Pablo Torre Finds Out - The Sporting Class: Hydration Breaks, FIFA Trials and a Condo Full of Cats

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Ex-ESPN president John Skipper was once the most important soccer fan in America. But then he lost the World Cup to FOX — and became a federal witness. So we wanted to know what it’s been like to watch America fall in love with the very tournament Skipper wasn’t allowed to win. And whether federal corruption trials, nine figures worth of commercials and a Trump Tower apartment full of cats can slow the spread of the world’s favorite game.• Donate to the Kyra Fund, which will support research on Glioblastoma, one of the deadliest cancers Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I'll give Fox credit. Fox knows how to make money. Right after this. Some point I will say during this, that not even FIFA can mess up the World Cup in the games. Well, I want to start there. Can we just start?

Are we rolling? Let's start with that sentence, that not even FIFA can mess this up. The World Cup. and its competition and the attention of the world upon it can withstand every corrupt, incompetent, silly, pompous move that FIFA makes, and it still is the most extraordinary sports competition in the world. And it's working. And, by the way, I like the 48 team move.

It's great. It's working. We got to talk about tournament expansion. We got to talk about tournament expansion. hydration breaks. I want to talk with the business of this. I want to establish for people who are not familiar with you, John Skipper, that we are doing this episode without David Samson here. Very sad that we're doing it without David. Absolutely. And David would already be making fun of you. But instead, David is mourning. And we want to direct the entire sporting class audience,

everybody who's ever watched either of us, any of us, to donate to the fun David has established in honor of his daughter, Kira Samson, who died at age 28. if you had not heard, of brain cancer, glioblastoma. And we will put the link for the Kira Fund, which is already doing remarkable fundraising work already in the show notes here. Please go there and donate. And in honor of David, I would like to make fun of you now. Well, certainly, somebody must do it.

And he does it quite well. Quite, quite well. And I love him for it. And it is sad. And it does put in perspective. that while we are passionate about what we're talking about here, there are some things that make us understand that this is all not that important.

The perspective that we need to remind ourselves about as we talk about the most popular product on the planet, which is soccer and the World Cup, is really essential for us to establish here, as I also establish, John, that I think at one point you were the most important soccer fan in the United States. I was the passionate fan in the United States who had a job that enabled him to act upon that passion in a way that nobody else had the opportunity to do. So it was the right person at the right time in the right place.

But the notion of you running ESPN at a time when, hey, suddenly you have the opportunity, there's actually a very small window it turned out. When he took the job, right, it was October of 2000. in five, a window that was in front of you to bid on this tournament. And this was, of course, many moons ago, but you were ahead of the curve with the financial resources to actually substantiate the bet. So when I asked George Bodenheimer for the job managing the content of ESPN, and I told him what I wanted to do was buy as many rights for as long as possible, and that was important, and I wanted to start by buying the World Cup.

And he said, why? And I said, because soccer is someday going to be the most popular sport in the United States. Not positive, that's true or not. That may be hyperbolic. But it is now the greatest single event that occurs in the United States. Not the largest audience. That's the Super Bowl. But the country is a flutter aghast at this thing. George said to me, you know, Skip, there's always been somebody who said soccer's coming in the United States. States. And I said, someday someone will be right. And it won't be because they're smarter. Other people saw it earlier. Other people cared more, maybe. But I did understand because I'd been to Europe and it's seen the game that it is the greatest spectator sport in the world. And the rest of the world loves it. And people here are going to love it as soon as they

quit worrying about the fact that they're not that many scores. Watching the 26th World Cup Must It must be kind of strange for you Because now the thing is taking off And people are in love with the games As you put it, because the games are so Good

The competition is so great And so you're watching this stuff We're in the knockout rounds And your bet is coming true But it's not your network You are not in that job. And the entity that has the rights, as we need to explain here, has itself been embroiled in literal federal corruption trials in which you were a witness,

which has to be a bit of an out-of-body experience for the celebration as well as the regret. Well, it's okay. What I have learned in this, yeah, it has a sting to it, right? Does it bother me that I cut on television and I have to watch Fox in order to see the World Cup? Yeah, hell yeah, it bothers me. Somebody asked me how they were doing in production, and I finally thought of the right answer. It's the second greatest production of the World Cup ever. So they're doing okay. But it's not the greatest production of the World Cup ever. And I take pride in the fact that we at ESPN were right about this, that George supported

me. We went out and did it. We built the World Cup in 0610 and 14. We celebrated the event, We spent a boatload of money doing stories. I went to Brazil in 2014 for five weeks to cover a zillion games. And Wright Thompson went into the favela to do reports. And in South Africa, Sal, Massacela took us inside Soweto. We had you, Massacela, do the music. We did stories, we had documentaries, we did shoulder programming. We had studio shows that lasted overnight.

I watched the Netherlands Morocco the other night. What a game. And it's over. And they go to like nine hours of commercials. And then I think James Corden is coming on for some reason. I'm like, why is James Corden coming on? Oh, they're going to promote his show during the World Cup. I wanted to watch five hours of commentary to listen to people break the game down. Because you're a fan, because you're an actual soccer fan. It happens. And always... the people who do sports at every network are fans of something, right? There are guys who just can't control themselves when Jim Nance talks about something like no other. I forget what it is. What is it, a tournament? Uh, uh, hello friends. Yes, a tournament unlike any other.

It is like any other. It's the masters, yes. More exclusionary, more misogy and like it than any other. And that gets some people going. The azaleas and the convales and the collared shirts, this is all someone's fantasy. But yours was... Was the World Cup. In America. In America. And in a time when we could begin to compete.

And that also, everything that we thought or wanted or hoped would happen in 94. Yeah. And the people who ran it, Alan Rothenberg, Don Garber, Sunil Glottie did an unbelievable job. It was a great tournament. But we were not prepared to compete. on the world stage. Now, the country's embraced it. Everywhere you go, everybody's watching the World Cup. I'm going to my place I go get my protein shake after I work out, and these guys are like putting up a television in this little tiny store. I'm like, what are you doing? They're like,

World Cup. We've got to watch the World Cup. I go to Gabriel's, which is a fancy New York restaurant, where Gabriel, who owns it, would have, was disdainful of a television at the bar. But there's a television at the bar right now, because all of the help is from Serbia, or a lot of the help is from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, they want to watch the World Cup. So it's all been embraced. It happened, what, six, 32 years after people hoped it would. Yeah. But it's happening. And soccer is just going to boom, continue to boom in this country. It's hard to get over how palpable it is when the entire world feels like it's focused on something. Yes. And look, you've long-hand. had the thesis on like what the economic proposition of sports is. And frankly, from the NBA championship

into the World Cup, which is like this almost exponential step change up, as much as I felt like, man, the world is celebrating the Knicks. We now see what it actually looks like when the United States can feel like it's in concert with the planet that you looked at and said, maybe we should pay attention to what's happening over there. Yeah, kind of a phenomenon. By the way, the country embrace the Knicks. But the world embraces this tournament. It's one of the very few things

that the whole world cares about. You know, one point they cared about the Beatles, but I'm trying to think what they care about now other than the World Cup and TikTok. I want to establish as well, like, before we get to the modern day presentation and the production

of this 26th World Cup, I want to get to what it was like when you took over as the guy in charge of ESPN's content. this was back in, again, October of 2005, because the characters that you had to encounter to navigate the world of winning the World Cup's broadcast rights are unbelievably colorful and relatedly corrupt.

It doesn't have to be related. In this case, it's directly correlated. Because the tower, the literal tower you have to walk into, John, is what? Well, it's changed a little bit. And when I walked in in 2005, they were still in Zoug, not Zurich proper. But where you walk in now is a temple built for the power football. It's got a little short, small pitch next to it. They have a big boardroom in the basement that you go down to that is windowless and feels

like it should be in a James Bond movie. What was that organization? Spector. That was the evil organization that James Bond had to. You feel like you're in Spector. and that guy with the eye patch and the cigarette holder and the gray hair is in there. And it's full of evil-looking people. Emilio Largo.

Emilio Largo. Who does sound like a member of the FIFA governance. I'm pretty sure he was on the executive committee the year they awarded it to somebody of the Niesp. No, it's, look, they're pompous. They think they're a national entity. I've told the story before of the security detail for Set Blatter, arguing with the security detail for President Clinton,

about who had precedence in leaving the opening night event at the South African World Cup. They really do believe they're an extra national organization. They have this rhetoric about it, and we're here to celebrate the great game around the world, spread the game around the world, and they actually accidentally do a lot of that while they're busy enriching themselves and buying boats and alpine houses in the Alps at a nonprofit organization. But it feels greasy when you go in. I mean, you just realize that everybody in there,

just about everybody in there. There are people who care and who want to do it the right way. the leadership team at the top. From Mr. Blatter to Mr. Infantini, they have not missed. I loved... Infantino. How dare you? Infantino. Infantini.

The infantini. God. This is where I miss David. I'm just like your dick names. But proceed. But you're referring, of course, to the tower, which was the Trump Tower, by the way, that Chuck Blazer, who at the time was the president, I'm not sure that's the right title, maybe executive director or commissioner, I don't know.

He was Deputy Secretary of Concucalf at the time and also, yes, one of the people that you needed to win over. He, we would not have acquired the World Cups in 10 and 14 were it not for the umbrage of Chuck Blazer. That umbrage was created by SEP bladder having a handshake deal with Dick Ebersoll at NBCSport. to broadcast the World Cups in 10 and 14. The sort of like state U.S. senators get the right to approve judges within their state, sort of. Chuck Blazer was supposed to be able to sort of approve any media rights deals, or at least, you know, bless them before the executive committee actually did them.

Yes. He was one of the 25 members of the FIFA Executive Committee. Yes. And the most powerful man in American soccer as a result. He was at the time. And what he was really furious about is NBC would have a handshake deal with set bladder. But they also had always Chuck and Don Garber and Sunil Golati and the folks at FIFA always had this sort of pact that whoever gets the World Cup rights, and remember we're getting them for free at the time, will also agree to do a deal with the end. MLS because we need to build our domestic league if we're ever going to be a soccer country.

So you need to do that. So not only did they do a sneaky deal, but they did it around MLS, which had held the rights before in Soccer United Marketing to sell the World Cup. When you said you were getting the rights for free, explain that, I don't. Well, in 06, we had the rights to the World Cup in Germany as a result. of a time buy or an ad buy, right? So we supplied the slots, we did the surround programming, we carried it, we marketed it in the United States,

but we did not pay a rights fee. So as recently as 06, the World Cup received no media rights money in the United States, because that's how little this country cared about it. Right. There were no bidders. Well, and so all of this, the setup, this visit to Trump Tower, the visit with Chuck Blazer,

this is an attempt to win the rights in 2010 and then 2014. And just the visuals, by the way, on Chuck Blazer, because I fear that you're not doing justice to him. So this is like 40-d-eyed stories above Fifth Avenue in Trump Tower. And Chuck Blazer,

John, I need you to be a writer for a little bit. What does he look like? He looks like Zeus. He is easily north of 300 pounds. He probably six three, six four, an extraordinary robust head. He looks like a cauliflower with a beard. Huge head of hair, big beard, a deep voice, always dressed, always dressed in a suit.

So a powerful voice. He's a commanding presence. He's scared. He looked a little like Burl Ives, too. Remember Burl I'm looking up Burl Ives? But more like Zeus. Somewhere between Burlives and Zeus, and according, by the way, to Vladimir Putin, Per Sports Illustrated, Carl Marx. Yes, again, looked a little like Carl Marx with a big beard. Except if Carl Marx loved parrots and cats. Chuck kept parrots in his apartment. He kept cats in his apartment. He claimed, I think, inaccurately, that he had invented the smiley face. Yes.

That was his cover for why he had so much. money in what was basically close to a non-paying job as the head of ConcaCath. He had a separate apartment at $6,000 a month in Trump Tower for his cats. Yes. And the justification for how he could afford this was he invented the yellow smiley face icon. Yeah. What do you think about if you take that yellow smiley face and draw a big head of gray hair and a big beard, sort of looked like Chuck Blazer.

because he did have a great old big smile. And he was charismatic and funny. And you did understand, you know, how you have buttons on your trousers in the back? You did understand to button those buttons. Keep your wallet close there when you went in to see Chuck Blazer. Well, to give the sort of spoiler alert here, it turned out that Chuck Blazer in his role at Congecalf

was pocketing drives and kickbacks for years, had failed to pay personal income tax on his fortunes. Eventually, notably, became a federal informant in the corruption scandal that would engulf FIFA in 2015 when the aforementioned step ladder would have to resign. Wait, you mean there was a corrupt guy who didn't pay his taxes was kind of a big old, big old lumbering dude with a weird haircut? And an apartment full of dust cats. And lived in an apartment in New York City on Fifth Avenue between what, 53rd and 54th? There still happens to be somebody who fits that description who still resides there. Yeah, fewer.

Has his name on the building. Fewer animals. More gold, I think. But look, the point being that you had this vision, that you were trying to work your way through FIFA to sell, which was, we're going to televise these things live. We're going to do it right. We're going to actually respect soccer fans as if they matter. and you offered what was then an astonishing amount of money. $100 million.

We offered $100 million. By the way, we were guided to that, right? So $40 million for 2010, $60 million for 2014. Yes. And we did agree to do everything live. Remember, this was still an NBC sports, and I admire much of what they do. Then and much of what they do now, I've always been. and a vocal critic of the,

we're going to take events and tape them and present them as a primetime special later, sports events need to be live. And they were not intending to do every group game live. They didn't have the ability to do that, right? They didn't have six, eight, nine networks like we did. So we said, we'll do it all. We'll do all the women's matches.

We'll do all the under 23, all of the under 21. We'll do all the qualifiers. I'll never forget that there was a woman from the programming department with me, a wonderful person. I won't call her name because I want to embarrass her who is like, John, you're like giving everything away. I'm like, I'm not giving anything away. We have like eight channels. We're going to put these matches on it at 3.30 in the morning. It's great programming.

We'll take off all those people who are exercising on the beach and we'll have more room. And the fishing shows and hunting shows. So, yeah, we, I wanted to. I just like that a guy who has you. Your accent was like, why are we airing fishing? Fishing. What a betrayal. What a betrayal.

I betrayed my people. They have my picture up at the Bass Pro Shop. If ever I walk in, they're going to put a big hook in my behind and drag me across the parking lot. God. But that was the sales pitch was, we're going to treat this like the sport that it deserves to be. And look, among soccer fans. it worked. It was great.

We had people who produced it, who loved football. We went to Europe and Asia and to North Africa and South America and got commentators who had lived it for 30, 40 years. We didn't try to put people who, you know, had done college basketball or baseball on the game. You didn't have Alexei Lollas, which... Oh, well, we had Alexi Lollas, I think. Oh, did you?

Yeah, we had Alexi Lollah. Oh, man. And Lexi did a good job for us. Amazing. And I have read the controversy. I was in Europe for the first two weeks. It's really hard to watch these games in Europe. Most of them are on at 1.30 and 4.

So I don't have any comment on that. Lexi also helped us with a documentary we did. I've had a fine working relationship with Lexi. Who is a challenging gentleman? The fact that you're protecting Alexi Lalas just makes me laugh. It makes me laugh. You're the guy. You're responsible.

You're responsible for Alexi Lalas. Okay, I digress. The point being that this thing, this whole broadcast, it emboldens you to feel like we're the natural home for this. We were the right home for it. We clearly were the right home for it. And we made it a big event. We made it a big event by showing it for the big event it was. We embraced it.

We put money behind it. We sent people to the events. We sent, we were all over different countries. We had stories on every country that was in the World Cup. We did something called I scored a goal, in which we interviewed everybody who'd ever scored a goal in the final match of a World Cup. One person turned us down. Who? Pele.

That motherfucker. Well, Pele had a reasonable point and didn't see the bigger picture, which is you want to be included in this. His point was, people have been interviewing them in my whole life. I'm not getting paid for it. I didn't make that much money, which he didn't. Playing football in Brazil and even for the cosmos, we made pretty good money. And he didn't want to do it. I still admire the guy and respect him, but he didn't want to do it.

And he didn't. So he didn't score a goal in that World Cup. I love that you had, though, the insane ambition of like, yeah, we're going to just blow this out in the way that you would do a Super Bowl. And the thing that it leads to, obviously, is, I mean, I just want to spotlight the fact that it's June 23rd, 2010. It's the U.S. and Algeria. And this feels like a turning point. I think it was a turning point. That's the game that Landon Donovan scored.

Ninety-first minute. And the place erupted. It just sort of U.S. soccer nation as it existed at the time. You were there in Johan? Where was it? In South Africa. It was in South Africa. And I do remember being in the tunnels going into that event.

It's an old-fashioned stadium. Had not really been renovated. And I was with my younger son, Clay, at the time. It was about 15 years old, I think. And we got stuck in the tunnel. And I had that scary moment as a parent where you're like, I'm not sure my feet are touching the ground as we go in through this tunnel. And I've got my 15-year-old who probably was capable, more capable than I was.

Yeah, I was going to knowing Clay a little bit, that feels like the reverse dynamic. Yeah, but I remember going to that staying to watch that game, and when he scored that game, that did feel like a, I don't know if it's a word, vindictory, that when you got vindicated, vindicatory. Vindicating, but no, no, vindicatory. It's vindicatory, thank you very much. It is an adjective here. So that was a vindicatory moment where it's like, okay, we were kind of right. The end of June and July can be a really rough period for sports fans, with football still a few months away and basketball and hockey ended.

But this year, we're pretty lucky because not only is there a World Cup, there is a World Cup in our backyard. And so make sure to check out the Athletic Podcast Network to stay up to date on all things related to the World Cup. You can wake up with the Totally Football Show from L.A., then dive deep into the biggest talking point of the day with the Athletic FC podcast. And you can watch the TIFO podcast fool around on their daily live streams in the afternoon.

All shows are free to watch or listen on your favorite podcast platform. The World Cup Final in 2010, it's the most watched men's soccer game to that point in U.S. history. It's over 15 million people on ABC, another 8.8 on Univision. And the thesis is proven. Even outside of what the Americans are doing, like, people want to see this.

And so all of it brings us to the idea that it's time to renew this relationship with FIFA. And for those who don't know, John, what happened? How do you explain this at a party? What happened? Oh, it's a downer at a party. You really don't want me to come to your party and get on an exegesis about how we lost the World Cup.

We lost the World Cup because members of the X-Co were bribed. And they were going to award it to Fox. I don't know how that happened. By the way, I'm not accusing Fox of anything other than being in collusion. I was in collusion with Fiva and didn't work out because they backtracked on me. But we weren't paying money. Somebody paid money.

I don't know who. I'm not accusing anybody. But somebody paid money to ex-co members so they would vote for the World Cup in Qatar. Everybody was fooling themselves and lied to themselves about – I read. I was a member of the U.S. World Cup bid committee. Right. to bring the World Cup to the U.S. in 2018 or 22. Right. And so we got to read the Qatari bid book, where they said we are going to build new stadiums that are completely air-conditioned and that we'll break down when the World Cup is over and send into Africa to help build the sport.

They weren't air-conditioned. They had to move the World Cup to December. Yeah. That breached their contract with Fox, who appropriately was unambiguous. happy with that. They have NFL football. In that part of the year, they don't need the World Cup. They have a nice big opening appropriately in the summer. That's what they had bought. So they huffed and puffed and puffed and threatened to blow FIFA's doors down. It is now documented that Jerome Valk went to the Exco and, I forget, April of something. This is in Tarik.

Panjas. Ponja's story in the New York Times that Jerome Vok went in and said, they're unhappy. I am going to recommend or said we've already made a deal that we're going to give them the 2026 World Cup for a modest increase so that they will not continue on. So the people that they colluded with to get the World Cup are now suing them. They're scared shit.

list that they will not be able to land in the United States and without being subpoenaed and the Tisha James dragging them in, the Attorney General of New York. They're scared of that. So they decide to give it to Fox. It's ironic, of course, because they came in 94 to open up the game because they won't at the U.S. money. So then when they finally get to the U.S. and should be getting U.S. big money for media rights, they decide, well, we'll protect our own buttocks as opposed to having what will clearly be a huge auction. Now, they had not announced U.S. yet.

So I am sort of alighting a few things. Sure. But they probably knew it. Well, but the point here is that... Didn't take the money. Right. The one time they didn't take the money ever. Yeah.

So just to recap, so what Fox is paying, for the 26th World Cup right now is less than $500 million to air this tournament. This is per the New York Times story in May. And what experts are saying is that the rights are worth as much as three times that.

And so the question becomes, how is it that FIFA didn't extract maximum money? And it drives back to this arrangement that FIFA Secretary General at the time, yes, Jerome Volk or Velka, however you want to pronounce that, depending on a part of it,

depending on a part of the European Union you're in. What the New York Times reported, according to the people with direct knowledge of this meeting, is that the FIFA Secretary General told board members that, quote, it had been agreed to extend Fox's contract to 2026 to this World Cup in exchange for Fox not acting against FIFA should the World Cup dates be moved because this thing was going to be in Qatar in 22.

And a month after that, FIFA announces, hey, it's going to be in Qatar. It's going to need to be in December and November. And two months after that, and this is just the order of operations, the entire FIFA leadership winds up being removed following a sweeping Department of Justice indictment alleging nearly two decades of corruption, mostly tied to the sale of TV rights to competitions in Northern South America. And yeah, you happen to be a guy who's familiar with the inside of that courtroom as all of this was happening. I was indeed. I did testify against two gentlemen. By the way, I did not test, you don't testify against them. You testify on behalf of the state, which is brought a case. I was not asked about their actions at all because I had no knowledge of it. I was asked, what do you know about what happened? What happened when you were there getting it? What agreement did you have with them? What happened during the bidding process? Because they were trying to prove malfeasance. My testimony did not prove. I, my testimony did not prove.

that. I did not testify about malfeasance. I testified about our experience in which we lost the World Cup bewilderingly. And didn't get to do the thing that you've established on the sporting class one million times, which is come in with whatever the highest bid is plus one dollar. Yeah. You were not given that opportunity to outbid Fox, which was perhaps just using the powers of logic and inference, a red flag. There would be no reason not to take the top bidder. who had just done a spectacular job in the World Cup in 06, shown the path to how you break it through in this country and get to a billion dollars in rights fees for a single World Cup,

which would certainly have happened this time, will happen next time. I would think they'd do a billion and have two billion next time, which is, you know, I'll give Fox credit. Fox knows how to make money. Well, let's talk about it. They made good money on the World Cup in Qatar because Qatar subsidized the production. And they will make good money on this World Cup because they got it for a sweetheart price.

And they concentrate. They're very good at running their business. Well, the things that we're watching now, you know, we're seeing a couple of innovations, right? You're a guy who said earlier that you weren't a big fan of the expansion to the field to 48 teams? I was not. I was wrong. And you've otherwise been, which is funny to me, because you've long lobbied for the NCAA tournament to be expanded, for the college football playoff to be expanded. So your soccer purity led you to betray your own capitalistic vision that you have for every other sport. David would be perfect on this point.

I am feeling him inhabit my body right now. And he's right. As a fan, I did what every fan did, which was, I don't want them to do this. I don't want them to pay the players. I don't want them to allow payers to transfer. I don't want this or that. I didn't want because I love my World Cup the way it was. And I was wrong because when they started playing, they're great. The games are great.

I thought, oh, this is awful. You can play all these games and only 12 teams are going to go out. All these Cinderella's. Why do you need the Cinderella? And it turns out it's great. And I was wrong about that. I don't know. Are we going to tell about hydration breaks?

Yes. Are you going to call that an innovation? I'm going to call that a way to profit in ways that are only thinly veiled as innovation. Which is clearly what it is. These guys are not going to keel over. They can grab the bottles as they go past. They can pour it on their heads. They can take a 30-second break.

This is a way to get an ad break in the first half and an ad break in the second half. We might see the innovation. where they have two hydration breaks. Well, they might just decide it's okay. We'll stop after 20 minutes. The coaches can talk with the players, but it's bullshit that this is about hydration. This is about commercials.

And Fox was sure ready to go with their commercials. On the very first hydration break, bang, there's a commercial, and bang, they don't get back in time for the action. Well, this is the thing, right? So soccer, part of the purity that you clearly loved was it's uninterrupted. You're getting, you don't have, these commercial breaks. And so here, what the Hollywood Reporter is saying is that according to a media buyer's source, the average cost of a 30 second spot during this new, innovative format is between $200,000 and $750,000, depending on, you know, is the U.S. playing what are the big draws and also the stage of the tournament? The knockout stage is underway now, of course. They raise the price. But with six minutes of hydration breaks, that adds up, report.

to anywhere between two and a half to nine million dollars a game. And so you multiply that out, 104 games played, factor in that, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, carry the one. Half a billion dollars out of thin air. And I assume that the sales force is in the market now telling people what the hydration breaks in the final will cost. And that will be a seven-figure sum of money.

Yeah. It'll cost a million dollars apiece. And are you begrudgingly impressed? No, I don't think that's an innovation that makes the game better. All it does is create more revenue for a corrupt organization that is a nonprofit, as I always remind people, a nonprofit with billions of dollars in the bank, and executives, all of whom have a very good-sized boat. Well, Johnny Infantino, for the record, says, quote, this is not a financial issue for us. For us is purely a sporting matter.

He is so full of shit. I mean, the pompous way in which he pronounces these things. He's saying all commercial agreements were signed in advance. There's no additional revenue here. This is a total misunderstanding of how it is that we are profiting. And he just decided he is concerned about the help of these players. Not concerned when he wants to create another new tournament, which means they'll play 120 games a year.

Not concerned when they were putting the World Cup in Qatar. Yeah. Yeah. How about you being a problem? How about we go up to Norway and play next time, where it's a little cooler and you won't need a hydration break and take a little cut in the money you get from the host nation. Yeah, and for those not keeping score at home, 2034,

we're looking at Saudi Arabia. Gee, good. A notably temperate. They've probably figured out that air conditioning thing by now. Yeah, they're going to, they're going to, yes, USAID might be gone, but don't worry, FIFA is going to export air conditioning after they use it throughout the Middle East to all of the developing countries in the world. You do know there is a rotation.

of countries they get the World Cup. Explain. Meaning they've always sort of said, okay, next time is Africa's time, next time is Oceana's time, next time is South America. Well, in order to get the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia, which was another inside deal, by the way, and I doubt any money changed hands there, they had to cross off South America. So we have opening games in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.

Then, oddly enough, there's going to be a couple of games in... So that takes care of South America. It can be a couple of games in Europe. They're going to play in Portugal and Spain. Right. And they're going to play a couple of few games in Morocco, in Africa. 2030. So click, we're through Africa, we're through South America, we're through Europe.

we can go back to the Middle East. I guess Infantini is going to tell everybody, we're celebrating the World Cup. It's innovative. Around the world, we've got South America, and we've got Northern Africa, and we've got Europe involved. This is a great new way to do the World Cup.

The best way to do the World Cup is to go to a great soccer nation and let people be able to drive around in a car to go from place to place. Think how expensive it's going to be to follow your team, when they're not just in Dallas, or you're in Scotland, you're Scottish,

and you're coming to Boston, then you've got to go to Miami for a game. Now you're going to get to go to Montevideo for the first game, and then maybe the second game, you can go to Lisman, and then you can go to Marrakech for a game. Just take the boat.

You just take your boat. It's just going to become, you know, a World Cup for plutocrats who can afford to get around all these places. Well, this is, and this is where we get to the paradox. which is a world comfort plutocrats is, of course, what we're on some level already watching. And yet, because the games are so fucking good,

it's also the rise of the African diaspora. Yes. In which you're watching a country like Morocco, just one example alongside Ghana. I mean, you can go down the list. And you can say to yourself, this is actually something like the global village of our planet, paying attention to countries that we otherwise don't care about,

but we are celebrating in a way that feels almost refreshing and meaningful. And this is astonishing right now in New York. This has been such a great- Cape Verde, just being now this player we pay attention to. Well, New York has a Cape Verdean community. I don't know if it's Verdean. They have a Cape Verde community. A friend of mine went out with a friend of his to watch Morocco-Netherlands play in Little Morocco,

Yeah. Which I think is, is it Jackson Heights? I forget where it is. But there's a little Morocco. There's a little Cape Verdi. There's a little Uruguay. In my neighborhood, in the West Village, I went to a restaurant. I usually, one of them I frequent, and they're having a Colombian watching party

because somebody has bought the restaurant out to watch the Columbia game. Yes. Astoria, by the way, in Queens is a seems, it seems the designated place to go watch and celebrate and eat Morocco. Yeah. But this is something that I think is quite encouraging in spite of the oligarchy. It is. Look, it is ultimately the people's game. It's a hell of a product for that reason.

And they vote every four years that we love this tournament. It has been, again, it's why I was wrong about the 48 teams. It's been lovely to see the fans from Cape Verde and the fans from other. countries who've never been before. It's great to see Scotland back in the World Cup. And it's just there's no begrudging. It's great to see King Abdullah the second of Jordan visit a Jordanian restaurant in Richardson, Texas. And by the way, while they got beat the Jordanians in the last game they played, acquitted

themselves very well. They have good players. The other thing this tournament has shown is that there are good players everywhere. And while the U.S. is going to have enough good players to be a national power, you kind of don't take any team for granted in this World Cup. Speaking of being taken for granted, there is a bit of an update, a post script, to this whole FIFA federal corruption case,

which you, again, were a state's witness in, because, and I just got to read what the U.S. attorney said on behalf of the Justice Department, which in May decided to give up the case against two of the defendants, one of whom is the former CEO of Fox International channels and this is what U.S. Attorney Joseph Nassela told the judge, quote It is focused, the Justice Department, focused on other matters now like Homeland Security,

narco-terrorism, gang violence, and human trafficking. These are some of the things that they're saying, we don't have time to look into these quaint matters that one John Skipper may care about. We got to stop narco-terrorism. This is, you know, always in an event like the World Cup, it reminds you the great nations of the world and that some people speakings and some don't.

So you might need that translated. I think that is some very powerful people called the White House, lobbied them, promised a campaign contribution, and we got a call that we needed to drop these lawsuits. How dare you hypothesize? Before anybody is embarrassed, this happened right before the World Cup, right? Yes, this is in May. You want to clear that out, and you just got to think about, well, who could be embarrassed?

And I'm not going to personally make any accusations, but you can probably figure out the likely parties, many of whom are friendly with this president. Well, the Solicitor General of the United States, D. John Sauer, also requested the dismissal of the two indictments and four other defendants in the case have come forward since to ask that their convictions be dropped as well. that the Justice Department is showing that no crimes were ever committed. And, you know, so it is that maybe we can all get this cleaned up. Yeah, nobody broke into the Capitol on January 6th either. And I love the name, E-John-Sour.

D-J-J-J-Z-Sour. I'm assuming that D-J-J-J-Sour. That sounds like an island down in South Carolina. I'm going to DeJon-Sauer and I have a little vacation with my family. I'm assuming it's S-A-U-R, not... S-A-U-E-R. Not S-O-U-R. Correct. And I suppose I should add this note as well, which is in the reporting here.

Since the FIFA investigation began in secret 16 years ago, because again, this was a sprawling federal case looking into this thing that was just in plain sight. Prosecutors had netted more than 30 convictions and hundreds of millions of dollars and fines and restitution. And now, of course, the story of what this is, they are via this administration attempting to revise it. But you mentioned, perhaps inadvertently, radicalization. And if it was not only inadvertent, I don't even know I did it. You mentioned January 6th. And it does feel like what we're watching is the radicalization of now soccer fans in America. And I wonder if some part of you is delighted that despite all of this, despite the story that is intertwenty,

with corruption and apartments for cats and arrests and oligarchs boats and plutocrats and attempts to undo prosecutions for corruption that you can watch these broadcasts and be like, you know what? I see myself in some of what's happening here. You remember, of course, Pablo, when it was not uncommon for critics of the sport. to suggest that it was boring and awful, and to suggest that it was basically a socialist enterprise. Correct. You needed to look at American tackle football.

Now, that's a capitalist sport. You're conquering territory. That's what it's about, and people, big, powerful people call the plays so you can gain 10 yards. And they accused soccer of being socialist, right? It's collective action of a bunch of people who aren't having to listen to a coach,

yell at them the whole game because the coach can't be heard. So it actually is a collective of players who do most of the decision-making as opposed. Chuck Klausterman's book is brilliant about this. Yeah, football. His book on football where he talks about why football is the supreme sport in this country, that it does reflect a lot of the values of this country, the past history, including powerful people being in charge, powerful people up in the booth who are called an offensive coordinator, defensive quarter.

We're in charge. Not those damn players who would want to put the people in charge. There is a top-down militaristic aspect, yes. To American tackle football, as you call it. And it's a great game on television, as Chuck also points out in his book. So many commercials.

It is. It is... No, it's made for attention spans being challenged in this era. It's made for the way we live. It's okay. It's made for being able to go the refrigerator and get a beer

and not miss anything. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not insidious or evil or anything. It's great. It's fun to watch. And when I watch it, I enjoy it. So I'm not, I can. Do you?

I do until I think about how many of those people are not going to be, are going to have CTE when they're 52 years old. Sure. That is a hard problem that does trouble me a bit and does interfere with my fandom. The whole consensual concussion. thing does ruin the vibe at a Marty. Yeah. Call me crazy.

But when I see people smoking cigarettes now, I'm like, it's not a good idea. Well, I grew up in an era where people still sort of said, I don't think you can really conclusively prove that cigarettes cause lung cancer. And now look at you. Yeah. Now I know. I quit. I quit smoking.

You're a soccer-loving, clean living, quit smoking. Socialist. guy who drinks protein shakes and is selling socialism back to America. Sorry David wasn't here to correct me on some of this stuff. I miss him for that reason. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.