This week president Donald Trump convened a prayer meeting in the Oval Office. Gathered around the Resolute desk, constructed from the timbers of a British naval vessel, a series of pastors laid their hands on the president’s thinning hair and prayed for his success. The only other item on the desk? The enormous intricate bauble that will serve as the trophy for Fifa’s Club World Cup.
That Trump should like the look of an object lacquered in 24-carat gold plating, and designed by the New York jewellers Tiffany & Co, is not perhaps a huge surprise. But its prominent position on the world’s most consequential desktop will surely also have been welcomed by the president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino, who left the trophy with Trump this month on his visit to the White House, a week after Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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Infantino has a competition to sell after all. The Club World Cup is taking place in the United States this summer and, as the countdown speeds up, key issues are yet to be resolved. With fewer than 100 days to go, tickets are still available to buy for each match in the tournament, with many fixtures showing large areas of seating unsold. A groundbreaking global broadcast deal between Fifa and the streaming platform Dazn, meanwhile, has yet to translate into sublicensing arrangements with national broadcasters. There is also fury from other competition organisers – the Premier League included – over what is regarded as a land grab and an imposition on a strained fixture calendar. At the same time, the Club World Cup stands a real chance of creating a paradigm shift in how club football is played.
Upgraded and expanded from the competition that began in 2000, when eight regional champions faced off against each other in a knockout tournament, this summer’s Club World Cup will feature 32 teams in a 46-match format that has group and knockout stages and will run for a month. Chelsea and Manchester City will compete, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter too. These giants will face off against lesser lights of the international game such as the 2022 African Champions League winners Wydad of Morocco and New Zealand’s Auckland City, who qualify by virtue of their ranking as the best club side in Oceania.
That there are still a good number of tickets left at the 25,000-capacity Inter&Co Stadium in Orlando to watch Auckland play Benfica on 20 June should perhaps be expected. Ditto Manchester City against Al Ain at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta (even if it is an Abu Dhabi derby). But there are many tickets available for matches with more recognisably household names too. As much as a third of the 20,000 Camping World Stadium in Orlando remains unsold for City v Juventus on 26 June, for example, while Inter Miami against Porto on 19 June looks like being way too small for that 75,000-capacity stadium in Atlanta, Messi-effect included. The pattern of lukewarm sales recurs across the knockout round ties.
Fifa says that some matches are sold out, though the controversial process of authorised ticket resale in place for the tournament – whereby you can buy a ticket and instantly sell it on again for a new price on the same platform – means you can buy a seat all the same. It observes too that there is a higher demand in the new soccer hotbed of Florida than in other parts of the country. At the same time, however, it acknowledges it is trying to launch a tournament in a country where soccer is at best the fourth most popular sport, and at a time of year when the average American consumer has any number of possible entertainments to choose from. Fifa intends to intensify its marketing in the coming weeks, hoping to sway those punters in their decisions, but must first find a replacement for one of its competitors, after the Mexican side León were removed from the competition for a breach of Fifa’s rules on multi-club ownership.
The sporting world is watching every shift in the cup’s development keenly; some with dread, others with anticipation. For Adam Kelly, the president of the sports marketing giant IMG, there is no question that Fifa is undertaking the kind of project that audiences want to see, even if the risks are substantial.
“I look at this and honestly have to commend Fifa because they are being bold and they’re taking a really significant risk here,” he said. “I think they’ve got a responsibility to better reflect the industry they are in, especially around product innovation. I think they’ve got an obligation to try something new. And Fifa are building a club event that they’re saying hands down, without doubt, is [going to be] at the top of the club game and that is their ambition. I think you’ve got to applaud it.”
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As professional sport increasingly becomes part of a global entertainment industry, Kelly argues that elite competitions are growing in significance. “The sceptics will point to this being a power play, a political move,” he says. “They will ask questions about the number of fixtures. But of the numbers that we see, where sport is setting new records is where you’re driving fans and engagement clearly to the pinnacles, to the very top of the pyramid. So we’ve seen records set for the World Cup for both men and women. The Copa América, the Euros, the Gulf Cup in the MENA region, they’ve proven that trend too.”
Kelly says he is not surprised that ticket sales are slow for an unfamiliar competition, but argues Fifa has a number of marketing levers to pull before the event, even without an intervention from the White House. And if there are empty banks of seats when the South Korean side Ulsan face Mamelodi Sundowns on 16 June, Fifa will still have taken big steps towards globalising the club game in an unprecedented way.
“If you look at everything in the round, there are leagues that are unhappy, some of the federations, while at the confederation level it’s a mixed bag as to whether they’re truly supportive or have some concerns,” he says. “But overall, when the first game kicks off, I think the interest will be strong.”
