For Whom the Ball Tolls : World Cup Sales Were Socko, but Many Had Higher Goals
Sales of imported beer--led by the Dutch brand Heineken--jumped 365% in Orlando, Fla., in June. As many as 50 kids a week are enrolling at Cherif Zein’s youth soccer camp in Pasadena this summer, up from 30 or 40 last year. Washable tattoos featuring Striker, World Cup ‘94’s canine mascot, were a surprise hit for a Texas novelty maker.
Beyond the 3.5 million in attendance at the Rose Bowl and eight other stadiums, beyond the half-million hotel room nights booked by soccer fans, beyond the number of times that the Snickers logo flashed in front of 2 billion pairs of eyes in global TV broadcasts, the World Cup was a powerhouse.
Yes, the economic impact of the monthlong, 52-game international tournament was immense by virtually any measure, but it still failed to meet some people’s expectations. The hotel industry, for one group, was disappointed at the level of bookings, as were certain merchants who sold World Cup-licensed products.
As tourism and economic development officials compare notes with business people in the nine host cities, they are hearing praise for the event’s smooth running mixed with disgruntlement that it didn’t always match its advance billing.
“Cup fever? I wouldn’t even call it a mild head cold,” griped Bud Konheim, chief executive of the Nicole Miller fashion house in New York City. The firm created a $65, limited-edition silk tie with a World Cup motif. Sales were so slow that you might call it a scoreless tie.
“I’ve been in the business almost 40 years and I’ve never experienced a hype bust like this,” Konheim said.
Other merchants--especially those with less-expensive wares--fared better.
W.H. Smith, which runs airport and hotel gift shops nationwide, did about $3 million worth of sales during World Cup--”about three times the average Super Bowl,” said David Banks, vice president for business development.
T-shirts celebrating the Italian team were so hot in Boston that employees couldn’t keep the shelves stocked, he said.
Similarly, Dick Pope, president of Winona, Minn.-based Wincraft, said his company’s selection of low-priced pennants, key rings and seat cushions sold twice as well as he expected, and he’s been selling soccer merchandise “since Pele came to the U.S.” in the early 1970s.
Many hoteliers were disappointed at the relatively small influx of foreign tourists, given early projections of hordes of free-spending fans from all corners of the globe. World Cup officials estimate that the event drew 300,000 visitors from abroad.
The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is now surveying local hotels, said World Cup-related bookings may total 150,000 room nights for Southern California.
“That’s a monster event,” said Michael Collins, the bureau’s senior vice president. But it won’t be enough to satisfy an industry that had counted on twice that number.
Nobody could complain about the final week, though, as area hotels were jammed to capacity.
The World Cup ’94 Organizing Committee originally projected that the event would generate a total impact of $4 billion on the U.S. economy.
The organizers relied on a January, 1993, study by two USC economics professors, who said the impact on the nine host cities would be $2.8 billion. (The extra $1.2 billion in the estimate came from air fare, sponsorship payments and other expenditures that couldn’t be tied to a particular venue.)
The study’s basic assumption was that the main economic benefits of the tournament would flow from the people who actually attended the games.
International TV coverage makes the World Cup a truly global event, the thinking goes, but support from the domestic audience drives most of the direct economic benefits.
That is part of the secret to why World Cup ’94 was a bigger moneymaker than the 1990 World Cup in Italy, or any previous Cup, for that matter. The United States may lack Italy’s soccer history, but it more than compensates with five times the population, huge disposable income and a strong tradition of sports-related spending.
Alan Rothenberg, chairman of the U.S. organizing committee, noted one tangible bequest that World Cup ’94 will leave to FIFA, soccer’s international ruling body: a viable U.S. television market for soccer.
Worldwide TV rights for this World Cup totaled $300 million, of which the U.S. share was a paltry $20 million to $25 million. For ABC and ESPN, which got better-than-expected ratings, it was a bargain not likely to be repeated, Rothenberg said.
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Some TV advertisers were wary going into the event because the games consisted of two 45-minute halves without commercial breaks. Rather than traditional ads, sponsors had their logos displayed on “perimeter boards” on the sidelines or on the on-screen game clock.
Trying to derive a dollar value from the time a logo is in focus on-screen is “a bit of an inexact science,” said Mike Goff, director of corporate sponsorship for Sprint, one of World Cup ‘94’s prime sponsors. But Goff said he knew he got his money’s worth when a dramatic photo of Swedish goalkeeper Thomas Ravelli appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle with the Sprint logo in sharp focus in the background.
“You can’t buy that,” Goff said.
Prof. Bryan Peter Rosendorff, one of the authors of the USC study, said in a recent interview that as long as game attendance met expectations, the overall impact would be close to the original projection. As it happened, although the final attendance total of 3.57 million was 1 million more people than had ever attended a World Cup, it fell nearly 6% short of organizers’ projections.
In some cities, officials think it fell shorter than that.
For Dallas, which spent $15 million on improvements to the Cotton Bowl, the USC study had projected an economic impact of $266 million.
“We think it’ll be more like $50 million to $55 million,” said David Whitney of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, which has commissioned a follow-up study.
Detroit officials, too, were dubious that the four games in the nearby Pontiac Silverdome had generated anything like USC’s $180-million estimate.
The $243-million estimate for Washington was “ludicrous--such an outrageously high figure,” said Tom Murphy, spokesman for the Washington Convention and Visitors Assn.
“There’s a general feeling downtown of real disappointment that it was not the event the World Cup organizers made it out to be,” Murphy said, explaining that the lion’s share of hotel bookings was snared by facilities in suburban Virginia and Maryland that undersold their D.C. competitors.
Boston is the first World Cup host city to have completed an economic impact estimate based on actual numbers compiled during the tournament: $212 million.
That total is within hailing distance of the $255 million projected in the USC study and doesn’t include results from the Providence, R.I., area, which is actually closer to Foxboro Stadium, where the games were played.
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Hotel capacity in New York may have hit 80% last month, compared to 71% for a typical June, said a spokesman for the city’s convention bureau. He noted, however, that two other major events--the Gay Games and the Stonewall 25 gay rights commemoration--also contributed to the Big Apple crowds.
Even tourism officials who were disappointed by local hotel bookings or retail sales were ecstatic about the boost to their cities’ international profile from globally televised images of festive, nonviolent soccer crowds in well-groomed stadiums.
“Crime against foreign tourists in Florida was literally washed off the pages of the international press because of the World Cup,” said Joanie Schirm Neiswender, who led Orlando’s bid to become a host city.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!
World Cup ’94 by some measures was history’s biggest single-theme sports event, rivaled only by the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. U.S. trade and tourism officials are still calculating the economic impact of the monthlong tournament, but the following estimates give a sense of the scope.
* Foreign visitors: 300,000
* Hotel bookings (room nights): 500,000
* Total game attendance: 3.57 million
* TV broadcast rights (worldwide): $300 million
* TV viewership of final game: 1.5 billion to 2 billion
* Projected U.S. economic impact: $4 billion
Sources: World Cup ’94 Organizing Committee, World Cup Accommodation Bureau