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That’s just rent. Will they still have the revenue to manage upkeep on that stadium with champions league ticket prices and crowds?
It will be Championship football. Champions' League is the biggest deal of European football, with the top finishers from each country. I don't think WHU pays all that much rent. Probably not enough to hurt upkeep with smaller crowds. The big problem for West Ham will be their own income. Will need to sell some players.
His trophies all seem to be the other side of the pond.
NFC Championship this season.
At halftime of this Champions League game, they showed Arsenal fans watching in New York. The stupid commentator, a woman with a British accent, said they were watching in “the American capital.” (To be clear, she was also the person who said they were in New York.)
Got a Team Germany soccer shirt yesterday. Not the one a they are wearing this summer but it was $12. Seems like a wise decision.
Well USA ties it up. Need to find my USA shirt
‘I don’t want to give my money to Fifa’: Toronto turns its back on the World CupFor football fans in Canada, the initial prospect of the World Cup coming to town was thrilling – but hundreds of tickets remain unsoldAs far back as he can remember, football has long been a part of Lawrence Yee’s life. Growing up in a Canadian town where hockey was the dominant sport, he found community and passion in the game. The sport – and the full, at times devastating, spectrum of emotion that comes with fandom – has remained braided into adulthood. Nearly four years ago, when Fifa announced Toronto and Vancouver would join 14 other cities in hosting the World Cup, Yee was ecstatic.“Hearing the biggest stage, the highest competition, the biggest tournament in the world was coming into Toronto? I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for someone like me. Being able to live in the city and cycle to the venue? I knew I’d be the first in line for tickets.”But when Canada takes to the field to play Bosnia and Herzegovina on 12 June, the first men’s World Cup match ever played on Canadian soil, Yee won’t be in the stands. Nor will he attend any of the other group stage games. His initial excitement – and that of hundreds of thousands of others in the country – has collided with Fifa’s new pricing structure for tickets, where fans are being asked to pay what they feel are exorbitant prices for tickets.Less than two weeks before Vancouver and Toronto host games, hundreds of tickets for each of the 10 games in Canada remain unsold, a reality that appears at odds with previous reports of overwhelming demand. Even hotels are only at 80% capacity, a figure typical for summer months.In April, Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, told attendees in Vancouver that demand for tickets was 10 times the amount of the last two World Cups together.
demand appears to have hit a wall when it comes to prices. The cheapest tickets to Canada’s opening game, at face value, are more than C$1,000 (£535).
But the idea of maximizing revenues, and selling out a stadium, are different objectives, said Moshe Lander, a sports economist at Concordia University. Under the current strategy, it makes more sense for Fifa to sell high-priced tickets than to fill seats.“Fifa controls the World Cup,” said Lander. “There is no competition, so they can behave in whatever immoral, unethical, improper way they want – unless fans are prepared to walk away. Not just by avoiding giving them money, but also not going to the local pub and watching the matches. If enough people do it, they might change their behaviour.”A Fifa spokesperson told the Guardian: “Never before in the tournament’s history have more tickets been sold directly to fans,” pointing to the organization’s decision to allocate at least 1,000 tickets priced at US$60 – a “very competitive price point for a major global sporting event”.Fans point to previous World Cup tournaments where Fifa made tickets more accessible to residents, a strategy that has been supplanted by the lucrative idea of real-time pricing models.Fifa defended its the move, saying the variable pricing ticketing approach “aligns with industry trends across various sports and entertainment sectors, where price adaptations are made to optimize sales and attendance and ensure a fair market value for events”.
Increasingly, skeptics – in the form of city councillors and elected officials who supported bringing the World Cup to Canada – have pointed out that cities bear the immense financial burden of hosting, while Fifa is able to take the revenue from ticket sales and broadcasting, and pay no taxes on it. Residents are paying for the games but many can’t attend. In some cases, officials and Fifa planned to charge for public events that were promised to residents, before backtracking.While the original estimate for hosting the game in Toronto was as much as C$45m in 2018, it is now expected to cost at least C$380m. In Vancouver, the estimate for seven games was C$240m in 2022. It is now going to cost at least C$624m. According to the parliamentary budget office, Canada will pay more than C$1bn to host the games, meaning each game will cost $C82m. Other Canadian cities, when they saw both the initial price tag – and the stringent guidelines Fifa ruthlessly enforces – balked
With Thursday coming into view, what do we want for the WC? A 'live' thread for in-game discussion and a general WC one for those watching on catch-up, or a 'catch-all' WC thread with the usual 24 hour results discussion embargo?...
