And the soccer WC went the opposite direction, by encouraging scalping, giving it an official avenue, and taking a cut of the profits. Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.
> Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.
By and large, the masses have always experienced football on a TV screen. (though removing lower price tickets from such public sport events is still bad)
Not true at all. In many of the big football/soccer countries there's always been very strong measures to ensure affordability. England caps premier league prices, the Bundesliga goes further still by having a 50 + 1 rule, that is all teams are majority member owned. Up until ~2000 they had no private investors at all.
The yardstick in European football has always been that an ordinary working person can go and see a game in the stadium. A fair amount of sports did until they got the privatization treatment.
Well, there is a genuine problem with the WC that reselling solves. It's unclear till a few days before what team will be in which match. That said, I'd prefer the solution where tickets don't go on sale till it's clear which teams are in the match.
I think the actual solution is closer to, you buy a team specific ticket/option: if your team advances you get the ticket, if some other team advances their fans get the tickets.
To be fair, if FIFA wanted to maximize profits, they should auction tickets off instead of allowing scalpers to eat the delta between sales price and real value.
To be fair, GP said that FIFA is corrupt, not that FIFA is either profit-maximizing nor out to light the goose that lays the golden egg on fire.
I know it's hard to imagine in the US, what with our quarterly-profit-maximizing corruption, but it is possible to be corrupt and still have to balance long-term concerns like "keep the graft flowing".
The trick to getting away with being corrupt is to as corrupt as you can without your marks/customers/voters/whatever revolting¹. Switching ticket sales to an auction format would likely add enough friction that many people² wouldn't bother, bringing the price back down, or would make a very public noise about how unfair it feels.
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[1] or authorities taking action, but that usually comes after the marks/customers/voters/whatever speaking up loud enough, unless by “taking action” you mean “taking a piece of the action” by way of being corruptible themselves.
[2] from those who do, or might in future, play along with the current race-to-buy-at-fixed-teered-rates system.
Actually, rich people and not so rich people who don't mind borrowing more than they can afford. I'm not rich by any means and there are much worse of than me dumping a couple months salary for the "experience". Not that there is a problem with it if that's what you enjoy. A bit over the top for my taste though.
> Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.
I'm so tired of people trying to pretend that limited tickets to an event billions of people want to attend ought to be available to poor people just because. If they sold for a penny, the resale market would eat them up and they'd still cost what they cost. If you'd bought them for $10, you'd instantly turn around and sell them for a few thousand to someone else.
I'm sorry no one prepared you for the fact that rare things have value, but perhaps some introductory economics classes, instead of TikTok-trite-internet-rage would be helpful.
Ironically it’s the thing that will destroy many sports. People worldwide watch the premier league for the atmosphere. That comes from working class people singing and following their team. There’s a reason Newcastle fans out-sing the home crowd at Old Trafford every year, even when we’re losing.
If I pay high prices for your tickets and for travel to see you play in one of your limited selection of touring cities, sure, I might go. But if you tour again a few years later, I would rather see an artist I haven’t seen live yet.
Meanwhile if the tickets are affordable, I’ll try and go again. You’ll have my renewed interest every time.
Tennis is terrible to watch these days. It was always a bit of a corporate jolly, but the stands are literally half empty for all but the finals of slams. Nobody really cares for the game...
Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them. People talk as if the ticket is even the problem and that it's cheap to go otherwise.
Yes if the ticket selling happened in another world with another species other than humans it is possible that nobody would try to scalp. Here on earth people will find ways to bring non-market prices in-line with a market. It has nothing to do with who is selling the original tickets and all to do with how individual people behave with money.
I’m going to straight up call this a classist view to hold. Things like sports events, music events became popular BECAUSE of the working classes watching and taking part. Football, the biggest single sport on Earth would be nothing were it not for the millions of working class people playing it, filling stadiums, following their teams through thick and thin around the world and stretching their budgets to do so.
And you think it’s ok for rich people to swoop in, appropriate the attire and vibe of the sport and working class people just need to suck it up because they’re poor? The people who made the sport what it is now can’t enjoy it? The people who STILL make the sport what it is?
This, but for everything: industrial modernity, pizza, jazz, and in general nearly all music and culture of note (it's true that some high culture is actually good, though it oftentimes is a thin rebadge of something working people had already been doing for a long time): working people have done almost literally everything that matters throughout the entirety of history. Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.
History always repeats in cycles. The poor never do a damn thing, until it gets pretty bad and then they vote for fascists, and if they are starving then the guillotines come out for whoever is currently powerful (fascists or not). That's how it has always worked. As long as the powerful class continues providing bread and circuses, no guillotines. In cycles where fascism happens, it does accelerate the cycle because fascists are too stupid to realize they need to provide bread and circuses.
Mate poor people never went to any world cup. I find it funny to watch rich guys discuss why it is too expensive to buy a ticket TO THE WORLD CUP. Like that was never a thing people afforded unless you happen to have the luck of your life and live next to one of the stadiums. Most people go to zero ticketed cultural or sports events per year where I'm from, and that's at the country level before you even slice by poor people.
It's like watching millionaires discussing that nowadays poor people can't afford to go on a rocket to space.
I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.
Also, I know for a fact that plenty of working class people from England go to the World Cup. Fair enough, they’re wealthy by the standards of Brazilian favelas but that’s a broader issue. It still stings to see the price gouging that FIFA is enjoying this time round.
I really don't think you're interpreting that right. The idea of football tickets in general becoming too expensive for the working class doesn't even make sense, there's so many of those tickets.
Depending on the club, you can’t compare pricing for Blyth Spartans tickets to Arsenal (famously expensive) and say “well you can just go follow a different club.” That’s just not how football support works in England.
Also, I pointed to another comment that working class fans are the fans that make the game. Man U are famously followed by “the prawn sandwich brigade” and the top tier clubs are regularly mocked by others for being out-sung at their own stadiums.
> I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.
No idea why you would read a comment in a thread specifically about the WC and think, "but boy, think how angry I could be if I decided this comment was about something else entirely?!"
Sure, it would be better that everyone could have a beautiful life without any worries and being able to do all they want to. Choosing the world cup as the thing to be mad about is ridiculous though.
This and plenty of other problems that plague the society now and over the past centuries could be solved by eliminating the distinction and gap between "rich" and "poor".
nonsense, the lowest strata of working society has never had it so good, unfortunately things are still going to be out of reach, perhaps what the comment above said was a little harsh but there is truth to it, if what you love about the sport is merely its accessibility then find or start a new one (that the rich will appropriate in a couple of hundred years).
By and large, the masses have always experienced football on a TV screen. (though removing lower price tickets from such public sport events is still bad)