FIFA’s mission to expand the World Cup will only damage it

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CREDITL: ARSEN GALSTYAN / AFP

With 166 member nations of FIFA voting to explore the concept of a two-year cycle for the World Cup, questions need to be asked whether too much of a good thing will destroy what makes the competition special.

One of the best parts of the World Cup is the spectacle of it all. The elite quality of the tournament is already being watered down with the changes to the format, with 48 teams instead of 32. 

While allowing more teams in will create new markets for the competition, it isn’t like the World Cup would struggle for viewership without them, as it is the most-watched sporting event on the planet.

The changes to the structure of the cup – with two out of a group of three going through instead of the top two in a group of four – is already challenging the tradition and excitement of the World Cup. If you draw one of the powerhouse teams, like Spain, France, or Brazil, then it is likely your country will be on a plane ride home after playing just two games.

Despite the success of the World Cup, FIFA seems to want to tinker with the competition without any concern for the negative impacts the changes may cause. To build support for this, FIFA is wheeling out stars like Arsene Wenger and Yaya Toure.

Wenger is currently FIFA’s chief of global football development

Why FIFA wants to interrupt what has proved to be a winning formula only has one answer: Greed. More games mean more money. In a 48 team competition, there will be 64 games, compared to 40 in the current format. More games equal more money for TV rights and a wider reach for the game with an added 16 teams.

Combine this with the concept of hosting a World Cup every two years instead of four, and FIFA will be printing money like never before.

The unfortunate side effect of this will a weaker competition in terms of quality. There are always some relatively poor teams featured in a World Cup, but adding another 16 of the ‘best of the rest’ will dilute the talent pool. Combine this with the fact some teams may even go home playing only two games, it will surely make the World Cup a less exciting affair for many appearing in the group stage.

Another factor that needs to be considered is sustainability. We’ve already seen that major sporting tournaments often leave countries with huge stadiums without any use for them.

Engineers Against Poverty say that hosting a World Cup leaves a “legacy of white elephants”, with stadiums built for the 2010 South Africa World Cup and 2014 World Cup in Brazil “hemorrhaging taxpayer’s money”. 

A white elephant refers to a possession whose cost of maintenance is well beyond its value, and whose owner cannot dispose of it. An apt reference to what World Cup stadiums have become for countries that do not need bumper stadiums.

Four cities in Brazil that hosted games at the 2014 World Cup –Manaus, Cuiabá, Natal, and Brasília – have no major football teams to play in the humongous stadiums built for the event.

South Africa spent $2.7 billion to build 12 new stadiums for the World Cup, in a country where half the population lives off an average of $242AUD a month. 

Polokwane, a city of 130,000, now pays $2.7 million a year in maintenance towards the legacy of the South African World Cup.

Peter Mokaba Stadium, Polokwane, South Africa

Russia is also struggling with issues related to stadiums built for the 2018 World Cup. In Saransk, local authorities are dealing with the upkeep of 300 million rubles (AUD 5.5 million) to maintain the stadium built for the event.

Major events don’t just lead to empty stadiums either. For the Sochi Winter Olympics, the Russian Government built a $13.5 billion tunnel system to connect Sochi to the rest of the country. The operation and maintenance of this underutilised infrastructure cost taxpayers $1.6 billion a year. 

FIFA has praised the joint World Cup bid from the United States, Mexico and Canada for using existing infrastructure instead of building new stadiums, however, few countries already have the facilities to host games. 

By expanding the World Cup to every two years, many countries will  be hosting for the first time. This will inevitably lead to similar cases to South Africa, Brazil, and Russia’s stadiums becoming a burden on citizens. 

FIFA risk damaging their premier competition in the pursuit of greed. It needs to be asked why they seem hell-bent on changing a winning formula, especially one that has already been embraced worldwide.

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Melbourne should have been apart of Women’s Asia Cup 2026

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Image credit: Shutterstock.com / Dans Destinations

On Wednesday, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will ratify Sydney, Perth and the Gold Coast as hosts of the upcoming Women’s Asia Cup 2026. Games will be played across Stadium Australia and Western Sydney Stadium, the Perth Rectangular Arena, Perth Stadium, and the Gold Coast Stadium.

While the Women’s Asian Cup is a momentous occasion for Australian football, the exclusion of Melbourne stands as a missed opportunity.

Known as the sporting capital of the nation, Melbourne holds an incredibly passionate soccer fanbase and has continually delivered excellence on the pitch.

Zealous and Loyal Fanbase 

Most recently, Melbourne hosted six Women’s World Cup games at the Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, otherwise known as AAMI Park, in 2023 for hungry audiences. Of the six games, five reached over 90% capacity according to AuStadiums, illustrating the desire Melbournians and Victorians have for more football.

Furthermore, Victorians have consistently shown up to support their teams across both the men’s and women’s A-Leagues. According to AuStadiums, in last year’s ALW season, AAMI Park was on average the most attended stadium of the grounds which had hosted 10 or more games, averaging 3,500 people per game. This accomplishment built off of the 22/23 season where AAMI Park had also averaged the largest crowds for stadiums for which had hosted multiple games.

In the men’s competition, AAMI Park has been by far the most played at stadium, with more than 30 games played at the stadium each season since the 21/22 season. Through this, AAMI Park has consistently achieved the highest total attendance of any A-League stadium and has additionally maintained strong crowd averages.

AAMI Park was the third most attended ground on average last year for stadiums which had hosted multiple games. Additionally, AAMI Park also appeared the most in the top 10 attended games of the year, hosting four of the largest crowds of the 23/24 season.

To deny such a passionate fanbase the opportunity to see their national team, and other elite Asian teams, locally, would be a travesty. Compounding it, the decision to neglect one of Australia’s most beloved, professional and modern stadiums on a global stage is another disappointment.

World Class Facilities

In the latest Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) 2023-24 A-League Men Report insights from players, executive teams and coaches, AAMI Park was one of the highest scoring stadiums across Australia and New Zealand.

In terms of pitch quality, measured by the pace, smoothness, hardness and overall quality of the surface, AAMI Park scored above average. Depending on the hosting team, the stadium was rated between 3.5 stars to 4 stars placing it above the 3.2 average across the league.

Additionally, AAMI Park recorded the best atmosphere leaguewide when Melbourne Victory played, achieving a 4.4-star rating. Nearly half a star higher than the second-best atmospheric stadium.

These sentiments were similarly echoed in the most recent PFA A-League Women Report from the 2023-24 season. The report illustrated AAMI Park as one of the premier stadiums in the country, with the ground achieving a 4-star and near perfect 4.9-star rating, across its two hosts.

Australia’s Most Liveable City 

In combination with providing a world class stadium for some of the world’s best teams, hosting games at AAMI Park in Melbourne at the Women’s Asia Cup would have propelled Australia’s image on the global stage by highlighting one of the world’s most liveable cities. Ranked fourth in the world for most liveable cities by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index 2024, Melbourne continues to showcase the very best of Australia.

Travelling fans would get to enjoy the cultural events and sights Melbourne has to offer, while also finding their way to and from games easily due to Melbourne’s simple public transport system.

Furthermore, Melbourne would not only highlight the best of Australia to travellers, but to an ever-increasing global audience. With the rise of interest in women’s football, the amount of people watching and interacting with games has increased exponentially.

According to FIFA, over two billion people engaged with the Women’s World Cup in 2023. Furthermore, the tournament produced over 2.72 billion viewer hours, a 9.2% increase in consumption from the 2019 Women’s World Cup. With so many eyes now on women’s football, it makes sense to put forth Australia’s best.

Conclusion 

Fortunately, as Australia’s most loved team, the Matildas will draw crowds wherever they play, having now sold out 16 home games in a row.

Yet the neglect of Melbourne from the Women’s Asia Cup will prevent one of the country’s most fervent fanbases, which has repeatedly supported the national team and the A-Leagues, from witnessing one of Australia’s most important sporting events.

Unite Round: A-League’s Bold Vision Faces Challenges

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Image credit: Western Sydney Wanderers

The second-ever edition of the Unite Round sparked some interesting debates and narratives about whether the A-League can properly host an inclusive event of this scale.

As the contract with Destination NSW expires, the question remains; Is the experiment worth committing to or should it be scrapped?

A potentially unfair comparison would be to NRL’s Magic Round and AFL’s Gather Round who managed to succeed with the concept in its first two seasons. It’s quite simple, the A-League don’t have the wide-ranging committed supporter base to reach those heights just yet.

But will they do so quick enough for this investment to be worth it?

Challenges that undermine Unite Round

It was a weekend that had a few positives, as mentioned in the A-Leagues press release last week but was certainly marred by a slew of negative and/or embarrassing moments.

Whilst match-going fans, who spent the weekend in Sydney, anecdotally seemed to truly enjoy the experience, there simply weren’t enough that flew out to watch their team play.

The 45,000-capacity Allianz Stadium had a rather empty look for most of the games, mirroring Covid lockdown football, and the lack of atmosphere really took away from the experience that was promised when the concept replaced the controversial Sydney Grand Final deal last season.

For a league that has constantly struggled with attendances since the horror 2021-22 season (which saw attendances slashed in half post-covid), the ability to hold a full-scale weekend of football in one city is realistically never going to work, especially in a cost-of-living crisis.

Another issue that is increasingly being brought up in media and fan spaces is the NSW Police releasing a statement before the weekend had started, ensuring that they were going to crackdown on pre-game marches, flares, banners and flags in an attempt to ‘keep everyone safe’.

Baffling for any hardcore fan, it was a truly tone-deaf action that stripped football of its core: intense and passionate tribalism.

Highlights of the weekend

Focusing on the positives, in the A-League press release, they revealed the numbers behind an improvement on last season’s first-ever United Round.

– 33 goals were scored across 12 games between both the Ninja A-League Women and Isuzu UTE A-League Men.

– Attendance was up 50% on the first-ever Unite Round with a cumulative match attendance of more than 71,000 fans. This was certainly helped by an amazing 30,777 crowd to watch the Sydney Derby.

– Over a thousand fans take part in grassroots clinics, tournament and fan zones.

Commenting on the overall feel of Unite Round 2024/25, Nick Garcia, A-Leagues Commissioner, said:

“It was a turbulent build up with a ticketing outage, a change in venue for our six Ninja A-League Women matches and a planned train strike – but we’re really proud to have welcomed 50% more fans from across Australia and New Zealand to Sydney compared to our first-ever Unite Round,” Garcia said in a press release.

“We really believe in the long term potential of this partnership with the NSW Government and Destination NSW, establishing a new tradition and welcoming football fans from across Australia and New Zealand to electrify this incredible city.

“This event really resonates with our young and diverse fanbase and aligns with our drive to unite communities through a shared love of football. It’s the pinnacle weekend of professional football, and we hope this is a tradition that we can continue to build on and grow in the coming years.

“It’s been a really strong start to our 20th season. Crowds have grown by 30% year-on-year across the first four rounds of the Isuzu UTE A-League Men, while the new Saturday night doubleheader on 10 Bold has also increased the free-to-air national audience by 34%. We look forward to continuing this momentum across both leagues as we move into the summer period.”

The path forward for Unite Round

The words from Nick Garcia suggest that the A-League are committed to making this concept work and are hoping the progress made in the last 10 months can be replicated over time.

The direction in which the United Round goes in is still unknown with the expiration of Destination NSW but it also could lead to an innovation that bursts this weekend into life.

Do they try it in New Zealand for a year? Or up in the Gold Coast where people might have more incentive to enjoy a weekend up in the Sunshine Coast?

The chance for experimentation surely has to be attempted considering the trends suggesting that this weekend won’t be considered an outright ‘success’ in the short term.

Conclusion

In the end, the future of the Unite Round hinges on bold experimentation and a commitment to creating a uniquely football-centric spectacle.

Whether it’s exploring new locations like New Zealand or the Gold Coast, or innovating to better engage fans across the country, the A-League has an opportunity to redefine what a national celebration of football can look like.

The league’s struggles with attendance and atmosphere are real, but so too is the potential for growth in a competition that resonates with Australia’s diverse and passionate football community.

The Unite Round has shown glimmers of promise amid its challenges—now it’s up to the A-League to seize that promise and turn it into a tradition worth rallying behind.

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