Text / Wang Shuai
Editor / Guo Yang
The draw results for the round of 18 were released, and the national football team, as the fifth-tier team, unsurprisingly got a hand of "signing". Of course, we won't pick a seat after taking the free tickets, and there are even fans who continue to look forward to qualifying - what if, we accidentally go to the expanded US-Canada-Mexico World Cup?
In fact, starting with the 2024 America's Cup, which merges North and South America, counting the new version of the "Club World Cup" in 2025, to the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and then to the 2031 Women's World Cup, which is currently bidding and has a high chance, and the "finale" - the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which is the only candidate appointed by the IOC...... In the next decade, there will be a lot of events in the United States.
The sports competitions that have come together have created an "American Super Cycle" of world sports.
Perhaps in many people's minds, this is not surprising: the American sports industry has always been developed, and it is only natural to hold more competitions. However, since the 2003 Women's World Cup, the United States has been absent from major international sporting events for 20 consecutive years.
图源：Front Office Sports
Correspondingly, over the past two decades, we have witnessed a shift in the world of sport's center of gravity in the emerging regions of East Asia, South America and Arabia. If influence equals the right to speak, then the trend of international sports in the past 20 years also happens to coincide with the pace of multipolarization in the world.
So it is not difficult to explain why the Americans are still haunted by the defeat in the 2022 World Cup finals, and even did not hesitate to knock out the big names in international football. Under such enthusiasm, the American sports industry also has a lot of expectations for the upcoming "Super Decade".
After the 2022 World Cup bid fraud case, many big names in international football have been pulled out Source: ESPN
Football aims at the United States,
Can men's football replicate women's success?
For decades, the United States, which has the world's most "fertile" sports consumption soil, has always been the "land of milk and honey" that football dreams of.
As early as the end of the 70s of the last century, the first wave of "gold rush" led by Pele, Beckenbauer, and Cruyff planted the seeds of football on this continent. The success of the 1994 Men's World Cup and the 1999 Women's World was a great milestone: the MLS became a symbol of American football, and the heyday of women's football allowed "Uncle Sam" to occupy a place in the international football circle.
1994 World Cup final Source: FourFourTwo
That was the last supercycle of American sports (1994 World Cup, 1996 Olympics, 1999 Women's World Cup, 2002 Winter Olympics, 2003 Women's World Cup). Since then, football has gradually developed into the "fifth largest professional game" in the United States in the past 30 years - you know, on the top of football, it is the "four families" (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) that have accompanied generations of Americans and have been integrated into local life. How easy is it to subvert the order?
Now, here's your chance.
According to the latest statistics from the Gallup Polling Center in February this year, football has surpassed ice hockey to become the fourth most popular sport among Americans, and the proportion of the audience has risen from 2% at the beginning of this century to 8%, which is 26 million people when converted from the total population of the United States to 333 million.
If the statistics are accurate to young people under the age of 30, football will further surpass baseball to rise to third place. You must know that in the top 2 places, the NFL has an unshakable status as a national event in the United States, while the NBA is an achievement that the American sports industry has worked hard for nearly 80 years to achieve today, and it is not easy for football to have such a ranking.
The momentum is encouraging. According to authoritative data from the American Federation of State High School Associations, in the 1980s, there were only 200,000 men and women in high school football in the United States. This number reached 600,000 after the supercycle at the beginning of the century; By 2022, it has exceeded 800,000. It is worth mentioning that half of these 800,000 miles are girls, compared with less than 50,000 girls playing football 40 years ago.
In addition, due to the relatively low probability of injury in football, 86% of American parents are "happy to see their children participate in football", even better than American football, which is too strong to collide.
More people are watching the game, too.
According to Ampere Analysis, a well-known research and analysis agency, in 2023, the US media paid a total of $1.3 billion for the rights of football matches, more than three times that of 2015. And this figure also means that the United States contributed 8% of the world's football rights spending that year, ranking 6th in the world, and the top 5 are the host countries of Europe's top five leagues.
The United States is already a big player in the copyright of football events Source: The U.S. national team
The data shows a clear and visible internal logic: the success of the competition - the popularization of the population - the development of the industry - the elite training - the success of the competition, and so on, in a positive cycle.
In many cases, the U.S. women's soccer team is the best proof of this: the girls who witnessed the 1999 and 2003 World Cups won two consecutive World Cup championships in 2015 and 2019, and the historical status of the U.S. women's football team was anchored. It is also the succession of these people that finally created the great moment when the commercial value of the U.S. Soccer League soared and the club's valuation exceeded 100 million.
So, the pressure is on the US men's soccer team and MLS, and all parties are ready for the new cycle, can they replicate the legend of women's football?
When the competition is piled up, can the U.S. infrastructure withstand it?
Experts on the front line of the European Championship in Germany recently released similar content: how speechless the operation and scheduling of German railways and subways are, the so-called "Germany is the most rigorous and efficient country in Europe" filter was shattered in an instant.
You must know that Germany covers an area of only 350,000 square kilometers, and the 10 host cities are all developed cities in Europe. What the United States will face is: the World Cup, which will host 78 football matches in 11 cities on a vast territory of 9.15 million square kilometers; The Olympic Games will arrange 15,000 athletes in more than 30 major sports to dozens of venues in an area of 90,000 square kilometers in the greater Los Angeles area, and receive millions of tourists at the same time.
The competition is a much greater test of U.S. infrastructure than Germany.
Of course, watching the Paris Olympics and Germany's European Championships in full swing, the Americans are already nervous. Under a program called the Olympic City Transportation Assistance Act, 200 small infrastructure upgrading projects have been arranged throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area, including 15 in the Los Angeles Metro alone. One of the most notable is the $1.4 billion rail line, which is about 3 kilometers long and will be used to quickly transport 30,000 people to and from SoFi Stadium (the main stadium of the Los Angeles Olympics) every day.
Rapid rail line outside SoFi Stadium Source: Los Angeles Business Week
"Los Angeles' communities have been divided for decades due to poor infrastructure, and we need to make corrections to create better public services for all. It's a change that needs to be made in Los Angeles, and the Olympics have only accelerated it," said Casey Wasserman, president of the Los Angeles Olympic Committee, "and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"
The ideal is very plump, but the reality is very skinny. The Los Angeles Organising Committee has long said that the $6.9 billion budget "will not be spent on urban infrastructure". So where does the money come from? The city of Los Angeles and the whole of California naturally have to bear the burden, but this time the federal government has also generously donated $900 million to the replacement of Los Angeles' transportation system.
The picture of Los Angeles is playing out across the United States. In fact, the 11 cities hosting the World Cup and the Olympics have received more or less financial support from the U.S. government, and have thus become part of the "Big Infrastructure Era 4.0" in the United States.
The United States has entered the "Big Infrastructure Era 4.0" Source: Brookings Institution
Those who are familiar with American history know that the United States experienced three "great infrastructure eras" in the 30s, 60s and 90s of the last century, and it was these three eras that laid the foundation for the modern life of the United States. In March 2021, the Biden administration released the $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan "Build Back Better", marking the official entry of the United States into the fourth "big infrastructure era".
We do not want to exaggerate the weight of sport in mega-national plans. On the contrary, sports are the beneficiaries of every "era of great infrastructure" in the United States.
In the 1930s, the construction of large-scale public works led to the rise of hundreds of large-scale stadiums in the United States, which not only brought a hardware foundation to the sports industry, but also laid the industry tone of "universities have big stadiums and big stadiums" in the United States.
In the 1930s, the stadium was built as a public works at many universities Source: University of Notre Dame
In the 60s, the improvement of the public transportation system created conditions for the development of the national home and away leagues, and also boosted the planning of the construction of multi-functional comprehensive stadiums in the new urban area;
In the 90s, the nationwide laying of the "new Internet infrastructure" enabled American sports to complete the information transformation and usher in the industrial explosion on the IT express.
In the fourth "era of major infrastructure", the upgrading and reorganization of the old bus, water, electricity and network systems is the highlight of the whole plan, and it also allows the upcoming "super cycle" to borrow the east wind.
During the competition, new venues including SoFi Stadium and the Clippers' new home "Intuit Dome" will be "stunningly unveiled", while old venues such as Los Angeles Memorial Stadium and MetLife Stadium will also be "glorious return", drawing a gorgeous footnote for the new "era of great infrastructure".
SoFi Stadium will host swimming competitions during the Los Angeles Olympics Source: Los Angeles Organizing Committee
Another big era of sports is coming, what are the results of the new infrastructure in the United States this time? Sports fans who are interested in going to the game may wish to have a good experience at that time.
The competition has reached a crossroads, and commercialization urgently needs to be explored
Sports practitioners must have heard that the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was a turning point in the commercialization of sports around the world. It was the innovative breakthrough of the Los Angeles Organizing Committee that brought the Olympic Movement back to life, and since then it has been ranked as the two world's top sports IPs alongside the World Cup, and its market development model has been cited as a model by almost all subsequent events, and is still used today.
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were a milestone in the history of sports business Source: Sports Illustrated
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the money-hungry Americans were even sternly warned by the International Olympic Committee to "don't just think about money!" because their commercialization was too much.
Another 30 years later, and now, it's Americans' turn to say to the IOC and FIFA, "My lord, times have changed."
Since 1984, after 40 years of development, the modern sports business with "sponsorship + broadcast + franchise + ticket" as the four pillars has been highly mature. You see, the bid for the World Cup is far more popular than the Olympic Games, precisely because the growth space of football business is still greater than that of the Multi-sport Games; And all the organizers of the competition are emphasizing "saving money", which means that there is no oil and water.
Therefore, when the United States starts the competition cycle again, the industry's expectation is whether the American business thinking can bring new solutions to the "revenue ceiling" of sports events.
The exploration has begun.
In the football broadcast screen, there are more and more advertising slots that are interspersed. During the 2022 World Cup, Fox Sports found an "inconspicuous" gap between the team's entrance ceremony and the official kick-off: it was short enough, so no audience would tune the stage and not watch it; It's unimportant enough, so even if it's not broadcast, it won't affect the audience.
And this "Heavenly Chosen Advertising Period" was named "Golden Unit" by Fox - from this name, you can guess how much Fox earned. Now, Fox wants to bring that operation to the 2026 World Cup.
Source: Fox Sports
Including the increasingly popular stadium screen scene of 10,000 people watching the game, and even the live broadcast on board and ship, the monetization potential is huge.
The IOC's anti-commercial principle of "clean venues" is also loosening. In June, the 59th General Assembly of the International Ice Federation (IIHF) officially announced the lifting of the ban on the commercial rights and interests of figure skaters' competition uniforms. Although the rules have not yet been agreed with the Winter Olympics, it is conceivable that the IIHF will go all out to achieve this.
In fact, for most projects with a low degree of commercialization, using the exposure of the Olympics to "make money" is an indelible demand. So once the IIHF makes progress, there will inevitably be an endless stream of imitators.
Source: Delegation of the United States
From a theoretical point of view, whether it is the Olympic Games or the World Cup, they are the culmination of the development of the European sports model over the past century, while American sports are regarded as "interlopers" in their own right. Therefore, today, when the sports industry model is becoming more and more finalized, the strong integration of American and European thinking in the next ten years is not only the call of the times, but also the necessity of development.
"See you in America!" A friend of the author in the industry will say the same thing every time I greet recently. Indeed, for many years from now, the United States will be the home of sports professionals from all over the world.
For ordinary sports fans and fans, everyone's wish is that there will be more Chinese elements in the competition, especially the Chinese football that has high hopes. For the sports industry, especially the sports event performance industry, when sports competitions are at the crossroads of the times, American sports in the next 10 years are integrating all cultures and thinking to give their answers.
*Cover and header image source: CNN