How the 1994 World Cup Transformed the Business of Football Forever

0:02 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Jill Why Isn't Thal?

0:23 And I'm Tracy Alloway.

0:24 First of all, are we calling it football?

0:26 Sorry?

0:27 Are we to say?

0:27 You know?

0:28 I'm fine with either. I've accept whatever. I don't feel strongly, but just for like consistency stake, I guess we'll just call it football on this episode if you want.

0:35 That's fine with me. I like that you're defining the terms beforehand.

0:39 It's important as long as we all are operating. Listen, I'm happy to call it football. Busy time obviously, coming back to.

0:45 The in the sports, in the sports sports world, in the sports.

0:48 World, I think when you landed back from our recent trip to Asia, it was like literally like the final minutes of the knickt winning.

0:55 Yeah, it was nuts. I was driving through Lower Manhattan and every one was spilling out into the streets watching the game through like the windows of bars and stuff. And then of course when they won, you could hear the entire city just go nuts.

1:07 Yeah.

1:08 So part of me is like, why aren't we doing a basketball episode because it feels very much like New York is actually focused on basketball at the moment, even though we obviously have a very big football slash soccer event.

1:19 Yeah, and I was. I was walking through my neighborhood. I live in these village last night, like everyone. It's very festive time in the city. Everyone was like sitting out in outdoor bars and stuff, like watching whatever World Cup match was on last time.

1:32 Obviously whatever World Cup match, I forget what was airing.

1:35 Well.

1:35 To be fair, yes, you could lose track in this particular World Cup because it's the biggest ever World Cup.

1:42 What does it mean?

1:43 So it means they have like the most teams playing the most games ever. I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's almost fifty teams versus previously it was about thirty teams thirty two.

1:56 Yeah, it's so fixed.

1:58 FIFA argued that this is about making the game even bigger, you know, diversity and inclusion and all of that. But if you were going to be cynical, and some people would argue you should be cynical when it comes to FIFA, you could argue that it's about selling more ads, selling more tickets to more games, and also internal politics, so currying favor with some smaller nations for political reasons. All of that.

2:22 That makes sense actually, because I was sort of wondering, no offense.

2:27 We're going to offend so many people in this episode. I can already tell you I.

2:30 Was pretty impressive that, like curs Ou made the World Cup and so forth.

2:33 Did you see the cape Verd game, the cape Verde game, right, So that was insane? So okay. So part of the concern with FIFA expanding this to like fifty teams is that, well, you don't get the same I guess intensity that you would in a World Cup with a smaller group, and you get all these meaningless games like Cursow versus Germany.

2:53 But then Cape Verd played Spain and it wasn't a dead rubber game. It ended up like being kind of an upset because Spain are supposed to be favorites for the entire YEA yeah, And so now I am proud to say I'm a diehard cape Verd fan and I really want this whole like dead rubber thing to just blow up in FIFA's face.

3:14 You know, one thing I'm aware of with football in general is that we could have an entire podcast on the money side of it, and like, you know, people say, oh, you should really do an episode on how like, yeah, whatever team and whatever league in Europe is now permanently going to be relegated because they've signed these financial and it's like, you know what, that sounds like really finance fascinating to me. But unless we were like really deep in it, that almost sounds like too niche, you know.

3:44 And so you know, we had a really good newsletter all about this last year. Week did all about it financial engineering in specifically European football. But yeah, there's a lot of let's say money influence slash money games being played in football at the moment.

4:00 There's so many angles that we could attack it from. I just earlier in the year I went to my first Champions League match. I saw Atletico Madrid versus Arsenal in the Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid. Amazing experience. Had the vibe to me of like an American like Big twelve college football match, which I think is an amazing energy, et cetera.

4:20 Again, we are going to offend so many times.

4:23 I say, there's a compliment. Anyway, let's give the money. I'll say one more thing about football, which is that I've never like really gotten hooked on it, but I've always thought the jerseys are the coolest of any sport particular. I liked when more of the jerseys had physical colors on them. I think that's gone out of style a little bit, but I used to love like those old jerseys that had like the flapped collars on them, and I just think they look cool as hell.

4:47 Yeah, I agree, And.

4:48 Somehow on a football jersey, it doesn't offend me when I see ads the way it does. Like if I see an AD on American baseball jersey, I was like, it's sort of like basing. It looks to me, it looks fine.

4:59 Why do you just expect it?

5:00 I don't know. Maybe it's like a hosubtle chauvinism or something like that, or it's like, oh, it looks fine to see these corporate logos. Now when I look at an NBA jersey with a logos, they're sort of debasing this sport. I don't know, but you just.

5:13 Come to expect money to debase football. That makes sense.

5:17 We're going to be talking about whether money has an ejective vitality or expanded the game or debased it or whatever. Or least how the massive amounts of money have changed the game. We're very excited to bring on the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with freelance football journalist Joey Drso and he has a new book out called More Than a Shirt, How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, money and Power. So, uh, Joey, thank you so much for coming on Oddlaws.

5:42 Thanks for having a big fan of the pot.

5:43 I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll say, like, do you have any hunch as to why it is that someone like myself is okay with seeing ads on a football kit versus other sports? Like do you have any sort of intuition about why maybe we come to expect that or that.

5:59 Sort of cool or is it is one sort of deep in your soul than your personal identity and you just feel it in a way.

6:05 That yeah, maybe that's just it. Maybe like I don't have like the sort of you know, I grew up like a Detroit Tigers thing, for example, and if I saw like a big ad for like open ai or something out there, I wouldn't be thead into it or crypto dot com or whatever which seems to advertise everywhere. Maybe it's just there, maybe it's just like what's in my soul or not.

6:23 Yeah, well, it's an interesting question which sporting culture is more commercial, yeah, corporate capitalist, and which isn't because obviously the US in most respects is far more capitalistic than in Europe. But there's actually funny some ways to invert that. One is sponsorship, and one is like this draft system, which to us feels like communism for US. You know, it's just the rich teams buy all the best players and that's how it happens when the rich get richer.

6:43 Okay, so Joey, I can't help but notice that we're doing a football podcast, but you are, in fact wearing a baseball shirt, which maybe says something about the difficulties.

6:54 It's a Coney Island Cyclone shut, which I love. Anyone who comes and visits the New York has to go to a Cyclones game.

6:59 But soccer, it has historically had some difficulty with breaking through into the US. Right, So it's getting bigger. Now we have the MLS, we have all of that. We now have a World Cup that's taking place in the US, but we had one previously and that was kind of an uphill battle to break into that particular market.

7:20 Yeah. Well, so soccer in the US has quite a long history, but it was basically wiped out by the Wall Street crash. So it was big in big industrial cities before that, big in kind of Philadelphia, New Jersey, and then it was wiped out because it was deeply linked to these industries that were hit so badly in nineteen twenty nine, and then it was kind of in the wilderness for half a century. America's own sports became really big. But yeah, it was sort of getting bigger and bigger. You know. Pelle came to play for the New York Cosmos in the seventies, Beckenbauer as well. It was like the place to be.

7:46 My husband used to work for the Cosmon.

7:48 Really yeah, he was a youth court really yeah. USA ninety four. FIFA had long wanted to bring the World Cup to the US, even though no one really cared in the US about the sport. But because of money, because of business, because the world's biggest companies, the world's richest people, the world's biggest pool of wealthy consumers are in the US, and you know, the sort of footballing snobs of Europe of which I'm probably sometimes one of them probably turn their nose up at going into the US.

8:11 Italian ninety is very romanticized in England, as you know, Pavarotti and the beautiful sites of Rome and these gast Americans. What are they doing with our beautiful World Cup? But it was kind of a success in many metrics. The grounds were full, lots of I think the Hispanic population would have helped a lot there, but a lot of just curious Americans. Like women's football was huge in the US before it was big in Europe, so a lot of there was a lot of interest because of that.

8:32 I think it was the Olympics before that that was big. Swen ninety four, loads of massive American corporations made their debut at the World Cup. They paid up to twenty million dollars to get involved, which might not seem a lot in the scale of football now, but certainly was back then. You had McDonald's, it was the first ever global sponsorship. You had General Motors for the first time, MasterCard, who had a sort of pilot in nineteen ninety eight, converted that to a long term commitment. It was a big commercial success. Like Harvard Business School wrote case studies about it, despite the fact most Americans weren't interested. The opening game was interrupted by the O. J. Simpson car chase.

9:03 But yeah, massive deal in World Cup history for commercial rather than necessarily football reasons.

9:08 First of all, I had not realized that actually there was a long football tradition in the United States prior to the crash. We could have probably done an entire episode just on that. But I do also remember, like as a kid in like the eighties, like hearing about this girl named Pela. You know, Trump is a bigger Pela.

9:28 Well that's pretty good.

9:29 Yeah, I thank you, thank you. But what were the cosmos? Now? I was like, what league was there?

9:34 Even so that was I believe it was the NASL, the North American Soccer League, but it was kind of an exobit. It was kind of the Plea Show and you know the cosmos that go around to these different teams. And when Pelle left, it all sort of fell apart pretty quickly. It was losing lots of money. And the US is just such a deep, rich sporting market. You know, there were like four the Big four, which would be American football, baseball, basketball, and ice hockey. It's hard to penetrate that, and it's very unusual, you know Australia. I was there recently. It's maybe the closest parallel in Europe, in every European country. You know. I like cricket. You guys probably think that's incredibly obscure and sort of fusty British.

10:06 But like, if cricket is tiny compared to football, as is rugby and all these other sports we have, football is completely dominant in the vast majority of the world. The US is a wild exception.

10:15 So let's talk about that ninety four World Cup. So, like, what was the lead up to that ninety four World Cup in terms of making the case that it should be in the US? Like how long was that? I remember that World Cup, but like how long was that in the works and the fights and what had they happened for the World Cup to finally go in nineteen ninety four to the US.

10:35 Yeah, so it was a long time. It was like the mid eighties had lots of build up time. I mean, the US, as we're saying now, it doesn't need to build loads of stadiums, right, that's one huge advantage he has, unlike you know, South Africa and twenty ten, built all these white elephant stadiums, and in many cases that was a wonderful World Cup and of apartheid Mandela, but financially a bit of a basketcase. So the US was ready even if it wasn't a big football in country. But what it had to do was set up its own league because it did not have a professional soccer league at that point, So we set up them less because of that so real kind of footballing desert at the time that it was preparing to host the World Cup

11:05 in ninety four.

11:06 So just to clarify when it comes to I guess US commercial advertisers, what exactly were they trying to achieve here, Because if soccer isn't that big in the US at that time in nineteen ninety four, I assume they're not necessarily trying to target the American market. Like, maybe it's great that you're trying to popularize the game more in the country, but if you're an advertiser, I imagine sponsoring the World Cup in ninety four is more about tapping into that global audience that you're describing.

11:34 Yes, if you Coca Cola and you want to sell it in Africa and Asia is the best billboard you could possibly imagine. It's being built and you know, whole village is in parts of the world where people don't necessarily have electricity at home, we'll be watching it. It's the biggest advertising event in the world by far. But before ninety four it just wasn't really commercialized that ruthlessly.

11:50 You know, tournaments lost money. There's a great story from I think it's in the seventy four World Cup in Mexico. This tailor, like a guy who sews clothes somewhere in London, just bought half of the oizing boats on the stadium in Mexico City just because like no one else had have thought of it, and he offered them like a nominal amount of money and they were like yeah sure.

12:06 And like when I do my research into the sort of history of football shirts and sponsorship, the early days are often just kind of like that. A team will win some massive trophy with the local beer company on it, and then three years later there'll be no logo because it's literally just like some guy. There's no process, there's no marketing department, there's no anything. So I suppose Football FIFA just Lee was leaving millions, billions of pounds on the table. Of course, there is a flip side that if you ruthlessly commercialize it to within an inch of its life, you're potentially risking harming the product itself. But that's maybe a separate podcast.

12:36 Yeah, I suppose there's a separate party.

12:38 Do you want to get into that?

12:39 Like, yeah, we could, Yeah, we should get into that in the current state a little bit more, but talk more about some of these deals and how big they were and how unusual they were. So you go from like okay, a tailor in one World Cup to then a few World Cups later into Coca Cola and the biggest Yeah, and there were.

12:55 Like twenty million dollar deals and this kind of thing.

12:57 Yeah, So talk about like who are some of the big spants theres in like you know what there we like, what were some of these deals?

13:04 Yeah?

13:04 Yeah, and what were some of these deals that they signed in nineteen ninety four.

13:06 Yeah. So this guy on Rothenberg who was the kind of see the guy running the bit and he was very who came from an NBA background and he was very commercially minded and he turned it into this big commercial event, I think very effectively but yeah, the sponsors are, you know, like the ones we see now, like Coca Cola, like Visa, these huge multinational corporations that the World Cups hadn't really seen in the same extent before, and American companies, which is what we see now.

13:44 So I want to go back to something you said about the nineteen ninety World Cup, and you mentioned that it was lionized or I guess looms large in a lot of people's football memories, especially in Europe. What actually makes a World Cup successful? Like, what is that essence that you can point to that means you can say something like, oh, people love the nineteen ninety World Cup versus I don't know. I don't want to name of any specific World Cups as absolute failures, but you could pluck a few examples. I suppose.

14:15 Well, I think the two big things are a your team winning or doing really well, and being in your twenties. Like most things in life, you look back on it, and I suppose lots of people, you know, look back on nineteen ninety at the who are in positions a power at the moment, and that's wonderful for me. Twenty eighteen in England were in Russia and England did surprisingly well after being dreadful for twenty years and the sunshine every day for three months and it was just a party in England, which was fun. So I think a lot of it is that like social cultural stuff, but you know, on the broader sense, exciting games, close games, but like moments and people you know you look back to, like Diego Maradona. Do you know about the hand of God?

14:50 In nineteen there was eighty six? In nineteen ninety there was the first World Cup I paid attention to and I knew about, and then he had a pretty disappointing nineteen ninety World Cup. It was Argentina was pretty mediocre that year, right, But I was like pretty obsessed with a Madadonna that year and I was sort of, as a young kid, disappointed that he didn't wasn't it couldn't bring back the magic?

15:11 Yeah, And I think particularly as the game extends. So I'm from, you know, an English background where I went. I've been going to see my club aston Villa since I was like four years old, and it's so like deeply in my blood that you know, like, but that's a tiny mind. I think that's a minority of the people whoatch the World Cup, most people are from you know, parts of the world where they might tune in once every four years, and it's all about, you know, those characters and memories and people, and you know, I'm thinking about nineteen ninety the famous one in England would be Gazas tears. I don't know if that means anything to you, but Paul Gascoigne, the sort of maverick Englishman who was

15:40 like pretty sort of chaotic personal life and he was brilliant but sort of very flawed and he got a yellow card in the semi final against Germany that mean who couldn't play in the final and he cried, and it's like Gaza's tears. Is this sort of it's like a part of Britain's national story, like the sort of romantic view of football in that way. And you know, England didn't get to the fund semifinal. England lost that semi final to Germany on penalties, which then happened again six years later. And this idea of like losing to Germany every time is like a very deep in the kind of national myth and every country has its own, Like I've just been in Argentina, and like eighty six with Maradonna and you know, twenty twenty two with Messi.

16:15 The interesting one is nineteen seventy eight when Argentina won the World Cup and a military dictatorship as people were being tortured like a mile down the road, and that's kind of slightly airbrushed out of the story, but like, yeah, these people, these characters, I think is what really makes World Cups above anything else.

16:29 Someone told me this should probably fake, but it's like one of those things that people say, apparently some extraordinary number of people in England have nineteen sixty six because there are a pin current for their ac and they're like, you can just guess the once pin because in the last time England won the World Cup.

16:45 Oh totally. Yeah.

16:46 This was something that always used to happen. If for the ten years that I was in the UK, every time there was a World Cup, people would get really excited about bringing back the trophy and you would get all the analysts at the banks with the l side research and if they really wanted to get a bunch of clients happy, they would say that Englian was going to win the World A.

17:07 Crystical model Yeah, football is coming home. Yeah, I know a few yeah feel fact Yeah.

17:13 Which is a kind of slightly misunderstood slogan, I think because it's seen as this arrogance or this like we invented it and with this imperial people who are going to colonize you and win everything, which it's actually this sort of extremely sort of self deprecating to the point of like melancholic thing about how we never win anything and it's all really miserable, which is sort of a national character, I suppose.

17:31 So I noticed some extent we're talking about vibes, and it's hard to pinpoint those exactly, But I'm really interested in the contrast between the nineteen ninety World Cup and nineteen ninety four. So you go from a very European, not that commercialized event to something that is much more American and there's a lot more focus on actually generating money.

17:51 So how did those two events stack up against each other? This is what I'm trying to get at.

17:57 Yeah, well, and then you hit this sort of well, I mean, it's the beginning. USA is the beginning of a process. It's the beginning of this exponential curve where like people are throwing around the figure twelve billion for this World Cup, when three World Cups ago it was half that. It's many billions more than guitar. So the USA is not massive, but it's the beginning of the exponential curve in which the figure that well, you know, the nineteen ninety World Cup in Italy like lost money.

18:18 The USA ninety four is this beginning of I think maybe people didn't realize at the time what a commercial success it could be and how much money was potentially on the table from World Cups themselves, and that's when you lead it to feed for itself, becoming this much more ruthlessly commercial body.

18:33 Maybe the right way to think about the compare and contrast is not nineteen ninety verse nineteen ninety four, but nineteen ninety in Italy versus nineteen ninety eight in France, both hosted by European stalwart soccer nations. How did those two differ with nineteen ninety four having split them in the middle, And how much more commercialized and different was nineteen ninety eight versus nineteen ninety.

18:56 Or much more commercial And you have these big sponsors much more prominent in the stadium, already much more commercial, I mean The interesting thing about nineteen ninety eight is that France now feels like a stolewart football nation. It kind of wasn't before nineteen ninety eight, and then in France because it's a story of economic history and industrialization that France industrialized later than England, and it was a country where most of its people lived in villages rather than towns and cities, and football is everywhere and always a game of the city. It was spread by trams and trains inside cities. It was initially a child of the weekend. The first week workers to get weekend in industrial England were the people who played organized football first

19:30 the satsate three pm slot. France industrialized later, so it did not have that same culture, and there are pockets of it, you know, sin Etien, an industrial town in the south of France, But really France was not a big football country deep into the even nineteen ninety eight, and then that changed overnight. But still even now, you know, you go to a small French city and it's just not a thing that people talk about in a way that it is in England and in Spain and Italy.

19:51 Can I ask a very basic question, so you've said the word exponential a number of times. In terms of the commercialization of the World Cup. FIFA is a not for profit, right, Like technically it's not.

20:04 For debating this over the like what is FIFA.

20:07 It's supposed to reinvest its money like back into the sport. So what actually you know, basic question here, but what's driving the urge to generate money from advertising revenue?

20:19 So FIFA is a is a vehicle for funneling money from advertisers and TV to member associations. There are two hundred and something member associations that make up FIFA. They vote for the president, Jenny and Fantino. The World Cup is this huge bonanza of cash, both in terms of tikto ticketing, as this multi billion dollar thing is completely new.

20:39 I mean, I'm sure you've heard a lot about ticket prices and lots of European dropping outrage about that. Americans say that's just you know, capitalism, baby or whatever. But like it's like two three billion dollars now, which is completely new, and the advertising as well. FIFA is the kind of middleman and then that money goes to member associations and it's one member, one vote. So if you're England, Brazil, Germany.

21:00 You have the same vote as Cape Bird Suriname, and it means that these countries have incredibly glitzy facilities and it means that they tend to re elect the president.

21:08 Okay, so that makes sense. So in terms of corporate structure, is it the Premier League? Is that a for profit organization or is there yet another sort of non profit layer that sits above a bunch of privately owned clubs which are for profit.

21:23 That's correct. Yeah, it's a member association and it votes for its members.

21:27 What about the MLS? Is that the similar structure where the MLS is a sort of nominally.

21:33 Non a franchise system.

21:34 Oh, it's a franchise system.

21:35 So the US sports model, which is where a franchise system where there's no promotion and relegation, which of course is deeply part of European sport. It means that the valuations of clubs are much lower because you can get relegated and Totmham Hotspur, who are a very big club in England, extremely close came close to getting relegated, which means you fall out of the Premier League and into the ellegue below.

21:55 My husband is a Spurs fan, so this has been a painful bring.

21:59 Up any trauma. I've read stuff around the time saying that even that Spurs came close to relegation, it's going to harm the valuation of Manchester United and Chelsea and these other teams because it feels possible in a way it didn't a year ago. Too big to fail.

22:13 I haven't thought about that that basically like that, it puts it implicitly that there's a left tail outcome for a club, any club ownership that is just not possible. And then like Major League Baseball, are obviously Major League Soccer where you just prominently have that spot at the top. That's super interesting.

22:30 Yeah, there's there's real stakes.

22:32 And relegation is obviously very unlikely. But Champions League FOOTBA also the top four or five teams in England go on to play in the Champions League, the European wide competition, which is hugely lucrative. And my team aston Villa who are punching way above their way at the moment and have qualified this year, but that means there's not a spot for you know, Chelsea haven't qualified this year, Manchester United have gone several years without qualifying. They have this year.

22:53 But that's a like left tail risk, which is really quite likely and means that you're not going to get that huge part of money next year, and the odds are pretty The.

23:00 Flip side is that teams and lower rated leagues. We did that episode years and years ago with that bitcoiner who bought like a team like Bedford England or something like that, the fifth team down with like his pitcoin profits, and he had dreams of like bringing them up, you know, like you could have like sort of like entrepreneurial football entrepreneurs.

23:22 Like yeah, so like it does seem like, you know, I think it would be more exciting. I actually have an old friend or kind of a friend who owns a US soccer club in a smaller league, and he wants the US to introduce like relegation and promotion on this idea that maybe that club could one day be a bigger, more valuable thing. But I have no idea if that could ever happen.

23:44 Well, I guess the members would have to vote for it, the same you know in any other league. And it's a bit kind of Turkey's Vogue for Christmas.

23:50 Okay, since we're on the topic of the Premier League, and also right and left tail outcome. So you right across your coverage a lot about the influence of geopology on football, right and I think at this point everyone is familiar with the term sportswashing, so the idea that certain governments, certain people, certain companies will sponsor a football team to make themselves look good and maybe distract from other scandals. One thing that's interesting to me now is it kind of feels like sportswashing can also go in the other direction, where you can end up having geopolitical vulnerabilities.

24:24 So if I think about Chelsea, you know, Chelsea basically lost their sugar daddy for lack of a better word, in the form of Abramovich. And I think at some point there was talk about maybe sanctions in the UK against the Emirates and obviously Manchester United owned by Americans, and I imagine for some British people, Americans aren't that popular.

24:46 Right now, does the influence of sportswashing go in the other way?

24:52 Well, I mean Chelsea, yes, it was very embarrassing for them. Abromvirich was sanctioned by the American government, but fundamentally Chelsea had won one league title before he came out in the early two thousands. They won five in the eighteen nineteen years after that, so I don't think they'll be you know, would would they have taken that? As a Chelsea fan at the start, I basically think, and this is maybe putting myself out of a job. No one cares that much. Like, no one, like people don't become a sports team to grapple with geopolitics. And it's kind of pretty terrible sometimes, I think, because like Newcastle United is probably the most egregious example because they're literally owned by the public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, and yeah,

25:26 like that's been I think used as a propaganda vehicle for an autocratic state, and yeah, it's pretty bad, But I don't think fans care. And Newcastle United is like a very working class club with a really proud history in this sort of quite you know town that's had a rough few decades and a very proud and very amazing institution. And it's a very clever move for the Saudi Investment Fund to buy it because it has so much sort of authenticity and credibility.

25:48 Was there some team that has gets prom under logo.

25:51 That well teed me up, because that's the first whole first chapter of my book.

25:56 Which team was there?

25:58 That's Shoulker in Gelson Kirshen and where I travel and speak to lots of people. So yeah, the great thing there was they had gas prom on their shirts, and when I went there two years after the invasion of Ukraine, lots of people were wearing blue stickers over the gas prom logo because they were shamed by it. But yeah, Russian gas and German politics were deeply entwined for decades and best exhibited in the shirt of Sholka, and politicians and executives would wine and dine there. Germany was buying cheap gas from Russia, so both sides were getting something out of it. Because Germany doesn't have much natural resources, Russia needed the cash. It all came crashing down in twenty twenty two. The one team that does still have

26:35 gas prom on their shirts is Red Star Belgrade in Serbia, who also play in European competitions. But of course Serbia is much more pally with Russia than the rest of Europe, so they don't see a problem there.

26:45 So who did did did their team? Did they get a new sponsor?

26:49 Sholka well, they lost loads of money overnight. It was like ten million euros and they'd been kind of declining for a while, but it was almost the straw that broke the camel's back and they went down to the second division in Germany, which was They're a huge club, so they took a huge financial hit from losing that sponsorship.

27:19 So, speaking of Jersey history, I guess one of the things that's come up in the current World Cup is Haiti's jersey. So I think they had to redesign it because FIFA said it was too political. You're not allowed to have political slogans or like political meanings. And Haiti apparently have a little graphic of men during the Haitian Revolution and one of them was like a very famous war hero, but not even explicitly like maybe a very famous war hero. And I find this really interesting because obviously there's a lot of judgment involved when you say whether a jersey is political or not. And no one is going after like the Netherlands for wearing orange and promoting Protestantism or right, So like, how do they make

28:02 those calls and does it feel like they're picking on maybe smaller countries with fewer resources to fight against some of these decisions.

28:10 Well, yeah, all these things are just kind of arbitrary judgment calls, you know where. And there's a thing that football associations are constantly grappling with because it's people that have ripped their shirts off to have something to do with Israel, Palestine or and I can see why. But then when the Russia Ukraine stuff happened in England, that kind of whole football community united around, we support Ukraine and flagged and whatever else. So these things are often conceeeme hypocritical, conceeem contradictory. Those decisions. It's just some person somewhere, you know, How do you objectively make a call like that?

28:38 But yeah, you're right to flag the Netherlands. And it's a really interesting one. I've actually on Instagram be doing a series that's like white Country plays in each color and Heiti is that they play in red and blue because it was the French tree color and when they overthrew the French, you know, the slave hold of incredible slave revolution in Heiti, and they rip the Whites out of the flag just to be left with blue and red the Netherlands and the orange. The story is William of Orange, who's kind of the founding father of the Netherlands.

29:02 But in I don't know if you know, the Association of Orange in Northern Ireland and Scotland of the Protestantism and sectarianism and the Club Rangers, which represents the Protestant Unionist half of Glasgow while Celtic is the Irish Republican half. They play in Orange and it's quite inflammatory because it's associated with these sort of sectarian things. So, yeah, the same shirt, the same kind of but no one would say that about a Netherlands national shirt, even though the original origin of the story is similar. It's just these things have different meanings in different contexts.

29:30 I suppose tell us about the Jersey and Columbia that had a murdered drug dealer onn't it.

29:36 Yeah, so that was Envigado FC and the outskirts of Many In which the city which of course gave the world Pablo Escobar. But these days are a lovely place to visit. I'd recommend it to anyone as a toy.

29:45 I've heard everyone says it to me.

29:46 It's great and just chilled and like great food, great vibes. But it was the highest murder rate in the history of organized statistics was medy in in the eighties. Like it was just people were being gunned down, left, right, and center because Pablo Escobar and his cocaine cartel was running the show. But football was kind of a tool of all this. And Escobar owned the one club in Mediine, but other cartels owned clubs in Cali and other Colombian cities.

30:10 But the story I was interested in was a bit later than that. Was so Escobar was killed in the early nineties, and one of the offshoots from this cartel was in Envigado, and this guy was killed, you know, drug bosses are liable to get killed, and his son, as a loving tribute to his father because they own this football club, put his face on the back. So on the back of the shirt was this like silhouette of this man's face who was like a murdered drug cartel leader. And I went to a game there in the sort of humid stadium in the middle of the day and I saw one. I was like, I've made it this far. I really hope I get to see the shirt, and right at the end I saw it on the back of because it's quite old it's like

30:41 ten years old. But they were sanctioned by the American government. They were on this thing, the Clinton List, which is when foreign entities can't deal with US companies, so that means like banks and everything else. It's really tricky to be on that list if you're sanctioned. So they had no sponsor for a while after that, so they had like the silhouette of the drug cartel leader, no sponsor.

31:00 They was sanctued by the Americans, and now they're in by someone else and they just we should say, a normal football team.

31:06 How much do those jerseys actually sell for now? Can you get them off eBay or something? I imagine they're worth a lot of money.

31:12 Oh well, I mean that one's just an incredibly of skill on the high fan because I like the story. But some of them, oh hundreds and hundreds huge industry now and the nostalgia of it people on the kind of nineties one from when they were kids, and yeah, it's huge industry.

31:24 Yeah.

31:24 Obviously people like football jerseys. And my personal favorite for this World Cup is the away kit for Cursow, which is this really nice pastel yellow that I think I could get away with. But if I go to try to buy it. That's selling for like three hundred dollars now, and it is nice. Yeah, and I think some of the other some of the other popular jerseys, like one of the japan ones that has like stripes on it, that one's also very cute, like there is a choice. Yeah, they're really They're really hard to find now and they're selling for a lot of money. What does that actually mean for fans? You know, if I'm a Cursow fan and I can't get my hands on in away jersey unless I pay up like three hundred dollars, that seems

32:04 not ideal.

32:06 Yeah. Well, it's an interesting debate that you hear a lot because I mean, you're supply and demand, right, you know, they're selling the price that they can get away with it. But in England you get like politicians stanning up and talking about how much a disgrace it is that the shirt is it's priced at that level. I mean, it's something that means so much to people that and it's interesting.

32:21 This sort of the conflict between supply and demand and football, I think is something that we're seeing a lot at the moment with this World Cup, because you know, Arsenal who just won the league, who are in London, who are really popular. A ticket there is like sixty pounds, maybe like eighty dollars, and they're just impossible. They're put impossible to get. You need points, Like if you're just a random person from the US who wanted to go to an Arsenal game next season, you just can't. You might be able to buy in the secondary market, which is completely unregulated, you might get scammed. What they absolutely do not do is raise it to the market clearing price and charge one thousand dollars for it, Like that

32:51 just doesn't happen because it's so deeply ingrained in sort of European supporting culture that that's like wrong, Whereas the US takes a different approach. And this is what we've seen at this World Cup.

33:00 When I was in when we were in Madrid, I did you know I got into that?

33:03 Did you get a jersey?

33:04 I didn't get a jersey, But you know when I went on StubHub to buy my ticket, and I got really stressed because as soon as I bought the ticket, I got that pop up that said away fans will not be allowed into the stadium, And I was like, what if they think of an away fan. I doesn't speak Spanish, Like, I got like, are they gonna give me a light of techno test? So I went and I bought a scarf of Utletti and I wore that to the stadium so that it's like and then I felt okay and I got in no problem. And everyone was like, oh, be careful with their StubHub ticket. That might be fake. But I was able to get in.

33:33 So my son is a big Messy fan and he has a pink Messy jersey. But then today on the walk to school, he asked me a messy what's a goalie or not?

33:42 Oh my god?

33:42 So I was like, I was like, so he has this conception that there is this person in the world named Messi, and he has like who he really likes but evidently quite clear, I mean he's young, he like, does that actually know anything about it? He just knows that there is this existence. Likes the jersey, but like, why is my undry into this pink jersey?

34:01 Well a very clever bit of marketing from Well. So. David Beckham is a part owner of and that's an interesting sort of financial story because when he joined La Galaxy in two thousand and seven, someone put into his contract, whether it was him or he was maybe very well advised that he would have the ownership rights when a new franchise was introduced into the MLS and that became into Miami, and I believe he paid like twenty five million dollars, I think, which is basically just a huge bargain.

34:25 That's what now Mirth worth so many times more than that. And Beckham, or again maybe someone advising Beckham, settled on pink partly because apparently Miami is really pink or the buildings of pink, right, but also because basically no other team plays in pink. So many teams playing red, Palermo and Itsaly playing pink, but that's you know, quite niche, but no one. So pink is just so iconic. You just need to see, like the collar under a shirt and you know instantly. It was a very clever bit of marketing. But what's interesting you say about your son and Messi because football coming from Europe, the club is the first point of reference and that was certainly my own upbringing. And if your favorite player lead as well,

34:59 you kind of than when they come back for another team. It's all about the club and that's what you identify with first. Whereas as football is becoming this bigger global thing, it's that the individuals and Messi and Ronaldo who are both you know, way past their best and it's possible at this tournament they could be not very good, who knows, But the individual is now more important globally than the club, which is new.

35:20 Interesting just going back to commercialization of the World Cup. So you know, we've been talking a lot about advertisers and extending you know, the number of games played in order to expand I guess, the number of eyeballs on the game and all of that. There are other ways that FIFA is catering to the American market. So for instance, we now have mandated water breaks, which basically turns the game into like quarters, right that something that looks a lot more like an American football game than it used to.

35:53 How far could we go in terms of the americanization of I guess, you know traditionally European slash World football.

36:03 So the other strange thing to me is games start late. They start like not really late, they just start like five minutes lateh which never happens in Europe and even in the You know, these cultures like Italy, Spain, Argentina, whe everyone's like late all the time, and that's part of the culture. Football never kicks off late.

36:16 The suspense in America keep them, yeah.

36:19 Maybe, but it's like I'm sitting on my sofa being like where are they? Like, you know, I've got stuff to.

36:23 Do, like announcing, and someone's singing the national anthem. Yeah someone Yeah. That does seem like an American thing where there's that real much connection to the nominal time of the sporting event and the actual kickoff or tip off.

36:35 But the hydration thing, I mean, I try, I'm trying desperately not to be sort of European traditionalists shouting at cloud. But hydration breaks are bad. I think they're really bad because they completely break up the flow of the game. I've been watching a few where it's kind of really exciting. You maybe had like an underdog hit it against the ropes, like playing really well, and then it complearly takes the pace out of everything. And I get it. If it's forty degrees like in Texas, fine, but they're doing in these condition stadiums. They're doing in Toronto when it was like raining it's unnecessary, and I think it's really damaging, and I think like the rules of the game have barely changed in one hundred and twenty years. It would

37:09 be instantly recognizable if you went back to nineteen hundred. And it's a precious thing, and I think if you meddle with it a bit, you risk kind of ruining the whole experience.

37:16 I have to say, going to the game and Madrid, I really liked basically knowing what time the game was going to end. You know, you get there at a certain time, forty five minutes shorter plus a couple of minutes break, forty five minutes plus a couple of minutes game's over. And I thought, like, for planning my night, it was just very nice to not have to concern as it's going to go.

37:35 You know.

37:35 I guess there could have been like penalty kicks or something like that, or overtime, but.

37:39 Even then it could be two and a half hours. That's an absolute maximum.

37:42 Yeah, with this actually just reminded me when MLS was just getting off the ground, didn't they have like something where if you were doing penalty shootouts you had to like dribble for ages and it was supposed to make it more exciting.

37:55 Ring it's great. Yeah, you like that. I love it. Yeah, American innovation done right. I mean it's so cool. If you watch on YouTube, you see these guys with these like really baggy shirts and they all just look like though some of those players were like college players, you know, w ended up playing for the national team. And the way you do it is you get the ball like maybe around the halfway line and you just sort of run at the goal. Yeah, it makes it much more even it's harder to score, so it's like a fifty like a hockey. I think a hockey penalty is like fifty to fifty, but a football penalty is like eighty percent, and it means most of the time it goes in.

38:25 When it doesn't, it's like devastating for the person who misses. But it's a much more Yeah, it's fun, it's exciting. I'm well up for that. Like, you know, let the Americans do their things.

38:33 Now I have to run something by both of you. So I had an idea for making football more exciting for Americans. So the complaint that you always hear or at least score that, my dad says, right, they don't score enough goals. Never mind that in the last Super Bowl there were like two meaningful touchdowns or something, but whatever, there aren't enough goals in soccer. So what if you started awarding points for corner, So if you get one point per corner successful corner, and then you got three points for a goal.

39:03 Oh I'm unconvinced about that. But the Spain KD was thrilling and that was nil nil.

39:10 Criticism by the way, you know what I.

39:14 Makes it.

39:14 You know what I was introduced to. Our producer Kill showed me this before the athletic game, which I had never seen that there was this very like predictive essentially I don't know, machine learning AI type thing where at any given moment, there's like the swing and you could see like who has the momentum? What are these charts called.

39:31 Like the momentum jot.

39:32 Yeah, that's yeah, the momentum charts, and you could say, like so that you could see like a team in this position would have scored a goal like seventy percent. Yeah, And I was thinking maybe a nice way to add some more attention is that in the event of a draw, that you award the victory to the team that had the greater momentum throughout the game.

39:53 No, why wouldn't you just have a penalty shootout?

39:55 No, because then you just encourage attacking play throughout so that you're rewarded in the event of a draw. You what do you think about that proposal that in the event of raw, Yeah, yeah, that's the tiebreaker expect exactly. So the tiebreaker is expected goals, and therefore you're rewarded for having played consistent attacking play throughout the game, even if you know it didn't materialize and the ball went out the post or something like that. What do you think about that?

40:23 But when the team wins on it, so I expected goals, which how yeah good. But when team leaves with a better XG, that's the thrill of it, right, that's why you get.

40:31 Yeah, yeah, no, that's exciting, and I totally get that. And you're like, we should like if one team had better XG but the other team got more goals, fine, that's exciting. But in the event of a tie, you go to the x G and then you like, rather than like sort of very defensive.

40:45 People would find some way to game that too. And also people are already up in arms about the var Yeah, and by the way, I still can't say var without thinking about yours.

40:55 But I thought that was exciting. During the game, there were two times where the referee years went back and looked at a call that was made on the field, and I found it that was interesting. The energy in the stadium was incredibly high waiting for those referee reviews, and I sort of thought it added to the fun of like being in the stadium while we were waiting for the calls.

41:17 I think it's got better, Yeah, I think it's sped up. I think at the beginning there are a lot of teething pains and it was often really slow, and often people in the stadiums. What they're doing better at now is communicating to the people in the stadium, Because I've been in a stadium where it just goes on for like five minutes. People are like texting their friends saying, what's going on? Are you're watching on TV? So it has got better. I think there are still like huge problems with a lot of these calls are fundamentally subjective, right, Yeah, Like an offside is objective, but so you know, is a foul a foul? Is a handball? You know? If it bangs you on your shoulder there, it's not a fowl,

41:46 but if it's the things cannot be perfected through data or whatever else, so there will always be that tension there.

41:53 It's funny you mentioned texting people who are watching on TV. So many of the fans that I saw were watching CASS on their phone during the game, so that they would have like a little like stream on their phone and so during the call. That's sad, yeah, whatever they were like getting more commentary and stuff like that.

42:11 That nah, that's.

42:12 Sad and also okay, but almost kind of like that you mentioned energy just then, how do we get a proper chant culture going in American football or football which takes place in America? And I think even in the UK some of the chanting is starting to go away a little bit, which is very disappointing.

42:32 Yeah, well, I think I think it's partly to do with the sort of who was in the crowd. You know, it's much more of a sort of big family event in the in the in the US, potential the UK is becoming more so was previously would have been mainly kind of big groups of young men who probably chant more than families to be honest, and that's changed, and that's probably a good thing for the most part, but certainly the culture has changed quite a bit. But yeah, I mean some of these songs, some of these songs in English football have like a century of history. But I've been just become an MLS game, so I thought the atmosphere is pretty good. I went to the New York Red Bulls and I was, I don't know, expect

43:00 seeing a sort of Yeah, the U asked this of Energy Drink Company, and it was pretty good. Like I was impressed.

43:04 The Cosmos games were always really good because people would bring like drum sets and stuff. But in terms of chanting, I have to say, in my experience, the ultimate champions are actually Japanese baseball teams. Oh yeah, I've heard do it like mar In the Unison.

43:18 I really really want to go to a Japanese.

43:20 That's great vibes. If you like the Cyclone, Yeah, it's I that's definitely high up on the Actually one last question, my understanding.

43:28 So obviously football has become more popular in the United States today in twenty twenty six than it was in nineteen ninety four, my understanding, And tell me if I'm wrong is that if you go to like a typical American football fan, there will be some people who are like really into They'll have their favorite Premier League team or their favorite European team that they're really into, or there'll be some who are like really into the MLS, but that there isn't a lot of crossover. That's still like you're sort of either into European football or American MLS, but not really you're like kind of one or the others.

43:59 That the I think that's true, and the MLS has real pockets. I think like in the Northwest, im Portland and Seattle it's long and big. There are other places where are particularly strong and yeah, and I think there is sometimes a bit of a sort of culture war between I mean you get this in Europe or in England of teams who support their small local team versus the big team on TV.

44:16 Yeah.

44:16 But I think one interesting thing with European leagues is that the English League is currently like eating everyone else's lunch. It's just like becoming this sort of winner takes all all the TV revenue is flowing there and it's really harming sort of Spain and Italy and these huge football institutions like AC Milan have less money than these like tiny English teams.

44:33 Which I feel like you don't hear about the Bundesliga all anymore.

44:36 Right, like you win it every year, so it's kind of boring.

44:40 Okay, Well, anyway, I.

44:41 Just want to go back to the big Will FIFA kill the Golden Goose?

44:45 Oh yeah, question?

44:47 It's sad. In my head, I'm doing a goal golden pun but you can't even tell on the podcast. So I apologize for mentioning that at all. But how far can you actually push commercialization? And as we see FIFA especially try to make more space for advertisers through They haven't said this explicitly when they talk about the hydration breaks they say it's all great, yeah, the welfare of the players and all of that, but like it certainly looks like they're making defined space for ads. At what point does it mean that you start to lose some of the magic of the sport. I'm sure you've been asked this question a ton and you probably thought about it a ton.

45:26 Yeah, Well, I think it can happen. I think it probably. I basically think the World Cup is like, well, for me, it's like the pinnacle of human civilization and the greatest cultural event on Earth, and it is the biggest cultural event on Earth by absolutely miles. So I think it's pretty hard to mess it up, Like you just need two teams a pitch, get some fans in. You know, it's not some great like you don't need to think too hard about how to do it in four years time.

45:46 But the more you meddle with it, the more you tinker at the edges. I don't think the whole thing would come like crashing down overnight, but I do think if you keep meddling with it, then children will become less into it than their parents did, and very slowly you could sort of chip away at the edges of it.

45:57 They're obviously so much more a ten and distractions these days that someone sitting still for two hours is like harder to convince them to do. But yeah, I think in the short term, like they can probably rinse even more cash out of it, to be honest, because it's just such a perfect event.

46:11 All right, Joey Durso, thank you so much for coming on to odd Loads. I'm glad we got a World Cup episode and there's so much going on in the World right now, but it could have easily done a bunch of a million AI episodes. And I'm glad we covered the World Cup. And you're the perfect guest, So thank you so much for coming on Oddline.

46:27 Thanks for having me. I'm go to.

46:28 It, Tracy. There was a lot of fun, many interesting points. I thought. One thing I thought was interesting is the idea of the fandom of the player rather than the team emerging over time. You get these global superstars like a Messy or a Ronaldo or maybe like a Beckham or.

46:57 Yeah, but then the ritory you're not a real fan, No you're not, but like you.

47:00 Know, like from the perspective, then they like take their money with them from one city to or another. I could see that really changing the game or is sort of like changing the nature of like people's relationship with the sport.

47:11 Yeah, but again, like if I was going to be cynical about this, it makes it even more about the money, right, No, no, no, no.

47:19 No, not saying there's a good thing. I'm saying that's an interesting shift in how people, right.

47:22 And I'm saying that an effect of that will be that whoever has the most money I can afford, like the best player just gets them and gets even bigger, even more money, and it's this like self reinforcing cycle, which is what we're seeing in a lot of European football at the moment. By the way, material culture trivia for you on the pink jersey point, go on, did you know that pink used to be much more of a gender neutral color, even more of a masculine color than a feminine color?

47:50 Really?

47:51 Yeah, what do you have any idea when that changed?

47:53 I think in the like early to mid nineteen hundred. It's kind of interesting, So.

47:56 I would like to learn more about that. We should also have joy on back again, maybe in quieter days talk about the connection between football and the stock market crash in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, I had no idea. Maybe I'll go find I'll google that and read more on that. But I'm very curious about that. But uh no, it's uh that was that was a really fun conversation.

48:17 Where are you supporting in the World Cup?

48:19 I don't know, you know what, I've really been like so busy. I just like, like, you know, we've been traveling and the next and so I'm like I need this weekend. We're recording this, I think about it. I don't know for real, Well, like I have a washer World Cup match yet, so it's June's that we're recording this on June sixteen. If I need this weekend to like sort of reset every this week to reset and sort of get my bearing, It's like, Okay, what World Cup matches? Am I going? I just have not had that had the mental space to allocate, like you know, I remember like in twenty ten, I was gonna bring it up. I loved that one with the vuviz elas.

48:51 That was the one in South Afri That was I love that one And like everyone in Brooklyn with there, I thought.

48:57 That was my nightmare, being in a football stadium with someone with a voozo.

49:01 I could find me.

49:02 Yeah, what does the cape Ford jerseys actually look like? Wait? I want to see They're blue? Could be better still? Cape Ford for the for the win. Shall we leave it there?

49:15 Let's leave it there.

49:16 This has been another episode of the aud Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

49:22 And I'm Joe Why isn't Thal? You can follow me at the Stalwart. You can follow our guest Joey Durso. He's at Joseph M. Derso and check out his book More Than a Shirt, How Football Shirts Explain Global Politics, money and Power. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash O Bennett at Dashbod, Keile Brooks at Cail Brooks and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots or of a daily newsletter. In all of our episodes and you can shout about all these topics twenty four seven in our discord discord gg slash odd Lots.

49:54 And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it when we do sports talk I guess, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening