Yeah this would probably be the ideal, eventually. We’re not ready yet but I guess never say never. It may not be as far fetched as it seems projecting down the road.
My understanding is that FIFA will control the ticketing and that pricing is fixed and even, but fairly reasonable. Secondary market will be nuts, but I think the face may actually be lower than Copa America on most matches until the later rounds.
That's what I'm saying. I'm in Charlotte and I'm hoping to go to a US game as a bucket list item (I know it'll be crazy expensive), but I'd also like to take my daughter to a game regardless of who's playing maybe in Atlanta if it's affordable.
That's good to hear. Like I said if you want to see a high demand team you're going to have to pay up (or get lucky), but there should be a way for ordinary people to bring their family to see Senegal-Ecuador or Tunisia-Denmark type matchups (to use 2 examples from the most recent WC, and in a 48 team tournament there will be more of those).
It was interesting how a lot of people on social media, including some big people, immediately dumped on the US on this, and avoided the ugly potential truth of soccer fans here. Pro Football tickets and SEC/Big 12/Big 10 College hold hundreds upon hundreds of games in stadiums 2-5x the size of the biggest stadiums hosting soccer in Big 5 Leagues and South America w/no problems ever of this sort, over and over and over again. People are pretending this is the fault of the US when no nation on earth hosts as many sporting events of this size at anywhere remotely nearly the magnitude of size AND frequency w/o this ever happening, period. This is seemingly a soccer thing, because it's not happening in any other sport. Maybe there's something to Bielsa's rant about soccer being a sport of the poor connected to regular sports fans being priced out, but what about the rest of sports? There are crap loads of poor people who'd love to see prime Jordan, or LeBron, or Brady or Lamar Jackson or Mahomes and none of them are pulling this bull----, so what does it mean? It's alarming as hell, I find myself looking at pictures, and part of me feels that this is what happens when you ---- over the working classes and the poor, that they run riot at bread and circus events, otoh, part of me also says: no it isn't. They don't do this for Lakers games, Heat Games, Red Sox, Chiefs, Niner games etc. They literally destroyed escalators, climbed into heating ducks, ran over ticket owners, and showed up, knowingly without tickets to do precisely this...they are, inherently, pieces of ----, period. What's wild is I watched the Wembly '21 Netflix doc like two weeks ago. Way too many people on social media are moving from blaming the individual -------- to blaming security itself, or the US, and that I find really interesting. They clearly need to fix the security and ticket process going forward, but the people themselves that did this, are the bigger problem. Because if enough people had this monstrously selfish attitude, they could overwhelm security anywhere no matter how large it was. People also need to address this....I've been wondering when the people are gonna start picking up pikes and running at the billionaire/government/wealthy elite classes....I kind of wonder if this weekend is a sign of more instability and insanity to come.
Definitely, I mean similar things have happened in Argentina league matches, but far more frequently in recent times as things have gotten more and more unstable over there and populist enablers continue to excuse poor behavior. There's a societal component that everyone is kind of handwaving away as if people are supposed to act like this, which I refuse to accept. Frankly I'm amazed it hasn't happened in other sports here as well, the way things are going. I guess our traditions and mores have some helpful inertia yet.
Part of me has been wondering for years when the pikes would come out and we'd hit France 1789 levels of working class rage, maybe it's here, or maybe I'm just suffering from vividness bias. Not sure. But yeah, twice in 3 years is, pretty crazy. This isn't normal. It suggests a basic breakdown....but it just might be an isolated moment like the "Malice at the Palace" incident 20 years ago. Not sure.
I really don't mind the cash grab by CONMEBOL .... it just helps the game in the US overall. but let's get the darn venues and fields and security right next time .... whenever it is in North America again.
Yeah, looking at the attendance for the 1st round Copa games, we had: Ecuador v. Jamaica: 24,000 Colombia v. Costa Rica 27,000 Jamaica v. Venezuela 20,000 Costa Rica v. Paraguay 12,000 I left off Canada's games even though they were low, since they'll be playing at home and will presumably sell out. And I left out Bolivia's low-attended games, since they're unlikely to qualify. But I think those other games are plausible 1st-round matchups in the WC. I know the WC is a bigger deal, but are 2x or 3x more fans going to go compared to the Copa? Especially when there will be more games than in any previous tournament? I remember in '94 that my family got tickets through the USSF lottery, and we had to pick a city that was hosting, and then we got tickets to all the games at that venue. I could see something like ensuring that all games are technically sell-outs, but then people might skip the worst matchup at their venue or something and leave the stadium less than capacity on game day.
I don't know if I'd generalize this specific case to working class rage, there's a lot of context that makes it explainable just from other angles. Colombia's first trip to a final since 2001, the game taking place in a location with a huge LatAm diaspora and easy to get to for fans from abroad, Miami's general atmosphere of being lax about these things and people thinking they can get away with whatever, see the spring break chaos recently.
1994 was one of the best organized World Cups ever. FIFA does not mess around with the goose that lays their golden egg. The organization of the event in 2026 should be excellent.
They will sell out every World Cup game. This isn't even a question. Yes, they will sell out whatever game ya'll want to mention. Senegal versus Ecuador at WC22 was a sellout. 45k fans in Khalifa International Stadium. Because there are a lot of people with a lot of money. And there are a lot of corporations that'll happily buy up the tickets. Are there middle-to-lower class people who can't afford tickets to the World Cup? YES!!! Too bad, so sad. They also can't afford tickets to the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NBA Playoffs either. Such is life. This is one of the reasons people say the atmosphere at a lot of World Cup matches is pretty "meh." It's not the most passionate fans who go. Its worth noting that the average attendance at this 2024 Copa America was 49k The average attendance at the 20218WC was 47k Even this Copa America that ya'll are saying wasn't well attended, did quite well. The 2026 World Cup will be the most attended World Cup in history by a wide margin.
Yep. I have been to the final at 7 World Cups. I never saw so many people outside the stadium without tickets, and no hope of getting them, as at the final in Qatar. It has become a real “have” and “have not” situation. The stadiums around the world keep getting renovated to reduce seating capacity and increase VIP boxes and the like. For example, before it was renovated for the World Cup in 2014, Maracana had an official capacity of over 150,000, all bleacher seats. And there were 200,000 people there for the 1950 World Cup final. After the renovations, it was downsized to a little over 70,000 capacity. And this is despite the obviously huge human population growth since 1950. At the matches in Recife at the 2014 World Cup, the stadium was in a relatively poor rural area. The local folks would line the FIFA-created pathway from the train station to the stadium, watching the relatively rich people who actually had tickets to the matches. I found it to be a sad and somewhat depressing experience. But that seems to be just a sign of where things are heading.
So this happened.. THIS JUST IN: The head of the Colombian Football Federation, soccer's governing body in the country, was arrested amid chaos at the Copa America tournament at Hard Rock Stadium, according to Miami-Dade jail records and a Colombian media report. https://t.co/FG2OzxtQnD— WPLG Local 10 News (@WPLGLocal10) July 15, 2024
exactly this. there's nothing more condescending to working class people than thinking they're inherently immoral or can't have any personal dignity. no, trampling over kids to get into a game you have no ticket for is a choice.
On a side note, my wife viewed the game as utterly unwatchable. Reading scuffed tweet, I understood their perspective, the intensity and committment, but I agree, this tournament, and the final, were ugly, total --- soccer. The only selling point was how completely committed they were. Beyond that, it was just constant kicking and fouls, constant, it was like 90 minutes of "the last 5 minutes of a basketball game" with just whistle after whistle after whistle after whistle, kicking after kicking, after hitting, after falling, after fake falling after fake falling after genuine falling after genuine rolling...it was, utter ----. Just like the whole tournament. I don't remember prior Copa America's I've watched being this horrible, but maybe I just have rosy memories based on nothing because this tournament was just garbage. Flat out garbage. Hugely disappointing and it looked so so so small coming after the morning and early afternoon euro games for a month. It was a disaster on the field, not just off, it was terrible soccer, terrible reffing, terrible everything. Glad its over. Sad the Euro's are over, looking forward, sort of, to U20 WC qualifying later this week, and the olympics a week and a few days from today.
CONMEBOL did all the organizing for this one and didn’t know how to operate in the US. The same mistakes will not be made by FIFA and the 3 national associations working on home turf. This is what you get from a CONMEBOL cash grab.
I went to USA-Colombia at Levi's for the Copa Centenario. No problems. Nicest crowd. Florida man strikes, I guess.
Popped up on my YouTube algorithm, so I don't normally watch this show but pretty good explanation of what went wrong from a guy that goes to a lot of events at Hard Rock. Less uniformed officers and organization than a Bethune Cookman game according to him. He knew right away when he pulled up that something was off.