Money, it is often said, has ruined football. Staging the men’s World Cup mostly in America, a country that has produced so many great businessmen and so few good footballers, was supposed to mark the triumph of big business over the beautiful game. True, the ticket prices are extortionate. And the tournament often feels like a Silicon Valley conference circa 2016: this year referees have cameras strapped to their heads and each player has his own “digital twin”, whatever that means.
The retailers, television stations, brewers and betting houses that make up capitalism’s starting XI are an ageing and injury-prone lot. For some, this could even be their last tournament. (Unsplash)
Yet despite the pretences of the tournament’s organisers the business of World Cup football is a simple one, and a struggling one. The retailers, television stations, brewers and betting houses that make up capitalism’s starting XI are an ageing and injury-prone lot. For some, this could even be their last tournament.
That the world’s greatest sporting event has become a carnival of condemned companies is most visible on the pitch. On their left breast, players proudly wear their national badge; on their right, logos of faltering sports brands. Nike has dressed 12 of the 48 teams at this year’s competition, fewer than Adidas (14) and slightly more than Puma (11). The rest rely on faded giants (the Democratic Republic of Congo is the only customer of Umbro, a British brand that once outfitted more teams than any other) or local ateliers (Iran’s team is kitted out by Majid, a firm which shares its name with the country’s short-range missile-defence system).
All three of the big kit-makers are worth less than they were in 2018, when France beat Croatia in an all-Nike final. Shares in the American firm, which has suffered a stunning fall from global cultural ubiquity in recent years, have collapsed by three-quarters since their peak in 2021. Competition from firms like On, a Swiss brand, and Asics, a Japanese one, partly explains its demise.
Analysts say a paucity of exciting new products is a bigger reason for the industry’s slump. It is hard to disagree. In the “Trionda” Adidas has designed a truly forgettable football. It is not beautiful like the “Telstar” (Mexico 1970). Nor does it capture the essence of the competition’s hosts like the over-engineered “Teamgeist” (Germany 2006). Players’ boots this year are striking, but strikingly similar: most are shades of pink. More worrying still are Nike’s new “Aero-FIT” shirts, some of which clearly do not fit. Stitching on their shoulder causes the shirt’s material to protrude sharply, giving the slight men who wear them a pixieish appearance.
At the behest of FIFA, which has shown an extraordinary willingness to change the rules of a 19th-century sport it governs but did not invent, the game of two halves is now one of four quarters. The Swiss-based administrators say the new breaks (also known as “Powerade Hydration Breaks”) are necessitated by heat. Fans mutter that the stoppages allow television stations to show more advertisements.
Perhaps the water breaks are a sly act of corporate charity. Though could there be a needier recipient? Fox, which holds the rights to air the competition in America, has liberally packed the short breaks with adverts, most of which appear to star Sir David Beckham. Its shares, after rallying last year, have stumbled. Other channels have seen better days. In France games are being broadcast by M6 (whose shares peaked in 2000); in Britain half are on ITV (2015); and many Spanish-speakers in America are watching them on Comcast’s Telemundo (2021).
A tournament with many more games (104, up from 64 last time) ought to mean much more drinking. Yet brewers, too, are struggling. The wave of temperance sweeping young people in rich countries is the industry’s biggest problem. The World Cup might be the perfect antidote to this excessive prudence were not the England squad, historically known for its talented boozers, so keen to encourage it. Players this year can be spotted wearing a Whoop, a wrist-borne body-tracking device favoured by the over-slept and the under-drunk. Harry Kane, the team’s captain, advertises Oura rings, another popular piece of neurotic jewellery.
Some brewers still consider the tournament a Hail Mary. The world’s biggest expects the volume of beer sold this year to rise by between 0.2% and 0.3% because of it. American brewers will benefit from hosting the tournament. Though according to analysts at Morgan Stanley, how much is eventually drunk depends much more on which teams progress in the competition. Viewed this way, knockout games are also fixtures between the participating countries’ favourite beers. (Unexpected exits, though, can lead to massive unsold inventories, as they did when England crashed out in 2006 and 2010.)
A similar logic applies to the gambling industry: the more exciting the tournament becomes, the more money betting firms make. Investors hate them, too. According to Deutsche Bank, Flutter and DraftKings, two giants of the industry, can expect a record of around $2.4bn to be bet by their customers in America. Their shares have fallen by a half and a fifth respectively this year. That said, unlike their cousins in the booze business, they only have themselves to blame for the existential threat they face from prediction markets.
Off the bench
It is easier to observe the passing of the old squad of World Cup corporates than to predict who will replace them in competitions to come. It is anyone’s guess who will make the shirts if the large sportswear companies continue their slide into irrelevance. Kalshi and Polymarket, the largest prediction markets, are, so to speak, a good bet. As are the giant streaming players like Netflix and Amazon: eventually the gap between the size of the event and the irrelevance of linear television will become unbridgeable. Much will depend on FIFA, which unlike the corporate has-beens enjoys a monopoly. Whoever’s in the team, the manager stays the same.
