A Game of Chance : Staging Soccer’s World Cup in the U.S. May Be Risky, but It Could Prove to Be a Worthwhile Venture
Soccer’s gamble is large, but so is the potential payoff.
Can all the lawyers and marketing whizzes and logistical experts organizing the 1994 World Cup--a 52-game international soccer tournament to be held in nine U.S. cities less than a year from now--pull it off?
That has been asked since July 4, 1988, when FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, chose the United States, over Morocco and Brazil, as host country for the quadrennial event.
Cries of protest went up almost immediately. It was an outrage, said many, to put the event in the United States.
Compared to the rest of the world, the United States has little soccer tradition. Sports fans here have exhibited consistent indifference to the sport.
Despite a participation base of more than 16 million Americans, despite repeated attempts at professional leagues, despite periodic predictions of a soccer boom, the reality remains that the world’s most popular sport is, in the United States at least, just another game. The old joke still holds true: Soccer is the sport of the future . . . and always will be.
That’s precisely what World Cup organizers and FIFA hope to change. But what a gamble! North Americans are so out of step with the rest of the soccer world that we don’t even call the game by the name everyone else uses.
Football, as the sport is known elsewhere, with all its pageantry and passion, will be coming to the United States next summer, beginning June 17 and ending July 17. It will be the most far-flung World Cup ever, in some of the largest stadiums. Games will be played at Palo Alto, Pasadena, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, Pontiac, Mich.; Foxboro, Mass.; East Rutherford, N.J., and Orlando, Fla.
Even now, 141 teams are in the midst of World Cup qualifying. Twenty four teams--the U.S. team as host, and the German team as defending champion, qualified automatically--will participate in the World Cup. Americans will have seen nothing like it.
Soccer’s highly visible hooligans, the serious fans, the sightseers and the merely curious will stream over this country’s borders, into its planes, trains and buses, will
check into its hotels and will bed down in its city parks. They will sing in its stadiums, drink in its bars and, if they are Brazilian, think nothing of snaking a samba line across its busy thoroughfares. For a month, the United States, willingly or not, will be in the grip of soccer’s biggest spectacle.
The question is, when everyone leaves, will either the country or the sport still be standing?
WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR
With a year to go before the 1990 World Cup in Italy, there was a frenzy of construction. New stadiums were behind schedule, roads were still being built and the Italian government was absorbing a growing soccer debt for a privately run enterprise.
In Palermo, Sicily, part of the roof fell in. Twenty workers died as construction crews worked at a feverish pace. And as the tournament drew near, it was difficult to judge which element of preparation had been more grossly overestimated--time or cost.
But the national face-lift was finished, the scaffolding removed and the Italians’ red carpet was vacuumed only moments before the first World Cup game. The guests knew only that the stadiums were dazzling and that the trains ran on time.
A year before the 1994 World Cup in the United States there is a prevailing sense of . . . calm. No new stadiums are being built. Improvements are well under way at those few requiring them. The only obvious deficiency has been venerable Stanford Stadium, which a squadron of architects could not make young again, or pretty enough to satisfy FIFA.
But FIFA is satisfied with the progress. General Secretary Joseph Blatter reported the federation’s assessment this week:
“We have made an intermediate inventory of the work that has been accomplished so far. I can tell you that we are happy. There was just one question mark, for the Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, but this question mark has now been deleted.
“FIFA, one year to go, expresses its trust toward the United States Soccer Federation and the U.S. organizing committee, and its confidence in our football partners.”
That vote of confidence is significant. Not long after the announcement that the United States had been awarded the tournament, there was a clamor to have the decision rescinded. Germany, winner of the 1990 World Cup, stepped forward and offered its services, among others. No one, it seemed had confidence the Americans could do it right.
Soccer purists frequently cite Americans’ ignorance of how huge the sport really is. But the United States puts on any number of major sporting events, including the Olympics, the Super Bowl and the World Series.
“There was skepticism in Europe, to be sure, but not anymore,” said Graham Taylor, coach of the English national team. “I think everyone in the world knows that America can put on a big show.”
The apparent competence of World Cup organizers in the United States has won over many skeptics. But another issue nags. Efficiency and profit are fine, but they are not everything to a World Cup. What about passion?
Carlos Alberto Parreira, coach of the Brazilian national team, while praising the Americans’ ability to put on a good World Cup, is concerned about the atmosphere.
“Without a doubt there will be good organization,” he said. “But people are afraid of not having the fire and passion. The feeling for football here is not strong. We can’t feel it now. The expression will not be strong, but the staging will be great.”
TO MARKET, TO MARKET
Entrusting the organization of the sport’s most cherished pageant to a soccer backwater has caused genuine ambivalence in the soccer world.
On one hand, why put the World Cup in a country that has shown little enthusiasm for the game?
On the other hand, there is American television.
The rights fee for European television alone is reported to be more than $300 million. ABC-TV and ESPN, which will jointly televise the 52 World Cup games, paid much less, about $11 million.
When you consider that more than 1 billion watched the 1990 World Cup final, compared to 253 million for the 1993 Super Bowl, soccer’s marketing possibilities, should it succeed here, seem endless.
Organizers hope that network exposure will help promote the game and, possibly, lead to a television contract for an American professional league.
Ultimately, the 1994 World Cup may be less about soccer conquering a reluctant nation than winning over its powerful marketeers.
In that regard, it is already a success. All television time is sold. Both levels of national sponsorships, for which some companies must pony up $20 million, have sold out. Tickets for the first and second rounds have sold out at all venues except the Silverdome in Pontiac.
With a total of 3.5 million tickets to sell--nearly a million more than than Italia ‘90--organizers have found themselves with the happy problem of turning away ticket buyers. Alan Rothenberg, chief executive officer of World Cup ‘94, has long predicted, to much derision, that every ticket would be sold. FIFA is impressed with the interest, not least because it tends to affirm the federation’s decision to let the U.S. stage the Word Cup.
“It is clear that we could have sold several million tickets,” Rothenberg said.
Now, all of Rothenberg’s considerable powers of persuasion will be turned toward the selling of soccer.
American World Cup organizers have a hurdle not faced by their predecessors: They must not only sell the event to a nation, they must educate the people at the same time.
Many Americans have no idea what the World Cup is. Even some sophisticated sports people appear confused. Last week, for instance, the U.S. national team played the German national team in a key U.S. Cup game at Soldier Field in Chicago. The sign outside the stadium, however, announced the World Cup match between the two nations.
But ignorance cuts both ways. In April, a comprehensive story in the English edition of GQ magazine informed its readers that next year’s World Cup games in Dallas would be played at that impressive 72,000-seat stadium . . . the Cotton Field.
DON’T FENCE ME IN
Security is the largest budget item for the 1994 World Cup.
In Italy, 4,000 police and military personnel were dispatched around the country to keep the peace. More than 3,000 were based in Cagliari alone, to deal with the hooligan threat associated with the English and Dutch teams. A special jail was set aside for unruly fans.
“We take security very, very seriously,” said Ed Best, World Cup security chief. Best, a former FBI agent, planned the security for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics with a budget of $80 million.
Around the World Cup offices, no one says much about security, except to assure that there will be plenty. Best, Rothenberg, and other officials who attended Italia ‘90, however, acknowledge that the “show of force” approach favored by Italian authorities would make Americans uncomfortable.
“We can’t turn this country into an armed camp,” Rothenberg said.
Best gave few details at a recent news conference but said stadiums will use fencing or barriers to keep rival fans apart and off the playing field. Although, he said, the international trend is to take down the fences.
Blatter, FIFA’s general secretary, made clear his federation’s opinion of fencing: “We do not like fences. If you put spectators behind fences, they behave like animals, because you put animals behind fences. In my opinion, this is a big mistake.”
Security measures will focus on American borders, with immigration agents reserving the right to turn away anyone with an arrest record. Best said this happened last week at Boston’s Logan Airport, when an unspecified number of soccer fans were denied entrance because of criminal records.
“If they come to our borders and we are able to successfully identify them as having a criminal record, and it fits in the U.S. laws, we will turn them around at the border,” Best said.
“I don’t care if it’s an American citizen or foreign citizen, if they want to come to these games and enjoy the games, they are going to be welcomed with open arms. If they have another motive for coming to the games, they simply are not going to see the games.”
WILL IT PLAY IN PEORIA?
The credibility of the United States’ ability to conduct the World Cup is tied to the fortunes of the U.S. national team. Because the U.S. team has not been competitive internationally, the reasoning goes, the United States will not be able to properly stage a World Cup.
But a successful World Cup for the U.S. team would require it to do what it has done only once--advance beyond the first round.
Pete Davies, in his book, “All Played Out, the Full Story of Italia ‘90,” presents the prevailing position on the Americans’ right to even participate in a World Cup.
“Elsewhere, minnow nations might emerge from the footballing backwaters--but the USA remains the whale that burped and brought forth plankton.
“And that’s OK--because for large parts of the world, the very existence of a USA football team is an abiding comic folly, and an object of enormous and consoling satisfaction. Whatever else the Yanqui may do, he can’t play football.”
When FIFA awarded the World Cup to the United States, there were two objectives:
--To stage the World Cup in a large, television-friendly country.
--To stimulate, with massive exposure, the organization of a true professional league.
“With the impact that the World Cup will give, and the huge community of footballers in this country, directly after the World Cup, such a league must start,” Blatter said. “That is why our executive committee must be in possession of a project that has been promised.”
That project is a professional league proposal Rothenberg has promised by December. Blatter is adamant that a U.S. professional league must be one legacy of the World Cup. Asked if the subsequent lack of a viable pro league in the United States would mean that the 1994 World Cup was a failure, he did not answer directly. Most knew the answer, though.
Rothenberg said: “I will emphasize one thing and one thing only: that is, that our goal is to have something that works. Our goal is to do it right, not to do it at any specific timetable. Our target is to be up and running and have (league) play in 1995. We see no reason . . . not to believe that we can achieve that target. But we are not going to do anything hastily.
“With the growth of soccer in this country, with the fact that soccer is the No. 1 sport in the world, with the shrinking of the world, there is no doubt that a successful professional major soccer league in this country is inevitable.”
Still, it’s a gamble now. Much depends on the success of the World Cup. With so much of the world skeptically looking on, few sporting events have had such important coattails.
