How the 1994 World Cup Transformed the Business of Football Forever

**Joey D'Urso** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:18)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:23)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:24)
First of all, are we calling it football or soccer? We just think, you know, I'm fine with either. I've accepted, whatever, I don't feel strongly, but just for like consistency's sake, I guess we'll just call it football on this episode.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:35)
If you want, that's fine with me. I like that you're defining the terms beforehand.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:39)
This is important. As long as we all are operating in the same, I'm happy to call it football. Busy time, obviously, coming back to the US.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:46)
In the sports world.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:47)
In the sports world. I think when you landed back from our recent trip to Asia, it was literally the final minutes of the Knicks winning.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:55)
Yeah, it was nuts. I was driving through lower Manhattan, and everyone was spilling out into the streets, watching the game through the windows of bars and stuff. Then, of course, when they won, you could hear the entire city just go nuts. 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.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:19)
Yeah. And I was walking through my neighborhood. I live in the East 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, obviously.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:32)
Whatever World Cup match.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:33)
I forget what was airing.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:34)
Well, to be fair, you could lose track in this particular World Cup because it's the biggest ever World Cup.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:42)
What does that mean?

**Tracy Alloway** (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 50 teams versus previously it was about 30 teams, 32 teams.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:55)
I always sort of assumed it was fixed.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:57)
FIFA argued that this is about making the game even bigger, 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.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:22)
That makes sense, actually, because I was sort of wondering, no offense to any of them.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:27)
We're going to offend so many people in this episode. I can already tell.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:30)
I was pretty impressed with that curse that made the World Cup and so forth.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:33)
Did you see the Cape Verde game?

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:35)
The Cape Verde game, right.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:36)
So that was insane. So part of the concern with FIFA expanding this to 50 teams is that, well, you don't get the same intensity that you would in a World Cup with a smaller group.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:48)
That makes sense.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:48)
And you get all these meaningless games like Curaçao versus Germany. But then Cape Verde played Spain and it wasn't a dead rubber game. It ended up being kind of an upset because Spain are supposed to be favorites for the entire Cup.
And so now, I'm proud to say I'm a diehard Cape Verde fan. And I really want this whole dead rubber thing to just blow up in FIFA's face.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:15)
One thing I'm aware of with football in general is that we could have an entire podcast on the money side of it.
People say, you should really do an episode on how 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 fascinating to me. But unless we were really deep in it, that almost sounds like too niche, you know? And so...

**Tracy Alloway** (3:44)
You know we had a really good newsletter all about this last year.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:47)
Oh yeah, we did. Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It was whatever.

**Tracy Alloway** (3:50)
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.