Good piece by Leo MacLehose of Fanzo on the smoke, mirrors and skewed economics that sit behind FIFA's fan festivals this summer.

"This is not a moneymaker for this town. In fact, it's probably more of a headache than it's worth." This is the quote from local councillor on the prospect of hosting an official World Cup fan festival.

MacLehose summarises the three point plan:

  1. Invite more guests to the party - 16 more teams means 64% more games than we saw at Qatar 2022. More ticket sales and more eyeballs means more sponsorship inventory.
  2. Retain all meaningful revenue - broadcast rights, global sponsorships, ticket income, projected to surpass $11 billion for this tournament.
  3. Distribute all costs - security, policing, infrastructure, operations - to host cities. Cities get the honour of hosting. FIFA gets the money.

See previous note on FIFA's behaviour in the host city bidding process for this tournament:

But wait...

The fan fest model assumes a massive travelling fandom. Expect more of these type of stories in the run-in.