SuperTalk Media MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-06-10

**Gerard Gibert** (0:00)
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Get ready to go beyond the headlines and join a meaningful conversation with people from around the state. You're listening to MidDays with Gerard Gibert here on SuperTalk Mississippi.

**Dave Hughes** (0:51)
Good morning to you on a Wednesday. I almost said Thursday. I have lost all track of what day it is. That's out the window. I have no clue. It's a day that ends in Y, that's all I can usually say. Hope you're having a wonderful Wednesday. Hope everything's going well with you, Dave Hughes, in the chair today. Rhino in the booth as always. How you doing this morning, sir? Howdy, howdy. Life treating you good? Oh, not too bad, can't complain, especially considering it was the last time I'm going to wake up without a World Cup match to watch for a while. I was about to say, are you eat up with pre-World Cup fever? I was thinking about it last night, and I've gone through so much content on social media and YouTube, that I've gotten down to the people that really want to start their own podcast or their own vlog, and they're really passionate, but all they have is a laptop camera and the laptop microphone, and no lighting, and about seven views per video, but by God, I'm going to be one of those views. I'm running out of stuff to pay attention to and look into and research and just be obsessed with, so yeah, it's about time for kickoff. Yeah, I think when you get down to that level of the podcasting sphere, it's probably time to just actually start playing the games. I saw where there are still a few tickets left for the USA's opening match, but when the best seats are going for over $2,000, that's not a major surprise, is it? Yeah, FIFA really messed this up because FIFA is in charge of the ticketing and the ticket pricing.
They introduced this new thing that they called dynamic pricing, where if they noticed a lot of demand for a certain match, the prices just kept going up and up and up and up and up.
For host nation match like the US, you had some ridiculous prices that when they got to that high, people were just like, no, I'm out.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:51)
And they stayed that high.

**Dave Hughes** (2:53)
And then FIFA offloaded a whole bunch of tickets to third party, like the seat geeks and the ticket masters of the world. And it's just been a nightmare. I wonder if there's not some confusion in their mind because when you have World Cup matches that are hosted in European countries, a lot of European countries are smaller than Texas.
Do they understand that if you're hosting a World Cup match in New York, but the fans that want to go live in California, it's more than just the ticket price they got to pay. We're a big country. I wonder if that even enters into the thought process. That was actually a big argument when they announced the host cities, because FIFA picks the host cities that are going to host World Cup matches, not the host nations. I believe if the host nations had gotten to choose, there would probably be some smaller stadiums in the mix that would be soccer-specific stadiums that have been built for MLS teams. But you would have matches hosted at those stadiums that would be the offshoot minnow versus the middle-of-the-pack country, where it's not going to be a big sell. It's not going to be gangbusters for the box office there. But alas, FIFA chose to put the World Cup matches in the most populous cities, the biggest cities, the most well-known cities, even if they're not necessarily soccer cities, banking on, well, if it doesn't sell out beforehand, the big city will have a lot of walk-up tickets.
Not in this economy.
There are not people wandering around trying to find some place to spend $2,000 today. Or if you get your buddy or your spouse with you, $4,000 today. That's just not the way things are working right now. So I agree with you from what I know, and I'm not a huge soccer fan, we're all aware of that. I understand, I believe you kick the ball. That's all I know about soccer. But watching this unfold and seeing everything happen, I tend to agree with what you said, that FIFA seems to have really messed this up in about every way possible this time around. Yeah, they're not always the best. They're actually rarely the best. I would give them kudos at least for getting the World Cup off the ground, but it seems like ever since they got it started, they've been trying to find ways to mess it up. Well, at least they can count that as a success, you know, in the quarterly reports. We set out to mess up the whole thing, and we succeeded. Yay us! Early day today.