FIFA spent more than $50million on Club World Cup marketing to boost ticket sales
FIFA has spent over $50 million on marketing to promote this summer's Club World Cup tournament in the United States, including increasing their original budget by millions in the past month as they sought to drive attendances for the tournament, according to multiple people briefed on their budget.
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The Club World Cup, a project driven by the organisation's President Gianni Infantino, had been beset by organisational challenges as FIFA sought to make a splash for the first edition of the revamped 32-team tournament in the U.S.
In a statement released last week, FIFA said they 'anticipate great attendances and electric atmospheres' across the twelve venues and eleven cities hosting the competition.
They claimed the tournament will ultimately 'stand as the undisputed pinnacle of club world football.'
FIFA's marketing spend appears to have focused heavily on social media, with FIFA ploughing money into promoting posts with a significant number of influencers on Instagram. This has included engaging a baseball reporter to explain soccer to Americans and asking an invention influencer to talk about the competition, as well as cooking influencers to connect with the casual sports fan. FIFA has also spent significantly on highway advertising boards in several cities.
As previously reported by The Athletic, FIFA has been taking unusual steps in their bid to sell out stadiums for the tournament this summer. This worked for the opening fixture featuring Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, after tickets went tumbling down in price with tens of thousands of seats remained unsold a fortnight before the tournament launched.
FIFA's pricing on Ticketmaster had the lowest seat available for $349 in December after the draw, but these were reduced under a dynamic pricing model to $55 earlier this month. FIFA also gifted opportunities to Miami Dade College, who have over 100,000 students enrolled, by offering tickets for only $20 in the week before the tournaments — and with the bonus of four complimentary tickets. FIFA have also been making a certain number of discounted or complimentary tickets available to veterans for many group stage games.
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This strategy reaped dividends for the opener, as 60,927 attended the match in the 65,326-capacity stadium. Since then, it has been a mixed bag. Bayern Munich's 10-0 win against Auckland City was played yesterday in the much smaller 26,000-seater TQL stadium in Cincinnati and 21,152 attended this game. Paris Saint-Germain's group game against Atletico Madrid brought in 80,619 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Sunday afternoon. However, tens of thousands of seats were left available for the other two matches on Sunday, as Palmeiras against FC Porto attracted 46,275 in the 82,500 MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, before the Seattle Sounders defeat by Botafogo brought in a largely home crowd of 30,151 at Lumen Field, which holds 68,740. Even those with a large number of empty seats are reasonable attendances for a revamped competition but the stadium selection has provoked disquiet. The Athletic reported on Saturday how there had been disagreement within FIFA over the balance of MLS-dedicated and NFL venues that should be used during the competition. While members of FIFA's U.S. offices favoured a broader use of smaller venues which could be sold out out, FIFA's European office, encouraged by Infantino, were eager to bring the tournament to as many large venues as possible for a competition FIFA have billed as 'the best against the best.'
The most concerning crowd of the tournament so far came on Monday at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where Chelsea played MLS side LAFC but opened the game to vast sections of empty seats. Despite this, the cheapest seat available for a midweek afternoon fixture in Atalnta, as of Monday lunchtime, was still $52.
The challenge for FIFA increased in local markets amid confirmation that U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officials may be present at Club World Cup games, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection deleted a Facebook post saying they would be 'suited and booted' to provide security for the first round of games — only to then delete the post after senior personnel at FIFA contacted the organization to express concerns about the reaction it had provoked.
FIFA had struggled before the tournament to drive positive authentic publicity for the tournament in European and U.S. markets, with their own promotion sometimes leaning heavily on an Instagram roadshow by the organisation's President Gianni Infantino. There has been little conventional mainstream media access to the FIFA President — whose most extensive engagement appears to have been with the influencer iShowSpeed — while clubs and players competing in the tournament have mostly engaged digitally with the promotion for the competition with in-house quotes distributed as press releases. Speed was not paid for his time with Infantino, according to the influencer's spokesperson at Creative Artists Agency.
The Athletic has previously reported how European teams discussed walking away from the tournament in the autumn of 2024 due to a lack of clarity over sponsorship, broadcaster and prize money, while there has also been a mixture of criticism and lawsuits from the Premier League, La Liga and bodies representing players, who are unhappy about the disruption to the calendar and players being physically stretched by an extra tournament. The scepticism from Europe is underlined by the fact that FIFA's own data, which they provided to The Athletic, does not include English, Spanish or Italian buyers in their top 10 selling markets for the competition. There has, however, been considerable enthusiasm from Brazilian and Argentine supporters, as well as Egypian and Tunisian fans, with significant numbers of travellers from the two countries for the tournament but also the diaspora from those countries creating raucous scenes particularly in New York City.
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There were videos of South American teams receiving rapturous send-offs from their home fans before setting off for the U.S. while games involving Argentine side Boca Juniors in Miami have also been in high demand, with a strong attendance expected tonight against Benfica at Hard Rock Stadium.
At Sunday's match at MetLife between Palmeiras and Porto, FIFA offered attending fans 20 per discounts for further tickets during the group stages at the venue by scanning a QR code visible on big screens.
Concerns over a broadcaster and prize money were calmed after a $1 billion deal was struck with the Saudi-backed DAZN to broadcast the tournament globally while Europe's leading clubs were appeased by securing the largest portion of the participation money, with prize money of up to $125m for the winner of the tournament. FIFA's hope is that interest and goodwill is generated towards the tournament as it progresses and that the U.S. public will spend big on the knockout stages of the competition when Europe's leading clubs will likely take centre stage.
FIFA did not respond to a request for comment.
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