Trump’s World Cup

The biggest sporting event in the world is coming to the U.S. No, not the Olympics. The FIFA Man's World Cup, 48 national teams, 16 host cities, and the final right here at MetLife Stadium. Now, if you're going, don't tell me, because I will either die of jealousy or make a stupid financial decision. The World Cup is my Super Bowl, and in fact, it's way bigger than the Super Bowl, with nine times the global viewers. It's also expected to attract a million tourists to the U.S. this summer. This, of course, has caught the attention of one President Trump, who is already seeking to shape the tournament in his image. "You look at the numbers, nobody's ever seen anything like the kind of numbers we're doing. The early ticket sales are through the roof." So how and why did Donald Trump come to Love Soccer? That's coming up on today's explain from Vox. This is today explained. My name is Adam Krafton, and I'm a reporter at the Athletic, primarily covering soccer, the business of soccer, the politics of soccer, the money of soccer, and all the stories that come with that. Can you remind us just about the bidding process here? How did the U.S. and, of course, Canada and Mexico into conjunction even get these games in the first place? The way it works is nation's bid, and they bid quite a long way out. The process for this was kind of around 2017. It was actually during Trump's first presidency. "Well, thank you very much. We very much appreciate the fact that we have won a very important event. The World Cup in 2026, and we'll be hosting it along with Mexico and Canada." It's interesting to look back on because now, you know, any moment President Trump gets the opportunity to take credit for it, he will do, but actually, you know, we've reported on the Athletic. Like, one of the motivating factors for joining forces was kind of this concern about whether America, the USA, could win a bid by itself because this was coming off the back of, if you remember, the FBI's criminal investigations into FIFA and the DOJ's involvement. "We are here to announce the unsealing of charges and the arrest of individuals as part of our long-running investigation into bribery and corruption in the world of organized soccer." And there was this concern about whether FIFA membership, which was kind of one member, one vote across the world, would actually go for it just in American bid. So they joined forces with Canada and Mexico, slightly softer, I guess, landing, and also just this feeling at the time of, you know, Trump at the time was saying some pretty disparaging things about other parts of the world. You'll be shocked to hear that you mean to tell me, right? That's right! You mean to tell me, right? The time will jump! Right! That's right! You're merging on the gutters! And even during the bidding process, like, I suppose the people part of that bid, and they would be going round, saying to people things like, "Oh, you know, Trump doesn't really mean what he's saying," or, "Don't worry, he won't be the president by the time this comes around." And yet here we are. And Trump, you know, I think Trump likes it, basically, because he can claim credit. He can say, "I was here when we won this, I bought this, and now I'm here to deliver this." Now, you know, I really want to focus on FIFA's relationship, how they've oriented themselves to Donald Trump. You know, the president of FIFA, Gianni and Fentino, is become someone, a kind of legend in the soccer world for both maybe good and bad reasons. You're going to help us understand a little more about him. Who is he, and where did he come from? So he is. The son of Italian immigrants in Switzerland, as a child, they called him Piccolo, the little one. And I know what it means to be discriminated, to be bullied as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child at school, I was bullied because I had a retair, and I had this ret, how do you call them? Freckles. Freckles. And he actually, he's got this kind of quite interesting multicultural background. As a child, he's spoken about being pretty poorly and needing a blood transfusion. He was kept alive by blood from donors from England and also from Belgrade, so what's now Serbia, former Yugoslavia. And then he has this kind of story of emerging as a soccer bureaucrat. So he was originally in the legal department at the European Confederation, which is called UEFA. There's the different confederations around the world, and he was there, and he was one of the beneficiaries of kind of the collapse of FIFA in 2015, 2016, because this space emerged where he was able to kind of deliver himself to be kind of like a changemaker. Some people don't want to change. Some people hope maybe, well, new president, but we continue, as before, well, no, we don't continue as before. Well, we have our two main characters here then, President Trump and Gianni and Fentino President of FIFA. Can you tell me about their relationship and how it's shaping the world cup? Yeah. Well, their relationship was born out of the bid. So the bid joined Trump's first presidency in Fentino, kind of got himself into the Oval Office a couple of times, and that that was how it started. But what actually happened was, whereas a lot of people obviously turned on Trump kind of towards the end of his first presidency, and certainly after January the 6th, Infantino didn't. There was no point where Infantino publicly distanced himself from Trump. He played a pretty judicious game where he kind of, either because he liked Trump or because he was a smart political animal and recognized that there was a chance he might have to work with him again. He stayed close, he went to Mar-a-Lago, when Trump was out of office. Yeah. He maintained that relationship. And actually, there was a pretty memorable moment at Davos. This was when I think Trump was still in power, but it was the week where the ground rules were being laid for the Senate, so I think the first impeachment hearing. And it was around that time. And Infantino actually introduced Trump to speak at Davos and spoke about him in these glowing terms, described him as a fighter, almost like a gladiator, compared him to one of the great soccer players. I am lucky enough in my life to come across some of the most talented athletes in soccer, and President Trump is made of the same sort of fiber. And I think Trump, you know, whatever people think of him, he's clearly someone who remembers those who were loyal to him, and doesn't like those who turn on him. And when Trump was then out of office, FIFA found it really difficult to penetrate the White House. You know, there was no picture with Joe Biden in the Oval Office. There was no even visit to the Oval Office for Infantino during that time. And FIFA were finally at heart to get stuff done during that period. And then when Trump wins power last November, Infantino is immediately on the front foot. I mean, like on Instagram every other day, praising Trump, water-fantastic victory, he went to his pre-inorganization rally, and Trump would like keep name checking him at these events. The president of FIFA, Johnny Infantino, FIFA, FIFA, where's Johnny? Well, Johnny, by the way, I didn't know he was going to be here, he's big stuff. And it was pretty odd, like for those of us who have followed Infantino as a job, kind of this like soccer bureaucrat, to all of a sudden see him, you know, basically being on first name terms with the US president. Infantino has been in the Oval Office more than any foreign state leader, for example. That's extraordinary. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, say that again, I've got to make sure I got that right. He's been in the Oval Office more than any other foreign state leader, any other kind of dignity area, you know, he's, he, I mean, at this point, it seems as if he's like, you know, top of the list of Trump allies. Yeah, I mean, like, if you think of like, at least in public appearances, you know, like where you see those kind of joint over-office affairs, like the one that, for example, Mamdani had with, with Trump in the Oval Office, there's been like several of those with, with Trump and Infantino. So, you know, he has gone above and beyond before, for host nations, but I think what we're seeing now with Trump, I mean, certainly with the Peace Prize is kind of another level. You mentioned the Peace Prize. Can you explain that? What is this Peace Prize? Yeah, so at the FIFA World Cup draw at the start of December, Donald Trump was presented with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. Please welcome the very first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump. FIFA has never had a Peace Prize. Nobody has ever asked FIFA to do a Peace Prize as far as we know. And the background of this is, early in autumn 2025, a kind of unofficial campaign, kind of coming out of the White House and outriders of the White House started to suggest that President Trump should be winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And actually, the day before the Peace Prize was announced, of course, the day before Infantino goes out on Instagram and actually says President Trump deserves it. I mean, there's no reason for the president of FIFA to be kind of inherently be making these declarations about who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Why is Infantino going out on a limb in this way? There's a few theories on this. The first is just Infantino loves it, right? He loves being around, rich, powerful people, sees himself as this kind of head of state for soccer, if you like, the King of Soccer. The second view is there is a pragmatic need for FIFA to go above and beyond, right? And maybe they just think this is what we need to do to make sure we get what we need. And there are things that FIFA needs. So the host cities, the 11 host cities in this state, have needed 625 million, I should say, worth of federal security funding for the tournament. Now in normal circumstances you would say this is an international global event, of course the federal government's going to provide that. But actually, you don't quite know if they can provide that, right? So they got that, they got that through recently and you know, amid all the immigration policies that have been going on, FIFA secured what was being called a FIFA pass, which means that if you have bought a ticket for the World Cup, you will get an appointment wherever you are in the world, through a visa interview in your country, they're saying within six to eight weeks. So there are these kind of concessions that FIFA have got. But at the same time, you now have four nations, Haiti, Iran, Senegal, Ivory, Coast, whose countries have travel bands, which mean their fans can't travel to the tournament. So there's some wins and the sun losses, but I think FIFA wary of at some point, someone in the White House might turn around, look at FIFA and say, hang on. They are a kind of a global organization, you know, if I'm thinking in like Maga Speaker, a kind of global organization that get tax breaks from America, that get all this revenue from putting on a tournament on our soil. And we're not getting a cut of the ticket revenue, of the parking revenue, of the broadcast, the sponsorship, why are we helping these guys so much? And actually, does a peace prize go some way to just making sure that's always on his desk and reminding him, FIFA is great. Coming up. So it's the biggest sporting event in the world. That could possibly go wrong. Support for today's show comes from quote, "The New Year can be a perfect time to give your business a reset. It's a time to look around and think about better ways to get things done. And streamlining your communications could be one of the quickest and easiest ways to upgrade your business." Quo, spelled Q-U-O, says that they're the modern alternative to running your business. They're a business phone system that says they make sure you never miss an opportunity to connect with your customers. Quo works right from the app on your phone or your computer. 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It's today explained, we're back with Adam Krafton of the Athletic. I suppose there's someone who works for FIFA the other day who said to me like, they were very much speaking in a personal capacity I should say, but they were basically saying, you know, despite our best efforts to fuck things up and bleep me out there, the games and the jeopardy mean, this is an event that cannot fail, right? You know, this is an event that cannot be built in. The drama's built in. Yeah. Now, this time around, what's different is the prices. Yeah. FIFA fans say World Cup ticket prices are a monumental betrayal. Just reading into the ticket prices for the World Cup next year, horrible. Absolutely horrible. I don't think we're going to the World Cup anymore, bro. It's just not happening. You know what? FIFA, this is exactly, I knew this was going to happen. They're nonsense about all these pre-sales and yeah, we're going to take care of our fans, blah, blah, blah. No, you're not. No, you're not. FIFA have come to North America and to the States in particular and they have adapted to what is their new favorite word, what their new favorite phrase I should say, which is local market conditions, right? And local market conditions for premium sports events are really, really expensive, really expensive and they also have dynamic pricing. Well, let's slow down and define these phrases. I mean, this World Cup has an expanded number of teams. So theoretically, you would think that this would mean they would give Americans more opportunities to go the games. What you're laying out here is that the conditions for these World Cup prices are different because of two things, local market conditions and things called dynamic pricing. Can you define those for us? Yeah, so the local market conditions are that basically premium sports events and entertainment events in the United States are expensive. They said, hey, they pay a lot of money over here, so we're going to charge them a lot of money. Yeah, I think they probably look to America as a little bit of an ATM, you know, to be honest. And, you know, their argument would be, you know, if there's people who are prepared to pay that, we can then take those revenues, distribute them all around the world to all the national federations and, you know, develop soccer in parts of the world that requires it. So the reason though why the prices have started high and I think are going to stay high here is because it's so spread around a massive country, even though there's more games than ever, 104 games across the three countries, each region doesn't have that many games. You know, there's like eight, I think it's seven or eight games in New York, right? That's not that many people to actually be able to go to games when you bring in diasporas and when you bring in travelers from outside to the country. And that creates this incredible demand. Can we put some numbers on it? Like, what are we talking about in terms of the early run of ticket prices that we've seen? Is this like an avail ticket level? Are we talking about super ball ticket prices? Like what's the numbers? Well, I guess, you know, the super ball comparison would be the final, right? So the price is released by FIFA a couple of weeks ago. Three categories, category one, $8,680. Oh, I'm already out, right? Category two, $5,575, category three, $4,185. However, since then, there has been such a strong backlash that they have now introduced a, basically, a fourth category of $60 tickets. FIFA just announced it's slashing the price of some World Cup tickets for teams most loyal fans. The organization says a $60 ticket option will be made available for every game at the tournament in North America, which will be only for 1.6% of tickets per game, but for every game. But those tickets won't be for your casual fan in America. They will be given, they will split evenly between the two nations that are competing to the federation of those nations. So say, for example, the final is England against Brazil, 0.8% of those tickets will be given to the English federation to distribute to their most loyal fans, ie, the fans who have been to every qualification game in Albania, Serbia, blah, blah, blah, during the qualification and the same to Brazil. But that's kind of as good as it gets. We focused on ticket prices, but I also want to ask about other complicating factors when we think about next summer. What about the mixed messages we've seen from the White House in DHS when it comes to the prospect of ice raids at the World Cup matches? Is that a legitimate possibility? Yeah, I mean, this is an area where I'm really cautious of like minimizing or downplaying what the risks are, because ultimately, like, I can't tell people ice aren't going to do stuff. US Customs and Border Protection suggested in a social media post earlier this month, they'd be present at this summer's FIFA Club World Cup games, now that post has since been deleted. Concerned for FIFA fans as we count down to the 2026 World Cup, immigrant advocates are calling on the organization to use its influence to protect fans from ice agents. Look, I think there is a desire within the administration for this tournament to project very well on America. And I think if you look at President Trump as someone who sees the world through ratings and a little bit of vanity, he knows the World Cup has a huge global audience. That's why he wants to be involved in it. He has the vanity of saying I delivered this thing, so he wants it to go well because it came in his first term. Therefore, I think it would be politically strange for fans going to these games to be like the target of raids. However, that doesn't mean there aren't people within the administration who might see it as an opportunity or a good idea, and it also won't mean that there could be events that take place through normal actions of soccer fans that lead to arrests, whether it's a fight breaks out or a bit of hooliganism or people drink too much. One thing soccer fans are going to do. People drink too much and there's disturbances, and then following arrests, there could then be checks on papers and do you have your papers and ice, and you know, there will be big diaspora tendencies of these games. I think of games like Ecuador playing Germany at MetLife Stadium, a huge Ecuadorian diaspora will make that stadium look like a home game. Now does that make those fans more reluctant to go to games? I don't know. Let's say I don't care about soccer at all. Let's say I am your classic American sports ingester, and it's all existed as kind of like Eurofowl ridiculousness to me, and I'm hearing about this World Cup coming next summer, but I don't fully know what it means. Is there a case of why this event will still be something worth following? Okay. So if I'm giving the pitch on why this could be fantastic, right? And if I think of what Americans get excited about when it comes to sport, it's moments and it's characters. So you're going to have these moments that a World Cup always produces, because there's going to be so much jeopardy on the field, you have penalty shootouts, you'll have, you know, big nations going out, possibly quite early, who knows, but you're also going to have this real jeopardy of major names like Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi having their final tournaments, you're going to have Mo Salah being there with Egypt. And I also think from an American perspective, it is one of those times where the multiculturalism and the diasporas of the United States can produce really fabulous moments. You're going to have games in New Jersey where it looks like a home game for Ecuador, games in Miami where Argentina or Brazil will just fill that stadium and the blur of colour that you will see. These fans will take over the beaches, they'll take over the streets. I sound like Trump now. They're going to take over the streets and the beaches, but in a positive way, it'll be a blur of kind of music and colour and vibrancy and jeopardy, all of those ingredients that you want in big sporting events, that's what the hope is. Adam Crafton, reporter at The Athletic. Today's show was produced by Dustin De Soto, an edited by Amina Alcadi with some help from Joly Myers, Patrick Boyd and Bridger Dunnigan, engineer. Andrea Lopez Cruzado and Laura Bullard fact check the show. This is actually the last show that Laura will be fact check it. We will miss her, but can't wait to have her back as a reporter guest on the show. I'm Aesthet Herding. [BLANK_AUDIO]