In Soccer’s Big-Money Game, Who Benefits?

The figure is quite staggering--more than $40 million.

Possibly even quite a bit more.

That’s how much it would cost to buy the 32 soccer players who today at 1 p.m. will be playing in the FIFA/UNICEF World All-Star game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

International stars such as Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Gordon Strachan and Julio Cesar Romero do not come cheaply.

For example, it cost Napoli of Italy $8.5 million four years ago to get Maradona from Barcelona of Spain. Today, the Argentine player is probably worth even more, having led his country to victory in the 1986 World Cup.

But the value of the players is not at issue here. The value of a single game, both as a sporting event and as a fund-raising vehicle for charity, is.

Just as its name implies, the FIFA/UNICEF World All-Star game is sanctioned by the Federation Internationale de Football Assn., world soccer’s ruling body, and is intended to benefit the United Nations Children’s Fund.

What is not clear is why, as the advertisements for the game point out in very small type, only 18% of the game’s total proceeds will be given to UNICEF.

What happens to the other 82%?

Why is UNICEF’s share so small?

Just who will be benefiting from this benefit game?

A search for answers to these and other questions produced a fascinating glimpse at the world of sports promotion and revealed a thing or two about the state of soccer in this country as well.

Anywhere else in the world, a game of this magnitude would be the responsibility of the national association in the host country.

But because the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) continues to be a body without a head, lurching from one organizational or financial crisis to the next, FIFA awarded the game to private promoters operating under the name of Eagle Sports Mondial.

The key figure thereby became George Taylor, a New York-based Dutch immigrant who had been heavily involved in promotion of the third such FIFA/UNICEF game at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., four years ago.

That game, a success on the field and a sellout at the gate, nevertheless drew some criticism from UNICEF, which suggested that it had not been benefited quite as much as it would have liked.

In other words, UNICEF believed that the expenses incurred were perhaps not all necessary, that money was being wasted, that their cause might have received a larger amount than the $200,000 it did get had financial controls been a little tighter.

Such comments still raise Taylor’s hackles.

“The ones that should be complaining the least are UNICEF and they’re . . . let me not say what I want,” he said last week when asked about UNICEF’s unhappiness in 1982.

“I am really sorry to hear that they say that because what we did in ’82 was to elevate the game to the level that it (now) has the prestige of World Cup quality.

“Before, there had been two UNICEF games played. One was in Dortmund (West Germany, in 1979) and one was in Barcelona (Spain, in 1980), and a (local) club team played against a bunch of what they called Humane All-Stars. They took just whoever was just right around the corner there. It was a nice local game.

“What we had to do was put it on a level where people paid attention. . . . In 1982, we had to spend a lot of money as an investment just to get it to that level of prestige.

“I’m sorry to hear that they take it that way (considering) the exposure that they got worldwide. Financially is one thing. You can only get a limited amount of money out of people who buy tickets. But if we provide a two-hour program for UNICEF worldwide to over 650 million people and those people know that this is for the benefit of UNICEF, to immunize a child, then I’m very sorry to hear that those UNICEF people were very unhappy.

“If they (still) are, then I would like to suggest to FIFA that maybe we find another charity.”

That, apparently, will not be necessary.

“We are getting what I feel is a better deal than we did last time,” said David Wood, special projects officer for the U.S. Committee for UNICEF.

“We are getting a percentage. We’re guaranteed a quarter of a million dollars from the proceeds of the game or 18% (of the gross), whichever is greater.

“It is (satisfactory) considering what the situation was in the last game.”

The problem then, said West Germany’s Horst Cerni, the chief of special events for UNICEF, was that all three bodies, UNICEF, FIFA and the promoters, were not really sure what to expect since it was the first time such an event had been staged in the United States.

“The expenses, unfortunately, were higher than we had expected,” Cerni said. “It was a very normal situation, I think, in that we learned a lot from that experience. It is a complicated undertaking, and the travel costs are high, hotel costs are high and insurance costs have risen, too.

“That, I guess, is basically the unhappiness that we had--that we only got the minimum guarantee that they offered us at the time, which was $200,000. We were hoping that we could get a bit more.”

This time around, the 18% figure leaves no room for doubt and, since it comes from the gross, it encourages the promoters to keep expenses down, Wood said.

But that still leaves unanswered the question of where the other 82% goes.

To begin with, there are two groups that are not getting any of it.

One is the players in today’s game.

“The players are not paid,” FIFA spokesman Guido Tognoni said. “Every one (of the 32 players) will get a Swiss watch and that’s it.”

The other group is FIFA itself, which normally would be entitled to 2% of the game’s gross revenue.

“We renounced our percentage,” Tognoni said. “We don’t want anything. It’s a benefit game. It would be ridiculous.”

Not ridiculous enough for the USSF to similarly renounce its 10% share of the gate, however.

Kurt Lamm, the USSF’s secretary general, was unable to explain whether his organization had even considered not accepting its percentage or had thought of donating all or part of it to UNICEF.

In fact, he sidestepped the question the first three times it was asked, then became quite flustered when it was asked for the fourth time, saying:

“Let me, let me, let me tell you . . . I haven’t even, I wouldn’t even go into this now because . . . look, at the federation . . . right now the game . . . FIFA also, uh, wants it staged under their rules . . . but I think this is always something that, uh . . . This decision is not, uh . . . has to be made by the federation and by the board and by the president, how they, what they, how they feel it should be applied . . . maybe they . . . I think that . . . Whatever happens I think it will be very justified no matter what it comes out like. . . . OK?”

It is possible that Lamm was too embarrassed to admit that the USSF, which has stared bankruptcy in the face in the past, actually needs the money, which could amount to possibly as much as $75,000. FIFA’s Tognoni, however, showed no such hesitation.

“They have the right to get it,” he said. “It’s difficult. The USSF has not so many possibilities to make money. On the other hand, they have to do their duties, and this is the only big event they have now. It could be a kind of a suicide to renounce it. If one national association has a good reason to keep the money, then it’s the USSF.

“They have to decide, and FIFA does not want to put any pressure on them. I don’t know what their financial situation is, but it cannot be great.”

Nor would UNICEF’s Wood criticize the USSF for not following FIFA’s example and renouncing its share of the gate.

“That’s their prerogative,” Wood said. “Nonprofit organizations are always accepting money welcomely. But we have to realize that other people are in business. They’re in it to make a living. As much as we’d like to think that everyone is very philanthropic, we also have to be realistic (and acknowledge) that they have to make a living as well.”

Tognoni, meanwhile, could find no fault with the promoters making a dollar or two out of a benefit game.

“The promoters have to make money,” he said. “They don’t work for nothing. Who does in the USA?

“You have to consider that the prices are very low. I mean $20 (the cost of the top-priced ticket) to see Maradona is not that high. If you compare it with Mexico, it’s low. . . . Mexico (where the face-value of the best World Cup tickets was as much as $50) was too expensive. I think these prices here are very good.”

According to Taylor, the game is built around a budget that provides for expenditures of “between $1.5 million and $2 million.”

He has little trouble in outlining where the money goes.

“It’s very simple,” he said. “Insurance (of the players) is our biggest killer. We are paying seven times the amount that we paid in 1982. We are paying more than $100,000 just in insurance. That’s No. 1.

“No. 2, we are paying a minimum guarantee to UNICEF of $250,000. That’s a minimum. They’re getting a percentage of all gross income. If we don’t fill the Rose Bowl, if we don’t sell enough tickets, even if we lose a lot money, UNICEF still is going to get $250,000.

“No. 3, (there is) the very big cost of airplane flights. Very big costs.

“No. 4, even worse than New York, (there are the) media (advertising) costs. The media costs here are astronomical. We are going to spend close to $500,000 in media. Meaning to make the people aware that there is a world-class event with the best players in the world that are coming to the town and there’s only once in their life that they can see that. The media here, I cannot believe what we have to pay for it. But, we had budgeted it and that’s what we are spending.

“(Then there are the) hotels for all those people that are coming.

“Then (there are) all the people that are working on it. You can’t put this thing together in two weeks. So we have a staff of, I believe it’s now between 30 and 100 people. Some of them are volunteers, some of them are part-time paid and some of them are full-time paid.”

Another large expense is the rental of the Rose Bowl itself and the cost of staffing the event. Taylor’s figures show an estimated rental cost of approximately $75,000, with an additional figure of “well over $100,000” for support services such as security, parking, ticket takers, and so on.

Connie Borg, Rose Bowl coordinator for the city of Pasadena, explained the city’s fees.

“A rental for any event includes an admission tax,” she said. “For this event, it’s 6.98% on every admission ticket, not to exceed 70 cents (per ticket). Rental of the stadium is usually 10% of the gross gate, less this admission tax. We have a minimum guarantee here at the Rose Bowl of $50,000.

“The city provides and/or coordinates security, traffic, parking, Rose Bowl staff, plumbers, electricians, that type of thing. That could run (to more than $100,000) for this type of an event.”

Borg said that the city sometimes gives breaks to charitable organizations, and in this case did so, choosing to charge only 8% of the gross gate instead of 10%.

All the same, the high cost of using the Rose Bowl has given Taylor second thoughts about his choice of venue.

“The stadium rent, although it is the most beautiful stadium you can think of from a soccer point of view, sitting close to the field, the stadium is very expensive,” he said. “What they are giving you is a beautiful but totally empty stadium. You have to bring in your own ushers, your own ticket takers, your own security people. Quite honestly, in hindsight you have to wonder if you made the right choice in stadiums. From a soccer point of view, from a television picture point of view worldwide, you made the right choice. But from a financial point of view, well, I have my questions.”

The bottom line is that today’s match has proved an expensive proposition to stage, and it will not be until this afternoon, when the crowd stops filing into the Rose Bowl, that Taylor will know whether it was worth the risk.

“We need almost a sellout in

order to make it financially,” he said. “The biggest source of income for us is tickets; 70% to 75% of our income has to come from tickets.”

Even though the game is being televised, either live or delayed, in dozens of countries, Taylor claims that television rights have not brought in much money.

“We have a dual purpose,” he said. “On the one hand, you don’t want to lose money, and on the other you want to expose the project to as many people in the world as possible because it’s for the benefit of UNICEF after all. So you try to get high license fees from stations, but if they don’t want to pay it, you kind of accept what they’re willing to pay in order to get it on the TV.”

Sponsors, too, have not been that big of a financial help, Taylor said. “That’s the sad part of this. Yes, we have sponsors, but they don’t pay the prices that they normally pay because they literally are saying, ‘Look, we have spent so much money on the World Cup we have no money left. We are doing you a favor.’ ”

The Times is one of the game’s sponsors, but its role has been limited to providing free advertising in exchange for a financial contribution to The Los Angeles Times Fund, which benefits a variety of charities.

As for the money UNICEF receives--whether it’s $250,000 or more--it will be used to aid the children of Mexico, especially those left homeless by last September’s devastating earthquakes in Mexico City.

PLAYERS EXPECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN FIFA/UNICEF WORLD ALL-STAR GAME THE AMERICAS

Player Position Country Nery Pumpido Goalkeeper Argentina Roberto Fernandez Goalkeeper Paraguay Jose Luis Brown Defender Argentina Josimar Defender Brazil Julio Cesar Defender Brazil Paul Caligiuri Defender United States Fernando Quirarte Defender Mexico Raul Servin Defender Mexico Diego Maradona Midfielder Argentina Roberto Falcao Midfielder Brazil Alemao Midfielder Brazil Manuel Negrete Midfielder Mexico Julio Cesar Romero Midfielder Paraguay Jorge Nunes Midfielder Paraguay Francisco Javier Cruz Forward Mexico Roberto Cabanas Forward Paraguay

THE REST OF THE WORLD

Player Position Country Pat Jennings Goalkeeper Northern Ireland Rinat Dasaev Goalkeeper Soviet Union Manuel Amoros Defender France Uli Stieleke Defender West Germany Terry Butcher Defender England Michel Platini Midfielder France Felix Magath Midfielder West Germany Soren Lerby Midfielder Denmark Chang-Sun Park Midfielder South Korea Mohammed Timoumi Midfielder Morocco Heinz Hermann Midfielder Switzerland Gordon Strachan Midfielder Scotland Michel Renquin Midfielder Belgium Dominique Rocheteau Forward France Bruno Conti Forward Italy Igor Belanov Forward Soviet Union Paolo Rossi Forward Italy