UP559 Revenue-maxxing: How FIFA Changed The Game

FIFA will make $13bn from the four-year cycle culminating in this summer's tournament — nearly $9bn of it landing this year alone. For comparison, the Paris 2024 Olympics, the other Greatest Show on Earth, generated $5.24bn. Total. For the whole Games.

It wasn't always this lopsided. The World Cup actually trailed the Olympics financially until 2010, when South Africa's edition pulled in $4.19bn against London 2012's $3.23bn. Since then the gap has only widened: 18% revenue growth from Russia 2018 to Qatar 2022, and FIFA is projecting another 73% jump by the end of this summer. They've already raised the budget for the next cycle to $14bn — before this tournament has even finished.

So this episode isn't really about football. It's about how a governing body turned a month of matches into the most lucrative event in the history of sport — and how that changes our relationship with the World Cup.

My guests are Joey D'Urso, Times journalist and author of More Than A Shirt, and Carla Bilche of Off-Ball Logic, who's spent months tracing the commercial history of the World Cup to understand exactly how we got here. Carla has a name for it: "revenuemaxxing." Once you hear the numbers, the word makes total sense.

This episode is sponsored by the Institute of Sports Humanities (ISH) 

ISH educates sport’s current and future leaders around the world, as the leading independent provider of sports leadership education and insight.

Their Strategic Sport Leadership Masters (MA) is for sports industry executives to study alongside their careers – designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport.

Applications for the next intake on the 2026 Strategic Sport Leadership MA, starting September, are open.

Visit sportshumanities.org for more information

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Transcript

Speaker 2 0:00

Gianni and Fantino FIFA's president called the 2026 World Cup, the greatest event that humanity has ever seen. I like a bit of hoopla, but one thing is factually true. This is the most lucrative sports event ever held. The numbers are astonishing. FIFA will make 13 billion from the four year cycle culminating in this summer's tournament. It's nearly 9 billion of it landing this year alone. For comparison, the Paris 2024 Olympics, the other greatest show on Earth, generated 5.24 billion in total for the whole games. It wasn't always this lopsided. The World Cup actually trailed the Olympics financially until 2010 when South Africa's edition pulled in 4.9 billion against London 2012, which were only made at poultry 3.23 billion. Since then, the gap's only widened 18% Revenue growth from Russia 2018 to Qatar 2022. And FIFA is projecting a huge 73% jump by the end of this summer. They've already raised the budget for the next cycle to $14 billion before the tournament has even finished. So we talk about money in this episode and it's about what the money does and what the impact is on the product itself and on our relationship to the World Cup. My guests are Joey Durso, the Times journalist and author of More Than A Shirt, which talks about sports relationship with politics. And Carla Bisch, a marketing professional from Bonna Airs, whose Off Ball Logic is a substack I recommend highly to you. She spent months tracing the commercial history of the World Cup to understand exactly how we got here. And Carla has a name for what we're seeing, revenue maxing. Once you hear the numbers, that word makes complete sense, this episode was recorded a couple of weeks ago, so my predictions for Japan reaching the semi-final haven't aged. Well, let's put it that way.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 1:50

This episode of Unofficial Partner is sponsored by our friends at the Institute of Sport Humanities. I-S-H-I-S-H ISH educates sports current and future leaders around the world as the leading independent provider of leadership, education, and insight for the sector. Their strategic sport leadership masters. The MA is for industry executives to study alongside their careers, designed for professionals who want to build on their experience, strengthen strategic thinking, and connect with a global network of peers working across sport applications are now open for the next intake on the 2026 strategic sport leadership MA starting in September. Visit sports humanities.org for more information and there'll be a link in the show notes. Carla, I know Joey. And the sort of chain of events here was he flagged you on Substack saying, "You should have a look at this. This is really good." And then I went and looked at, you know, because of the sheer sort of social presence of Joey Durso, he's around the place. He's, he's unavoidable. He's un- he's unavoidable presence in our lives.

Joey D'Urso 3:02

myself

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 3:04

But I saw that, and then I went on your, Substack and he was right, and it was really good. So just give us a bit of context on why you did it and just a bit of background. 'Cause there's, there's stuff in there that we'll, we'll get into

Carla Bilche 3:18

Well, I work in product marketing and I love uh, sports, mainly football. And so that's why I wanted to start OffBall Logic. And the mission of the, newsletter and the, and the Substack is to understand how the game is actually built, but more from like the OffBall lens,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 3:36

Yeah

Carla Bilche 3:36

talking about more marketing strategy, brand decisions, commercial logic, that turns an athlete or a team or a club or a league into something that people will organize their lives around. And especially about the, the World Cup, the thing was for me to understanding why the World Cup became one of the biggest global products in history, not from a sporting perspective, but also from a commercial, cultural, and political perspective. So that's why I wanted to dive into, dive deeper into what happened throughout the last 100 years in the history of the World Cup.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 4:14

Yeah, yeah. the run into this World Cup has been quite interesting, I think, because there's been a lot of business-type stories or, you know, it's ticket prices or it's the cities or it's to do with sponsorship or the media rights in China and India and all, and all of these things that we cover quite a lot and go into s- a lot of detail. But increasingly, there is a sort of cultural element where politics and culture come together, which I think you landed on really nicely. Joey, you've been doing, and people will know this anyway, but your, we- you came on the podcast and talked about More Than a Shirt, your last book. But you've been doing some would say heroic social media work linking the World Cup to shirts. Just talk to us about that for a minute

Joey D'Urso 4:59

Yeah. Um, first it's great to be on with Carla who I, who I didn't, I've never met before virtually or otherwise. But yeah, her, her newsletter is brilliant and full of sort of numbers and hard facts, which are often in short supply with people speaking very confidently about football. So really good, I recommend it. Um, yeah, so the book was about football shirts and how they explain the world, which is mainly through sponsors. You know, the classic example being Gazprom and how that tells the story of gas and Russian money and all that complicated politics neatly through the football shirt of Schalke in Germany. Um, but there are lots of others. But that was out last summer, and then I was sort of thinking, you know, the World Cup, how am I gonna have anything to say because, of course, international shirts don't have sponsors. Um, the reason for that being that FIFA don't want anyone competing with their own sponsors. Not through any kind of noble mission. But, it turns out there is an awful lot to say because every international team plays in its colors for a particular reason, a partic- often a really fascinating reason. a br- you know, the brilliant one is, is Brazil and yellow. they play in yellow because they devastatingly lost the World Cup final in 1950, a deeply traumatic event against Uruguay. It was supposed to be the sort of coming out party of Brazil after the war. the sort of multiracial, exciting new country, and it was a completely devastating defeat. And so they had a competition, and the shirt that they came up with was the yellow one, and then, you know, the rest is history, five World Cups. But, um, every shirt has a s- has a story of some kind, a historical one, which is quite different to the sort of commercial stories told in sponsorship and, and club shirts

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 6:26

Yeah, and it's quite... Some of them are quite counterintuitive 'cause I, y- your assumption is that it's something to do with the flag, isn't it? But quite often it isn't

Joey D'Urso 6:35

Yeah. Very often it is to do with the flag, but lots of the time it's not. Um, the blue of France, for example, is, is that's the ancient royal color of the French monarchy from sort of 1200s. Then the revolution happened. They chopped off the king's head. But blue happened to be the color of Paris, which made its way onto the Tricolore and they kept the blue for the sort of official thing. You know, Italy, of course, not at the World Cup, but, um, the blue comes from the House of Savoy. so not one of the three colors on the Italian flag. So there are all sorts of stories like this, from all over the world. The Pan-African colors of green, gold, and red find their way onto lots of African shirts, Senegal, Cameroon

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 7:08

Okay. Right. Let's get into the, business stuff. So Carla, revenue maxing was a phrase that jumped out,

Carla Bilche 7:15

Yes

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 7:16

Which I I liked, and I might even use as a title for this podcast. But there's this enormous jump in revenue for this cycle compared to previous cycles, and the- just, can you just sort of take us through some of the numbers? 'Cause again, was looking at that and thinking, "Okay, I knew this was a big one, but I didn't realize it was that big."

Carla Bilche 7:34

Yes. revenue maxing is a concept that came from a question from one of my readers, and the question was something in the, the likes of, "Why is FIFA so greedy?" And I thought that this was interesting because the answer is not just greed, but it's more a, like an, a structural reason because FIFA is a nonprofit organization, and the mission they, they have, the mission they state is that it's related to the expansion and development of the game worldwide. But the challenge is that FIFA operates, and in terms of product, they operate in a very concentrated product portfolio that enables that revenue, right? So, they have the men's World Cup, the women's World Cup, and now the Club World Cup. These are the main commercial engines. But revenue maxing, why I coined this term, is because it's... current scenario is just different from generating revenue. They are trying, I mean, FIFA is trying to optimize every possible layer of the tournament, from broadcasting to sponsorship or hospitality, ticketing, and premium experiences. And this is something that we can see in the numbers because the four, year cycle revenue that ended with Qatar, the revenue was $7 billion. Dollars. And now the forecast revenue for this cycle that will end with the, the current World Cup is $13 billion. And it's, I think it's also related to what Joey was talking about before, is the political layer. Because when we talk about development money, this development money goes to regions where federations depend more heavily on this support, like Africa, Asia, Oceania, and parts of Central and South America. So it's not only for d- distribution purposes, but also to sustain s- political legitimacy inside the FIFA system because every federation has one vote.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 9:32

I'm very conscious you used the phrase they're greedy, and I think that's a really quite an interesting word because again, it comes up a lot. And the accusation you quite often get to morality around FIFA, you get to of, people talk about previous eras of corruption. That Infantino is a sort of Bond villain going around the world making money. But when Infantino is looking at America, and when FIFA is looking at America, the most capitalistic market in the world, the richest sports market in the world What is wrong with making as much money as he and they can for the game from this, what it could be a once in a generation

Carla Bilche 10:20

Yes. Uh, I think that we have two concepts here, and it's really interesting what you're saying because the grid concept, it's really tied to, to morality. And there's-- You will say, "Okay, it's great for FIFA to revenue ma- to do this revenue matching in order to reinvest in in different regions for football," right? But I think that these two concepts are necessity and opportunity. So the necessity is what we already talked about, this idea of funding a global development machine. But the opportunity that FIFA identified is about a new commercial architecture, especially around the US markets, that includes premium buyers. These premium buyers are kind of shifting this ideal customer profile from the lifelong fan to the corporate hospitality buyer, the sponsor, the affluent consumer. And also something that is important to understand is that the US is a market with stronger commercial infrastructure that allows different marketing and business strategy to develop. So that's better for getting revenue, and that-- I think that's why the Infantino FIFA is focusing more on the US for this revenue matching strategy.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 11:31

Yeah. Gerry, what do you think about this? 'Cause again, it's just, we, we talk about, i- he's almost become a cartoon villain in, well, he has, you know, Infantino. But I find it quite useful or quite interesting just to take the, a different view just for a, you know, the sake of argument in some cases. But what do you think? What do you think about this idea that that's his job? That's what people have come on my podcast and said several times

Joey D'Urso 11:55

Yeah. So I think there's a-- The core tension is whether sport is like any other business where you're just, you're trying to maximize profits. That is your obligation to your shareholders, to whoever else, or is it something different? Is it a, social institution? and you know, UK English football tickets are way cheaper often than supply and demand would indicate. Um, you know, Arsenal selling tickets for like 70 quid when they could probably charge triple for that and fill the stadium. But that would deeply sort of affect what the product is, um, what the people who go identify as, and all these sort of social meaning we ascribe towards tickets. Um, American sport is not like that. They just set the profit maximizing price, and often that can mean tickets cost thousands of pounds. It can also mean the flip side. I was in New York a few years ago and don't really know anything about basketball or the NBA, but the Brooklyn Nets were playing and it was about $18 because they desperately wanted to sell some fill some seats on the day. Um, but that's how most, most businesses work, right? Just with that pure profit motive. And sport certainly in England and Europe and in South America has always been very different and had different motivations, and that's this coming to this huge clash now with this World Cup, with these extremely expensive tickets

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 12:59

Yeah. I was listening to him, his press conference. Obviously one of the things, you know, he d- doesn't do any so, you know, once every three years. Rob Harris asked a question about ticket prices from Sky Sports. And his answer, Infantino's answer was quite interesting because he mentioned Mandani, the, um, New York mayor, and, you know, he then said, right, you know, he'd made enormous amounts of positive publicity for Mandani by, by offering up cheaper, 50 quid tickets for the World Cup. And then he said, "Well, actually, we've been doing that and we've, we've done... We've sold many at $60, we don't get the positive PR." And then he turned and sort of said, "Oh, well, my... You know, maybe I sack the PR or my PR isn't very good," or whatever. He's making a joke. But there is something in that in terms of, there's a question about should they do it? Should FIFA behave like a business? Which is Joey's question. If they don't, then other organizations will make the money that is in football. And one of the arguments, again, the pro-Infantino argument is that he is plugging leaks a lot. So his the, the World Cup has changed and one of the reasons the number has gone up sharply in Carla's analysis is that there's less money leaving the FIFA ecosystem, as they would call it, because taking a take on the secondary ticketing market. They're owning the hospitality market. Each of those would be defined as a, a leak from economy because that money goes to third-party organizations or companies, profit-making companies who are making money and so actually his argument is always, well, it's better the money stays in. I will take the comms wrap. I'll take the PR wrap for this, but it's better that it stays in the football and is distributed into football rather than it going to StubHub, to Ticketmaster, to On Location, or whatever the third party hospitality providers are. and there's a logic to that and there's a strong logic to that because actually one of the questions is, well, yeah, what's wrong with that?

Joey D'Urso 15:05

Yeah. I suppose it's, it's how do you divide the pie and how big is the pie? But the pie is much bigger now in terms of hospitality 'cause there's just so much more of it. And these NFL stadiums, I, I went to the one in Dallas. Yeah, it's crazy. It's just so huge and so mu- you know, just the hospitality. I w- not, I was just in a normal seat, not a hospitality one, but the experience is so much more high-end than anything I've experienced in Europe. Um, you know, even at the top English football stadiums, you're kind of squished into these little rows. The food isn't much good, like, um, but the US experience is just so different and so much more hospitality, so much more high-end hospitality. Um, I, I guess the question is, do you fundamentally undermine the product by turning football into this sort of hospitality extravaganza? does the, you know, there'll probably be less singing in the stadiums, for example. all those things I think it can just slightly chip away at and potentially undermine the whole thing that people love so much.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 15:57

Yeah. What do you think, Carla?

Carla Bilche 15:59

first of all, it's true that the experience that the US offer is, better. I, I will have the South American father, so, it's per- perhaps a bit more biased. But I went to the Club World Cup last year, and I went to the Hard Rock Stadium, now Miami Stadium for, for naming reasons, and the experience was amazing. It was something from, from another world. Really, really, um, mind-changing. But the thing here is that, what we know about the ideal customer, the ideal person will-- that will see the, the World Cup is not really interested in the experience. This is the fan, the global audience that they understand, and they are engaged more with the emotional logic of the tournament. if FIFA is trying to, acquire this new audience that is more premium, that needs a, a more sophisticated offering, it's fine. But the thing is that the broader audience, the ideal customer we now have for this product is I don't think they are really needing this this level of offering. And I think this is the tension we are now living from, from our standpoint, right?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 17:13

Yeah. I mean, they, a- again, I think it's, there's a question there about, you're right, and I- there's a, premiumization. a horrible word, but I think that's what we're talking about in terms of just the, the elevation of the experience. then you get to who is the target audience, as you say there, Carla. And that shift, I think, is fundamental in terms of, well, is it football fans or are they big eventers? And big eventer is the bigger marketplace. They're richer on the, on the whole, their expectations are driving what is being supplied. And again, I'm not sure the World Cup is... So the World Cup is in America, and that's the, the world that is being presented to them. I don't think that FIFA... like I'm a- apologizing for FIFA the whole time, but I fi- I find it, it's quite interesting to work out what's happening. And one of the questions is they're not, they're not leading on premiumization. You know, they're, it's a fo- they're following the market there. So for them to turn up into America in 2026 with a sort of 1982 type football presentation would, would be totally out of kilter, and also leave an enormous amount of money for other people to, to ransack them

Joey D'Urso 18:30

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco in four years' time because you know, there are some... I went to the Bernabéu a few months ago and it's an incredibly premium stadium, but most of them won't be. And, and obviously the Camp Nou of Barcelona is being revamped, but most of them won't be on anything like the UK the US levels. And well, fundamentally the local- the consumers can't afford it. I mean, a lot of these US stadiums will be packed with not necessarily kind of the 1%, but just in a city like Dallas or, or Houston or Atlanta, there are a lot of people who are very, very rich by European standards. Um, income's way higher, and the, you know, European and US incomes have diverged massively over the last 20 years. So there's just a lot more rich people in the US who nothing of spending several thousand dollars for a, a trip for their family, which I think is a much, much smaller market in Europe. And yes, people will fly in and whatever else, but I don't think the prices can be as high in four years' time

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 19:21

Yeah, no, it's a good shout actually. What's the view of, in Aires, Carla, of FIFA and in fact of this conversation about the ticket prices? 'Cause we, over here in, I'm sitting in, you know, I'm in Brighton, but in the UK it's been... It, it's almost everything people are talking about, and it's, the, the cost. It's almost a daily news agenda item, and people are obviously getting cross. Everyone, no one likes high prices. What's it, what's the view from, from where you are?

Carla Bilche 19:48

It's pretty much the same. It's very similar in Argentina. We have two different layers on this conversation. The first one is very related to what we have talked about, how FIFA is changing this this ICP, this ideal customer profile, to a more sophisticated one due to the, the World Cup happening at the States. But there's an als- it's an additional layer which is related to what is happening in Argentina and in the local league, the Premier League of Argentina, the thing is that we don't have a different ownership. So both the national team and the Prem- Argentinian Premier League are all the, all, all the tiers are owned by AFA, AFA. and there are some teams, and I think Joey already experienced this, like Boca and River, who are charging tickets in a very pricey way for, for locals. I don't... For example, if if Boca Juniors could, can charge a ticket in $300, and this is like the minimum wage in Argentina. So it's something really curious that it's happening locally because the AFA is also looking for this revenues matching, but at the cost of how local fans and how Argentinian culture is linked to football. So I think these two forces are colliding right now in the conversation here in Argentina.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 21:15

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's really interesting. And, we have been talking about FIFA, I, for a very long time, 30 years in terms of, you know, through the Sepp Blatter years and, you wrote very nicely about that period, it doesn't, none of the mud seems to stick, does it? And the money still goes up. So you've got this juxtaposition where you've got FIFA, the brand of FIFA, which everyone has got a view on, and very little of it is positive. But also you've got this World Cup, which is just an enormous money-making, festival. So gerry, when you're, when you're talking about the politics of football, do you think any of it sticks? Do you think that, that it's actually just priced in to how we think about FIFA and the way football is, is run? There's a sort of

Joey D'Urso 22:04

I think, and this is a view that I've heard, I heard this in Brazil, I heard this in Qatar, in those... That this is an English thing, this fury with FIFA, with the Qatar World Cup in particular. They... Some people see it as, you know, we invented the game, we sort of lost control of it and get, got beat by all these countries that we exported football to, and we can't handle that it's out of our hands now. That's the sort of... And I think there is maybe some truth in that. Um, I think there is something that, that, that it's so far removed from the sort of English, I don't know if control is the right word, but there is certainly a fury about FIFA in England that I, I certainly subscribe to in many of the arguments, that it's just not, people don't feel the same way elsewhere, and it's interesting interrogating why that, why that is

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 22:45

Do you think it's a, historical grudge

Joey D'Urso 22:49

I think it's a grudge but I think we, we sort of have a, a strong feeling of what the game is. I think we're qu- very resistant to changes to formats, to changes to, to sort of commercialization 'cause it's h- the history's 150 years old. Whereas in most of the world, um, you know, like J- Japan didn't get the J League until the '90s. The MLS was founded in the '80s. Lots of these countries that kind of a decent footballing record in the modern world is really quite recent, and it means there's probably... th- they're more open to change and, you know, I'm not saying that's my view at all. I'm probably the, I'm a cranky European up there with the rest of them. But I think it's, it is a sort of th- this anger at FIFA and partic- and Qatar and all these things I, I think it, it was very English

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 23:30

Do you think that's true, Carla?

Carla Bilche 23:32

Yes, I, I think it's part true, but it's also very different from region to region. For example, talking about South America, I think the, the younger and the discussion is leaning more towards CONMEBOL, which is the, the federation that regulate South America instead of FIFA. And this is curious because sometimes FIFA uses the CONMEBOL, not in a, like, in a bad way, but it's part of the, the ecosystem as a laboratory. For example, they implemented in the Copa Libertadores, the cooling breaks. They already did it. So they didn't do the-- Yes, they didn't do the, the commercial outbreaks, but they did the break, like the literal break. And I was attending a match between Boca Juniors and Barcelona, the Barcelona of Ecuador. And when that happened, the people start to booed and saying "CONMEBO- CONMEBOL, go away." So there's where you can see where the attention is going, because they are not insulting FIFA. They are insulting the CONMEBOL because it's the one who is implementing this. So the, the idea here, the general consensus is that this is CONMEBOL's fault, not FIFA's.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 24:39

That's interesting

Joey D'Urso 24:40

are people still really angry at Chiquitapia,

Carla Bilche 24:42

Yes.

Joey D'Urso 24:43

when I was... Yeah, tell me more. What's the latest?

Carla Bilche 24:46

Well, the latest is related to the use of AI in commercial commercials for the national team. So we are-- Argentina is a country that is known for their hype and, and commercial, and commercials related to, to the World Cup. And the national team always do something which is very emotional also after winning the World Cup. This is something that will happen. And then these squad announcements that we have seen throughout the world, Argentina decided to do something similar, but they use f- of-- they use AI in most of the, of the parts, even in the, in the landscapes of the country, which is something really easy to, to capture. You can take a picture and, um, and and put it into the video. So people are, were annoyed, not only at the creators, but also at Chiqui Tapia, because he's the one who is kind of showing this level of, of unpreparedness to the Argentina national team's brands. So there...

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 25:49

who he is?

Carla Bilche 25:51

Well, Cla-Claudio Tapia f- um, effectively known as Chiqui, is the, is the head of the AFA, the, the Argentine's Football Association. And as I said before, since the AFA controls the, or owns or kind of, yeah, controls the, the national team and the leagues, he's also responsible for everything that is happening in the top-tier level and in the rest of, of the levels. And similar to what I said before with the number of votes, well, it is said that, um, Tapia is favoring teams that are not part of the top-tier level in Argentina, the ones that are not historical in return of votes and to-- in perpetuating in the, in the role. The reality is that Argentinians' AFA's, presidency is that it's not only an sportive role, but it's also a, a political role because it's related with the political tensions and dynamics that happens locally. So it's a really complicated role, and Tapia, after winning the World Cup started to, to affect a bit the quality of the local, of the local league, and this is what people angered the most, right? is angered the most because it's affecting what the football meant in Argentina and what the football meant for fans and for, and for people here

Joey D'Urso 27:19

I was there in February. It felt like everyone just wanted to talk about this and sort of swirling allegations of corruption and whatever else. It reminds me a lot of FIFA and talking about these sort of sports administrators. With all due respect to sports administrators, most people would probably rather be talking about football players chants about Chiquituria every match and just this sort of rage or... It, it felt like, you know, had an amazing time in Argentina. I loved it, but I, I went to Brazil at a similar time and it felt like kind of Brazilian football is in a happy place and Argentinian football is in a very unhappy place, it felt to me,

Carla Bilche 27:49

Yeah, absolutely.

Joey D'Urso 27:50

the World Cup win.

Carla Bilche 27:51

Yes

Joey D'Urso 27:52

of a tangent,

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 27:52

it's, it, which is odd because obviously they won. So it's, there's a... Maybe it doesn't bring happiness. Winning the World Cup doesn't bring happiness. That could

Carla Bilche 28:00

It's a burden.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 28:04

It's weird. That would be like Mark Bullingham's name being chanted on, you know, in the terraces.

Joey D'Urso 28:09

A Richard Masters or, you know, people just don't know who these people are unless you work in the industry. You know, they're, they're just anonymous figures. but, you know, and it's not like that. And well, it's not like that with FIFA now, right? Infantino is a household name, which kind of probably what he always wanted when he was a sort of 45-year-old lawyer in the back office at FIFA and, you know, n- now look at him a few years later

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 28:28

Yeah. I think there's quite a lot in that actually. There's a...

Joey D'Urso 28:31

I

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 28:32

Yeah.

Joey D'Urso 28:32

underestimate that, and I've

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 28:33

Yeah

Joey D'Urso 28:34

with people who have worked closely at the this, all this. And you go from just being some guy who is probably quite well-paid but barely a household name in your own house to going, you know, the sort of of being a head of state and more powerful than many heads of state. And you can get a, a meeting with the President of the United States whenever you want, you first class everything. And that is probably pretty exciting and cool on a personal individual level, and I do think that probably drives a lot of this

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 29:01

yeah, I mean, I completely agree. People start to have meetings, like bank meeting, you know, bankers and private equity people and money and sovereign wealth, and it suddenly becomes your view and your opinion becomes very, very important because you are, you know, at the apex of it. And it's quite... There's a, there's a sort of framing of fans as voters almost, and we're seeing it, you know, in, when you transpose this to, well, any government really. But if you look at the American market the American political moment, you're seeing this time where actually the Trump family, feels a lot like they view voters as just a marketplace to be exploited. And that framing, I think, is quite a, analogous with sports governing bodies in some ways. You can sort of say actually you hear them talk about the, the passion of the fans and, the beautiful game. And actually what you're looking at is a sort of glue, addiction of and that's exactly the nature of the relationship that's being exploited. It's quite a sort of odd thing. Just when you see him in the White House with Trump, it's quite an odd thing, isn't it?

Joey D'Urso 30:06

it's very odd and it's new. And during the, um, Biden administration, there wasn't that link at all. There's stories of Infantino kind of trying to get a meeting with Antony Blinken, who's the Secretary of State, getting sort of half an hour, which was strictly on, you know, logistical issues that needed sorting out. There was none of this sort of swan in and out of the White House whenever you want and have an office in Trump Tower. And it must just be really exciting and exhilarating. And you have a, you know, Secret Service team all around, and you stay in the finest hotels and whatever else. I think, you know, you go from being some guy to being one of the most powerful men in the world, and that must do strange things to anyone

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 30:39

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Karla, let's, let's just finish by pushing this forward and again, You made an interesting comparison between FIFA and Apple, and I just want you to sort of explain what that meant, because I think you might be onto something there, and it's

Carla Bilche 30:54

yes. I think the Apple comparison came from my understanding of businesses and products, and it's pretty useful, but only if we understand how it supply and which are the limits of the comparison. So FIFA is obviously not Apple in terms of, for example, supply chain, because Apple owns and controls their product system. But FIFA does not employ players, does not own the clubs, and depends a lot of federation and governments and organizers, local cities. So if you are using a similar analogy, FIFA is closer to a platform or a marketplace than to a traditional product company. But I think what makes the comparison interesting is that FIFA is increasingly controlling the packaging. This is something that we are seeing now in the, in the World Cup. They are controlling the rules, the commercial interface, the global positioning for the World Cup. This idea that the World Cup meant something, but now means something more related to the, the commercial objective of FIFA. So when I compare both of them, I'm not saying, like, they own everything in the same way, but more like FIFA is trying to behave more like a vertically integrated product company in the way that they are designing the experience

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 32:15

Hmm.

Carla Bilche 32:15

and kind of packaging the experience, right?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 32:17

Yeah. It feels like the American influence is merged into that as well in terms of you can't get away from the fact that they look at the NFL as the sort of this beautiful model in their eyes. That that's... In an ideal world, you know, Infantino would be Roger Goodell and you would have a commissioner with a pyramid of, the Formula 1 model in many ways. It's a lot of people in sports administration in the, classic governing body world just are always moaning because they have no control over anything, or they're always being sort of bitten from below and above. And actually what they really want are just straight lines and complete control over the, the, the world, which is impossible in sport, I think. Finish us off with a bit of, your hopes and dreams for the World Cup

Joey D'Urso 33:10

Well, I'm a, I'm a... Despite all the stuff I write about and talk about, I'm a football optimist. I think it's very hard to ruin. I think some people try quite hard. I think these hydration breaks are really bad. But, um, I think it's magical and wonderful, and I'm really excited about the whole thing, despite a lot of the quite bad stuff going on around it. I mean, you know, the stadiums are full. People are paying incredible amounts of money to watch these games. You know, good luck to them. Um, I think the football's gonna be really exciting. I think the, the expanded group thing is kind of working. We saw with Cape Verde and Spain, nil-nil. They're not... 'Cause I think the elite lev- the, the sporting science and nutrition, all these things are so high now that a bunch of basically amateurs from the Dutch Second Division or whatever can, can compete with the world's best, even if they probably won't win. Um, so I think these other things actually can make footb- are making football almost more competitive or making the lower teams better in the long term. So I think there's other things that are making this maybe a better spectacle. Um, yeah, I think a lot of what's going on is really bad, but it'll never... I think the World Cup is the pinnacle of human civilization, and it'll be extremely hard to mess that up, I think

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 34:09

Color

Carla Bilche 34:10

I'm also optimistic about this because the meaning of the World Cup, the relationship with the World Cup still comes from fans. The great shift is how this meaning is going to be captured and distributed, but the reality is that the ones that are creating the meaning are fans.

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 34:28

And I think your dog agrees as well in the background.

Carla Bilche 34:30

I'm sorry. Do you, it was like, it's a typical scenario of my everyday life

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 34:35

It's all right. We call it authenticity. It's, it's, it's what separates us from Radio 4 uh, he says. Right, okay. Listen, and who's gonna win? Argentina again?

Carla Bilche 34:45

Yes. Well, I, I hope so. I think it's that there is, there are great chances, but what World Cup is showing us is that everything is so unpredictable in this, in this group stages. Let's see what the future unfolds

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 35:02

Joey?

Joey D'Urso 35:02

I'd love to say England, but I think the France, I can't, just can't get past the depth of that France team. You know, the whole first 11 could be injured and they still look really good. It's just so volatile and unpredictable. That's what's so great. You could pretty much predict the quarterfinalists and you'd get most of them right, but beyond that, anyone really can be anyone, and the favorites are not favorites by that much. a cop-out answer, but there you go. You?

Richard Gillis, Unofficial Partner 35:21

Well, I've got to... Well, I, there's, there's a sort of romantic... Okay, England, obviously I want to win. I think that rather than go for France or Argentina, I will go with Spain. My second, I've just come back from Japan, and they are my absolute favorite team of the moment. And so I'll go, go for a semifinal. Japan in the semifinal, which is a bit of a, bit of an ask, but we'll see.