Reportedly 15 million households in US have watched the final.
Gianni Infantino should make a SuperBowl type of annual World Cup to milk the market. I'm joking. Hope he's removed from general secretary. The guy has no respect for football traditions, proposing WC every 3 years, expanding the tournament to 48 teams. At first some may applaud this but looking at the details, this is pure marketing:
- Football in UEFA zone is king and has only 3 teams increase from 13 to 16. 15 teams were in 1998 France, right? So absolutely irrelevant.
- New Zealand have already qualified from OFC zone for the 2026 World Cup in USA. Unless we need Tonga to break the record for goals conceded in WC history. Oleg Salenko would love to play in such game.
- Africa and Asia have almost double the spots for 2026 WC. You know no need to address the elephant in the room when it comes to football in Asia.
- North America have 3 hosts, so they gave additional 3 slots to teams like Costa Rica, Panama to compete for.
Europe has the 2nd least population in the world, while almost 2 of every 3 human beings are Asian. And like 1 of every 6 being African.
You are gullible if you think Europe should be getting more, as the World Cup is about money and increasing popularity of the game, you don't do that by giving the small contents more when you already have their market at peak.
International football was on decline before in comparison to CL, but past few years it is on the rise again, as it iffers unique experience in comparison to other sports. Euro finals had more viewrs than any NBA final games that was played during same time. The idea of Nations passionately clashing in 1 game just have too much hype and it is normal that they want to use it more.
Not sure why not respecting football tradition is bad? If anything it is his best quality.
And so far Infantino seems doing fine and popular everywhere outside of Europe, which is weird considered UEFA was the one who made him president
