Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet.
Name-dropped today: Victor Wembanyama, Pat McAfee, Brendan Sorsby, Serena Williams, Ben Stiller, Rebecca Lowe, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Adam Crafton, Diana Ross and more. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation
The World Cup transcends transactions
This is a multi-billion-dollar event — brands are marketing, cities are clamoring and fans are undoubtedly spending — and it is easy to get caught up in the commercialization of it all. (To be sure: We will.)
But it doesn’t have to break the bank. Earnestly, it shouldn’t. My shorthand:
If it fits your budget, just go to a game, any game. If you can’t, go to a watch party or bar.
I have been to one World Cup game in my life. In 1994, when the Cup finally came to the U.S., some college friends and I wandered over to old RFK Stadium in D.C., bought a few tickets outside from a stranger (my very hazy recollection is something like $40 each?) and went in for a round of 16 game between Spain and Switzerland.
I’ll admit: I had to look up both the opponents and the final score of Spain 3-0. And yet, when people ask me about my most memorable live sports events I have ever attended, I always mention that one. Because I remember the vibe — the multi-cultural atmosphere, the energy inside and outside the stadium, the fresh experience.
Thirty-some years later, hosting and attending big-time soccer games doesn’t have quite the same novelty in the U.S., but I cannot recommend more highly trying to get to a game, if you can find a reasonable ticket on the secondary market. In the absence of that, so many cities are having affordable (or free) public watch parties — again, highly recommend attending.
Or find a sports bar, like I did with colleagues for an all-time epic workday outing to watch Landon Donovan’s goal versus Algeria in 2010, or with my young kids in 2014.
World Cup access — which includes usurious ticket prices, of course, but also exorbitant transportation options and opaque water bottle policies — has been THE story leading up to this week, but the priceless element of the World Cup is this: communal experience.
Adopt a team. Test your prediction powers versus the crowd. Find a restaurant or bar. Touch asphalt and locate a public watch party. Sit on the couch and leave the TV on all day, catching whatever game happens to be airing. (If you’re like me, you can use our ultra-handy quick-hit team guide to get up to speed on whoever is playing.)
It’s not about the transaction; it’s about the transformative (and increasingly rare) experience of monoculture — in real life, no less.
So much more “Business of the World Cup” coverage below, over the next half-dozen Wednesdays in MoneyCall (and daily in our essential World Cup Briefing newsletter) and nonstop from my colleagues, like this “100 Things to Know” explainer.
🏆 World Cup links to bookmark
• Groups and standings
• Schedule and results
• Team forecasts
• Bracket projections
Get Caught Up
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
As promised: Essential World Cup prep
All World Cup coverage is free and unlocked in The Athletic’s app all tournament, so please feel free to share with family, friends and colleagues all month long.
🎟️ Ticket saga: Just catching up? Awesome explainer.
👋 Jerry Brewer fairly asks: WHO is this World Cup for?
💸 Got a spare $79? FIFA will gladly take it.
🌩️ The weather: I’m a bit obsessed with our explainer.
📍 Traveling to a game site? Our stadium guide is A+.
Must-See: “The Language of Soccer”
All 48 teams are now accounted for, with nation-defining phrases for every squad, along with fascinating cultural backstories for each nation’s distinctive rooting interests.
⚡ Non-World Cup lightning round:
NBA Finals: The mania in New York remains THE story in sports and sports business. (Wemby as local villain is the heel turn we didn’t know we needed, but are thrilled to have.) Get-in prices for Game 4 tonight aren’t quite as heated (or interesting) as Monday, but get-in process will be vastly less complicated without the presence of a president.
Pat McAfee, ESPN’s $60M talent: The clearest evidence yet that McAfee is ESPN’s biggest star? That the network is negotiating a contract extension with him worth upward of $60 million a year, per new reporting from Andrew Marchand.
MLB labor battle: Weigh in. We are doing a fan survey around your sentiments related to the MLB-MLBPA labor dispute. Take it here. I’m intrigued to see the results and particularly interested in what MoneyCall readers think.
Serena’s comeback: “I don’t need to win. I’ve won more than most people have in their whole lives. I don’t have anything to lose. Everything is just a gain.” — Serena Williams. (Fascinating angle from Matt Futterman: How GLP-1s fit into the comeback.)
Brendan Sorsby injunction/college sports debacle: “Just how egregious is this decision? It may be the first time in college sports history in which 99.9 percent of the country sides with the NCAA.” — Stewart Mandel. (More from Mandel on this below.)
UFC Freedom 250: It is hard to capture the confluence of novelty, spectacle and gaucheness that will consume the White House lawn Sunday night. There is no analog in U.S. sports history — maybe that time in 1978 when DC Comics had Superman and Muhammad Ali fight in an oversized comic book.
“Indiana Bears” update: Yesterday, I drove from DC to Chicago for a college pick-up. The stretch from Hammond, Ind. (site of the proposed new Bears stadium) to Evanston, Ill. (a fairly typical Chicagoland suburb) was 45 minutes *with zero traffic.* Maybe it was the 11 hours on the road, but I felt radicalized about the basic logistics of the move. (More reporting here from Dan Wiederer.)
Other current obsessions: The jaw-dropping (and six-minute!) Nike World Cup promo … Ben Stiller’s Knicks cinematography … Russell Wilson’s new TV career … the excellent, nostalgia-infused rebrand for the Minnesota Timberwolves (and Houston Rockets, too) … RIP Stacey King, beloved Bulls broadcaster …
What I’m Wondering
College sports’ Sorsby revolt
Skyrocketing NIL budgets, awkward cross-country realignment, pro players taking the court, endless tournament expansion. All of these recent headlines in college sports had not crossed a Rubicon like a local judge restoring eligibility to Texas Tech quarterback Sorsby after he admitted to gambling on not just college football, but his own team. The Big 12 is scrambling. NCAA president Charlie Baker called it a “new low.”
Stewart Mandel has a well-timed mailbag out this morning, and fans had a lot of questions I have myself, starting with: Can the NCAA enforce *anything* anymore?
Mandel: “It can’t be overstated how damaging this was to the NCAA’s already wobbly enforcement system. If it can’t uphold even one of its most basic rules — the same rule that led to Pete Rose’s lifetime MLB ban and cost numerous other pro athletes their careers — then the NCAA’s entire rulebook might as well be birdcage lining.”
Grab Bag
Names to Know: Zlatan and Lowe
Fox needed a serious upgrade to its World Cup broadcast. Enter Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the star of the network’s revamped studio show, along with NBC Premier League star Rebecca Lowe, a top-tier studio host. Marchand has the bigger story.
Power Rankings: World Cup jerseys
Via (send criticism to) Nick Miller:
Home
1) Ghana
2) Brazil
3) England
(FYI: U.S. 26th. Full ranking here.)
Away
1) Curacao
2) Japan
3) Morocco
(U.S. 38th. Full ranking here.)
Data Point: $25.8 million
“(Kansas City’s) ‘World Cup Jail’ is not operational in time for the World Cup. If that feels like the stuff of satire, it is not for want of investment.” — Adam Crafton, with a glaring case study about World Cup infrastructure missteps at the city level.
One more: $57.8 million, via Crafton and Chris Weatherspoon. That’s tax revenue from ticket sales waived by three U.S. states — Missouri, Georgia and Florida — so they could host World Cup games.
MoneyPoll
Do you plan to attend any in-person World Cup events? (Open to MoneyCall email subscribers – be sure you’re on the list here!)
Last week’s MoneyPoll results: 56 percent of you are rooting for the Spurs to win.
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle No. 625
Dan’s time: 00:32
Try the game here!
Worth Your Time
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
• Diana Ross. The 1994 World Cup. A memorable penalty. You had me at “Diana Ross.”
Two more:
• Regardless of how things end for the Spurs, this Jared Weiss dive into how Wembanyama and his marketing team are positioning for long-term, global mega-success is an absolutely fascinating read.
• As an advocate for normalizing mental health awareness, I was profoundly moved by my colleague James Edwards III’s column on how he saw his own battles with anxiety reflected in Jalen Brunson’s lived experience.
Back next Wednesday! Text your colleagues this link so they can get MoneyCall every week for free. And check out The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.
