The World Cup Has a Ticket Problem & The First Ever Reverse-Aging Drug

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Neal Freyman** (0:28)
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.

**Toby Howell** (0:30)
And I'm Toby Howell.

**Neal Freyman** (0:31)
Today, why are so many tickets still available to the World Cup?

**Toby Howell** (0:35)
Then the FDA just approved the first new sunscreen ingredient in decades. It's Wednesday, June 10th. Let's ride.

**Neal Freyman** (0:51)
Good morning and happy Wednesday. Look, a lot about the World Cup has been controversial and frustrating as we'll get into later in the show. But the vibes are on the up as Americans have begun to see our country through the eyes of first time visitors. On social media, Europeans visiting the United States for the games have been posting their experiences around the American South, expressing wonder at the nature, fast food and friendliness of the people in small town USA.
One German guy named Freddie in particular has gone viral. He's documented his journey around Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, rafting down the Chattahoochee River, catching the NBA finals at Chili's and eating Waffle House at 1 AM, which he called a 10 out of 10 experience. Toby, sometimes you just need someone else to hold up a mirror to not take things for granted.

**Toby Howell** (1:34)
I know, but this is the Internet. Of course, everyone is extremely cynical, so questions have been swirling on if this is just an American dude larping as a wide-eyed German tourist. But he appears to be legit. He has 22,000 posts on X, if you scroll back through his history, he does appear to be posting from Germany. Plus, I want to believe that this level of genuine excitement he's experiencing while eating chilies and waffles and buckies for the first time is real. It's pretty great too, that when Americans go abroad, they look at the cafes and the pizza. But when Europeans come here, they get SEC football stadiums and shopping at Walmart. And it makes both sides of the Atlantic just as happy to see each other's culture.

**Neal Freyman** (2:17)
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**Toby Howell** (2:25)
I am so glad you're bringing this up. I was thinking the same thing. It's been so fun, buddy, but it just makes sense for me to get a new co-host.

**Neal Freyman** (2:32)
I was talking about entry-level tools that Sage can replace with their AI-powered software that can handle HR and payroll across large distributed multi-country employee populations. But what were you saying?

**Toby Howell** (2:43)
Just that Sage scales with you as your company grows. Their product line can handle complexity from 15 employees to 5,000.

**Neal Freyman** (2:51)
Just head to sage.com/morningbrew to learn more. That's sage.com/morningbrew.
Speaking of the more bad vibes around the World's Cup, just one day out from the start of the tournament, FIFA paces a potentially very embarrassing situation, empty seats at games. According to a Financial Times analysis, nearly 180,000 tickets are still available on official resale platforms, a glut that highlights FIFA's unusual and controversial ticketing process for this year's event, the biggest it's ever put on. It's stinging news for your friend who thought they were being smart by snagging a bunch of tickets early on at face value with the expectation of reselling them later for a tidy profit. The FT found that since ticket prices on the official Porter have slid 20% over the past month, when taking the 26% fee on transactions into account, most resales can now come at a loss. Tickets are still up for grabs for seemingly the most in-demand games. For the U.S.'s opener against Paraguay and Los Angeles Friday night, 4,400 tickets were still available for resale at a median price of over $800.
Of course, these tickets could still be gobbled up prior to the game's beginning, but the prospect of the TV camera panning to empty rows at World Cup games would indicate that FIFA's big gamble on ticketing was a huge flop. For this World Cup, the soccer nonprofit changed everything about the process, maintaining direct control of ticketing and charging higher prices by far than any other World Cup in history. As the clock ticks down to the opening kickoff, it looks like that could have backfired.