Soccer’s $2 Billion Club World Cup Is Coming to America. Will Anyone Watch?

BY JOSHUA ROBINSON

The monthlong tournament is the brainchild of FIFA President Gianni Infantino. But slow ticket sales and complaints from tired players suggest its success is far from an open goal.

Miami

Ever since FIFA president Gianni Infantino cooked up a soccer extravaganza called the Club World Cup, he has promised to deliver “the greatest spectacle in club football history.”

He commissioned a giant goldplated trophy, found a way to include Lionel Messi, and even enlisted the help of President Donald Trump to bring 32 clubs from around the globe to 14 U.S. cities for a month-long competition. This $2 billion tournament, Infantino knew, would go a long way toward defining his tenure as head of the world’s most popular sport.

There was just one major unknown: Would anyone actually watch?

Ever since the event was formally unveiled last year, FIFA has pulled out all the stops to put the Club World Cup on the map by the time it kicks off here on Saturday. The organization has promised unprecedented prize money to teams, convinced broadcasters to air games for free, and leaned on its relationships with the White House and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, all in a sweeping bid to make this tournament relevant.

FIFA even created a special transfer window so that players could move clubs in time to wear a new jersey specially for the Club World Cup.

Soccer fans, meanwhile, haven’t been quite sure what to think. Ticket sales have been slower than expected, leading FIFA to slash prices and reduce availability at many of the tournament’s 12 venues.

At MetLife Stadium in New Jersey and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, organizers have closed off the upper bowls for most games. And in Florida, ahead of Saturday’s opener between Messi’s Inter Miami and Al-Ahly of Egypt, the price of many tickets has been cut by more than half.

FIFA declined to discuss any specifics of ticket sales, saying only that it had implemented a “variable pricing” model and received orders from fans from over 130 countries.

“We anticipate great attendances and electric atmospheres at its inaugural edition, with excitement growing with every round of matches,” FIFA said.

The organization understands that bringing together clubs from all over the world—and not just the richest leagues in soccer— means that not everything can be a marquee matchup.

Korean club Ulsan taking on South Africa’s Mamelodi Sundowns will never rival the intensity of a Champions League semifinal. But FIFA has done what it can to make sure the tournament comes with as much star power as possible.

Real Madrid, despite winning exactly zero major trophies this season, received an invitation to join the tournament. FIFA also guaranteed that Messi would be there by granting Inter Miami a berth for finishing with the best record in Major League Soccer’s regular season—never mind that the eventual MLS Cup winner, the Los Angeles Galaxy, was shut out.

FIFA has also leaned on a network of influencers and social-media personalities, such as transfernews specialist Fabrizio Romano and his reach of nearly 25 million followers on X.

Nowhere, however, have Infantino and the gold-plated Club World Cup trophy been more visible than in his repeated visits to the Oval Office.

The FIFA president used his visits with Trump to raise the tournament’s profile and do his best to reassure supporters visiting from around the world that they won’t run into immigration trouble if they attend matches in the U.S.

“The world is welcome in America,” Infantino said recently. “Of course, the players, of course everyone involved, all of us, but definitely also, all the fans, and let’s be clear about that: this doesn’t come from me, this comes from the American government.”

Outside of the U.S., Infantino has found no better ally than Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom had been looking to increase its investment in global soccer for years as part of the country’s larger strategy to grow its influence through sports. The clearest signs were Saudi Arabia’s successful bid to host the 2034 World Cup, which was approved last December. The country’s oil company, Aramco, also signed on as a FIFA global sponsor.

But in the shorter term, it was up to Infantino to create a product worthy of even greater investment. The Club World Cup checked all the boxes.

Last December, FIFA announced that DAZN, its broadcast partner for the tournament, would make all 63 matches free-to-air. Two months later, the Saudi’s sovereign Public Investment Fund announced that it had taken a stake in DAZN, widely reported to be

worth $1 billion for 10%. Separately, the Saudi PIF then signed on as a sponsor of the Club World Cup.

It was no coincidence that Infantino timed his most recent trip to the Kingdom to coincide with Trump’s visit to the region in May.

“We are here to create and to make the best show on the planet ever,” Trump said.

As for those actually performing— the players—the Club World Cup represents yet another commitment to an already brutally crowded schedule.

The demands on their time and bodies are so steep that FIFPro, a union representing soccer players from around the world, has warned that new events will lead to a spike in injuries. Last year, the organization even lodged a complaint against FIFA with the European Commission, arguing that the calendar had become unworkable.

“Ultimately, player unions believe the aim of this new competition is to increase the wealth and power of football’s global governing body,” FIFPro said, “with no proper regard for the impact on the players involved.”

But Infantino insists that the popularity of the Club World Cup will allay those fears and prove him right. Though no one was exactly clamoring for this tournament to exist, the FIFA president has chosen to bet much of his legacy on the success of a tournament that he revamped in his image.

That’s why he made sure that his name would be engraved on the trophy. Twice.