Potential 2026 WC Hosts (Update: Morocco Sole Challenger to CONCACAF Bid)

Nor is it going to work for Russia or Qatar.

Heck even in a fully developed country like the US, most football/soccer stadiums only get used a handful of days each year.....here in Seattle we've got CenturyLink Field which supports two very popular teams (the NFL Seahawks and MLS Sounders), but those two teams combined only have about 30-35 home matches per calendar year.

 

Wouldn't concerts be held at CenturyLink as well?

I used to live really close to the Barclays Center in New York and it seemed almost every night something was going on, even though the only full-time tenant at the time were the NJ Nets (41 games per year).

The only thing that blows is that it seems tax payers generally pay for these stadiums, which is absurd in a country with so much income inequality.

 

Plus, Infantino is only one vote. He can want, or be thinking of things, and the voters can vote a different way. This is what happened to Blatter with the Qatar vote.

 

I'm unclear why 14 stadiums are needed though. With modern turf technology, can stadiums not handle more than 2 games in a week? Why can't a country do this with only, say, 6 stadiums? Sure FIFA would like more, but is it needed?

 

Infantino has no votes

 

Yeah, 14 seems excessive. At the same time, the more the better so if a country only has 6 stadiums as part of their bid it should be seen as a negative against a bid which has more.

 

Interesting.
I'm making some estimation by using FIFA scoring system and big books.
I'll share my information with you to have a comparison.

 

If you read later on I noticed that. I found the attendance rates on Wiki for Botola.

Those numbers were not backed up and I even noted it forced me to reassess my position on Morocco's solo bid to HIGH white elephant risk.

 

Third in a series evaluating the bids from the perspective of a fan who will attend the World Cup wherever it is held. This post will focus on ease of getting tickets and conclude that it would be easier to obtain tickets for a Morocco World Cup.

The total supply of tickets is 5.8 million in the United bid and 3.8 million in the Morocco bid. That would seem to favor the United bid but let’s consider the demand side. There are two sources of demand for tickets: domestic and overseas. The proportion of domestic tickets has varied from 44% in South Africa to 65% in Brazil and 48% in Russia (my calculations based on FIFA’s figures).

Domestic demand
Tickets were fairly easy to acquire in 1994 but unattractive matchups like Saudi Arabia v Morocco still attracted 76,000 fans. Interest and awareness has grown enormously since then. MLS didn’t exist in 1994. Now it ranks just behind, and Liga MX ranks just ahead of, Serie A in terms of average attendance. Soccer may be the number 1 sport in Morocco but the overall population is less than 1/10 the size, they don’t have a particular history of soccer attendance (average attendance is only about 6,200), and the average person is much poorer (per capita GDP of $8,613 is much lower than even South Africa’s $13,403). It follows that most Moroccan demand will be concentrated in the low price Category 4 tickets that are reserved for them. The Moroccan bid assumes 19% of tickets will be Category 4. If the largest group of customers are grouped into one category, this means there will be proportionately less domestic demand for the other 81% of tickets.

Overseas demand
Although it is the #1 tourism destination in Africa, Morocco’s tourism industry is about the same size as South Africa’s. Morocco attracts 10.2m tourists a year, compared with South Africa’s 8.9m whereas those tourists spend $6.5bn in Morocco compared with $7.9bn in South Africa. For comparison, Russia gets 24.6m tourists a year.

Morocco is physically very close to Europe but the surprising truth is that European fans don’t travel to World Cups in the numbers one might expect. More are traveling to Russia from Australia or Peru than from France. More French and Spaniards will travel to Morocco but they’ll be outnumbered by the extra South Americans who will travel to the U.S.

In short, both domestic and overseas demand will be lower in Morocco and I suspect this will outweigh the extra supply in North America. In other words, I expect it to be easier for the average fan to get tickets in Morocco.

 

Because more stadiums equals more opportunities for graft, kickbacks, and corruption, which are all endemic in the construction industry pretty much worldwide.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Putin and his cronies have skimmed off well over a billion dollars from WC 2018, just like he did for the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Additionally, the more stadiums there are, the more spread out group stage games are, the more fans have to spend on travel, and the more money flows into the pockets of the host country. That's why teams always play their three group stage games in three different cities.

 

2026 FIFA World Cup bid books now available
http://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/united-2026-bid-book.pdf?cloudid=w3yjeu7dadt5erw26wmu

 

yes, for several weeks now, since march 26th .... links have been published here (and discussed) long ago

 

Obviously I missed that. Too much political stuff that had nothing to do with the bid books have been emphasized.

 

That because the technical qualities of the bids are, in fact, irrelevant. All the matters is politics, just like it did in 2018 and 2022, which were both awarded to the countries with the worst technical scores.

What comes out of Trump's mouth is going to have far more impact on who gets the 2022 WC than anything in the bid books.

 

Totally disagree.

I think what comes out of Infantino's mouth has more of an impact.

 

Just spoke to someone who knows people DEEP in the concacaf 2026 WC bid. They say it’s ‘95’ per cent sure to go Morocco. Even give or take ten per cent for the Chinese whispers effect that’s extraordinary.

— Eli (@ElMengem) April 12, 2018

 

Morocco deserves it.

 

I'm laughing at some tweets there. If the US doesn't win, it's rigged

 

As I expected, the natural CONMEBOL/CONCACAF alliance is asserting itself.

https://www.dobleamarilla.com.ar/ro...ndialista-reciproco_a5ad0dbf4ef76540f286aa7b3

 

As I've always said, we should never underestimate rivals. And there's also the task force which will evaluate to valid or invalid bids.

 

United 2026 video

Mexico video

Canada video

 

Also, it looks like the Saudi Arabian government declared support for the United bid last week.

Interesting that both bids have decided to focus on chiselling away on the "natural" support of their opponent.

 

Love is blind, as is revenge.

 

Russia and Qatar are no better.