we asked Camilo, what's the plan exactly? Are you going to like slip MLS flyers into players' lockers or something like that?
24:23 Speaker 03 And honestly, I think the answer is not that far off, actually.
24:26 Speaker 02 It's pretty close, yeah.
24:27 Speaker 03 There are a ton of top level training facilities in the US that these international teams could have chosen to use, but MLS worked really hard to pitch their fancy new training facilities and their nice stadiums as places for the World Cup teams to go.
24:40 Speaker 02 And sure enough, about a dozen national teams chose to use MLS training facilities as their base camps. Argentina's team was based out of the Kansas City MLS team's facilities. Brazilian players had been training before Erling Haaland destroyed their souls from the newest, fanciest facility, which is in New Jersey.
24:58 Speaker 05 They see our stadiums, they see the facilities.
25:00 Speaker 02 Are you hoping that, I don't know, Kylian Mbappe happens past your finest training facility during his visit here? For example?
25:08 Speaker 05 Kylian, it'd be great if he sees it.
25:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:11 Speaker 05 Whether it influences his future decisions, fantastic. But it could also have an impact on the decisions of his teammates and the people that players talk and they ask about experiences and what they think of certain places. And often before a player is transferred, they ask around and ask people what they think. So it's really important for us that players have great experiences as they experience the World Cup.
25:34 Speaker 02 There is probably a cap on how popular your league can be when the best players in the world are all playing somewhere else. So really, maybe the best way to grow American men's professional soccer during the World Cup is to convince even more Lionel Messi level players to come. And then that, that grows men's professional soccer in the U.S.
25:55 Speaker 03 And in terms of convincing those players, maybe the most important thing that's happened for MLS during this World Cup is this.
26:03 Speaker 02 Lautaro sends it across. It's swept in. And of course, it's Lionel Messi. Messi saves the day for Argentina.
26:13 Speaker 03 And this.
26:14 Speaker 02 Julio Alvarez running outside. Lionel Messi. Lionel Messi. First career World Cup hat trick. Ties the all time goal scoring record. Uh, yes, that by the way, is us. We can't use broadcast of the World Cup, so we're reenacting them by watching Messi World Cup highlights, whatever. You get it.
26:32 Speaker 03 Anyway, the point is that Lionel Messi has played out of his mind at this World Cup. And so to some degree, this whole thing has kind of been proof that coming and playing in Major League Soccer in the United States did not cause Messi to lose a step. This was not some kind of retirement home for him.
26:49 Speaker 05 When he chose to continue his career in Major League Soccer.
26:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:52 Speaker 05 There was a lot of people that thought he was coming here to retire and it's been the opposite. Rarely do you see him getting subbed off. He wants to play the 90 minutes. He's intense. He wants to win. Uh, and I think that's carried into, uh, the World Cup.
27:06 Speaker 02 I mean, and the fact that he's like. In shape for the World Cup, I think, is probably one of the greatest pieces of advertising you could have ever hoped for. Not sure you intentionally did that, but that is what's happened.
27:18 Speaker 05 Not just for him, but other players. I think Major League Soccer players scored 10 goals in the group stage. So I think that validates everything that we're doing and it shows the quality that we have on the MLS pitch.
27:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, maybe that's the note you slip into everybody's locker. Hey, didn't score any goals. Well, maybe try leaving La Liga. Try coming to MLS.
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28:29 Speaker 03 This episode was produced by James Snead with an assist from Sam Yellowhorse Kessler and edited by Jess Zheng. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Jimmy Keely and Anlee Huang. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. I'm Becky Sullivan.
28:43 Speaker 02 I'm Kenny Malone. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.
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