Friday Fact: Football, The Most Popular Sport in The World
What is football?
Football, commonly known as association football or soccer, is a team sport in which two teams of 11 players compete to move the ball into the opposing team’s goal without using their hands or arms. The team with the most goals wins. Football is the most popular ball game in the world in terms of both participants and spectators. The sport, which has simple rules and equipment, may be played practically anyplace, from official football playing fields (pitches) to gymnasiums, streets, school playgrounds, parks, or beaches. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), football’s governing body, estimated that at the turn of the twenty-first century, there were approximately 250 million football players and over 1.3 billion people “interested” in football; in 2010, a combined television audience of more than 26 billion watched football’s premier tournament, the quadrennial month-long World Cup finals.
How do football clubs generate money?
There are many ways for football clubs to generate revenue. Their revenue, however, mainly comes in the form of kit sponsorships, stadium naming rights, shirt sponsorships, sleeve sponsorships, and other sponsorships you can think of. Top brands shell out a lot of money to partner with teams. For example, during the 2019–20 season, Manchester United’s home kits had three sponsors: Adidas, Chevrolet, and Kohler. Each season, the company receives about £75 million from Adidas, £64 million from Chevrolet, and £10 million from Kohler.
The average football fan might wonder why these companies would spend so much to have their logos shown on these jerseys, but from a marketing standpoint, it makes sense, since Manchester United is followed by an estimated 1.1 billion users on social media.
Cost of hosting the FIFA
While the 1994 FIFA World Cup is estimated to have cost $500 million, costs spiralled into the billions from the 1998 tournament. The 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan cost $7 billion and this figure more than doubled when Brazil hosted the tournament in 2014. However, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar by far remains the most expensive, with the estimated cost of the tournament standing at a whopping $220 billion. While the expenses associated with the construction of new stadiums and/or the upgradation of extant ones account for a considerable amount of the cost of hosting a World Cup, in Qatar, stadium expenses have been reported to be in the range of $6.5 billion to $10 billion. The remaining $210 billion in World Cup spends is associated with the country’s broader Qatar 2030 plan that seeks to transform the Arab nation into a global innovation hub with top-notch infrastructure including airports and a sophisticated underground transport system.
Football fun facts:
- Brazil has won the world cup five times, not only that, but Brazil also competes in every world cup finals that has been held.
- As a result of the second world war, the fourth and the fifth world cup was cancelled, and therefore rescheduled.
- Preparation for the world cup is held years beforehand. As the world cup is held every four years, qualifying matches are held up to two or three years before the cup, whereas sometimes 200 countries compete against each other to qualify for the 32 spots in the finals.
- In 2002, the world cup was finally held within the Continent of Asia, in addition it is also the first time where two countries are hosting the cup, in which these countries are South Korea and Japan.
- And lastly, the world cup is the most popular event in the world. The world cup is the most watched event on television, even overshadowing the Olympics, where in 2016 approximately one out of nine people in the globe watched the world cup.
Reference:
https://www.britannica.com/sports/football-soccer
https://www.kreedon.com/how-football-clubs-make-money-and-earn-profit/?amp