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Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
World Cup 2026: Could co-host politics have an impact?
AI- Generated Image A year out from the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, host city Los Angeles is engulfed in protests related to the deportation of Mexicans and other minorities. Meanwhile, an ever-shifting trade war threatens relations between the three hosts and a travel ban will likely prevent some fans from attending. While the whims of US President Donald Trump make predictions perilous, fans, players and national teams must already start to make plans for one of sport's biggest events, one secured in Trump's first term when relations between the three countries were much more harmonious. The ongoing protests are an immediate safety concern for the Club World Cup in the US, with European champions Paris Saint-Germain set to meet Atletico Madrid in LA on the tournament's opening day on June 15. LA will also host the first US game of the 2026 World Cup on June 12, a day after the tournament opens in Mexico. Trump's travel ban, which came in to effect on Monday, bars citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the US. An exception was made for "any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting event as determined by the secretary of state" but not for fans. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 임플란트, 지금 시작하세요 [자세히 보기] 임플란트 더 알아보기 Undo Iran have already qualified for the World Cup, but currently fans would not be able to travel to support them in the US. Trump sees opportunity in sport The same is not yet true for citizens of Mexico and Canada. And for Andrew Zimbalist, professor emeritus in economics at Smith College in the US state of Massachusetts and author of "Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup," putting on a good show to burnish his own reputation is likely to be at the forefront of Trump's mind. "Mr. Trump has shown a willingness to make exceptions when there's pressure. And I think further that Trump cares. He's a sports fan. He cares about his international image. He cares about the attention that that will come to him when both the Club World Cup in 2025 and the real World Cup in 2026 happen. These are photo opportunities for Trump to bask in in the game's glory," he told DW, speaking ahead of the LA protests. Zimbalist added that with Trump, things can always change quickly. "There's a tremendous amount of tension and a tremendous amount of uncertainty about how Mr. Trump will behave, and we never know." World Cup co-hosts Canada and Mexico were, along with China, the first countries targeted in the evolving tariff war that began soon after Trump took office. Zimbalist doesn't predict the uneasiness at the government level will have a significant impact on the tournament, arguing that there will be enough fans prepared to travel for games that any discouraged from doing so will not be noticeable. He also believes that the relatively new leaders in Mexico — Claudia Sheinbaum, elected in October 2024 — and Canada — Mark Carney, elected in March — will not allow their countries to become marginalized. "I think both with Carney in Canada and Sheinbaum in Mexico, that he has met his real enemy. These leaders are not bowing down to him, and they're both very, very smart, very well prepared, and at the moment, are popular in their countries. And so they have the latitude to take on Trump," said Zimbalist. Mexican fans uncertain on match travel Nevertheless, for Mexican fans in particular, traveling across the border to World Cup, or indeed Club World Cup games this month, in the US is a fraught business. "I don't feel afraid to go to the United States but it feels little bit like going to someone else's house where you are not welcome," said Alan, a Pachuca fan talking to DW ahead of his team's participation in the Club World Cup. Other Pachuca fans complained that significant visa processing delays, some up to two years, meant they would have been unable to travel to support their team even without the current safety concerns. "Appointments were delayed and then the president said that some Mexicans shouldn't go there, I think that has a big influence on why they're taking so long with the visas," said Axel. "I would feel a little unsafe around the police and everything government-related and that side of the United States." While demand for, and interest in, the World Cup will be on a different level to the revamped Club World Cup, which has proved controversial in some quarters, and stands may see some foreign nationals from Canada and Mexico, it does seem like political relations will have some impact on fans — even if the stands will be full. Canada, Mexico more able to stand up against Trump While Canadians are not quite as central to the current events in LA, the US' northerly neighbours have been at loggerheads with the Trump administration. The US national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," has been booed at ice hockey games in Canada in recent months, and Carney's surprise election was partly ascribed to his willingness to take on Trump and his plan to make Canada the 51st state. "Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign in the last several months, it's not for sale. Won't be for sale, ever," Carney told Trump when the pair met in May in a meeting that was otherwise relatively cordial, despite clear tensions. For those hoping to plan a visit to, or participation in, the World Cup, judging the political mood — and the implications of changes in it — have become as important as waiting for results from qualifying. "I could see it happening along the way that if Sheinbaum becomes a little bit more aggressive than Trump wants her to be, or challenges some of Trump's immigration moves, that he would say: "You know what? I might not let Mexico participate in the World Cup, or I might not let this happen or that happen.' So I can see threats like that, but I'd have to believe that they wouldn't be carried out," said Zimbalist, musing on what might play out in the next year. The Club World Cup, which starts Saturday and is hosted solely by the US, is perceived by some as a test of elements of the country's readiness to host the 026 World Cup. But any development or deterioration of relations between the three co-hosts will be critical to the success of next year's tournament.
NBC News
22-03-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Something new is at stake in the women's NCAA Tournament: Money
For the first time since the NCAA began hosting a women's basketball tournament in 1982, a deep run through the bracket will produce more than bragging rights or a championship banner. Money is on the line, too. Every game that a school plays between the First Four through the Final Four — making the championship game doesn't count — will earn what the NCAA calls a 'unit,' essentially one slice of the annual television revenue brought in from the NCAA's media rights deal to broadcast the tournament. All units earned by a conference's members during a women's tournament will be paid by the NCAA to the conference, which then splits up the pool of money and redistributes it back to the schools over the next three years. At stake this year are 132 units worth a combined $15 million, meaning that if No. 1 overall seed UCLA advances to the championship game, it would earn the Big Ten conference $1.3 million to be paid out through 2028. (Conferences use different methods to decide which schools receive how much.) That pool available for tournament teams will grow to $20 million in 2026, $25 million in 2027 and increase by 2.9% annually after that, the same rate as other Division I funds. There's a reason why the NCAA landed on this unit-based system: It is the same one that's been used to reward men's teams in the NCAA Tournament since 1991. Between 1997 and 2018, the combined units earned by men's teams from the Big Ten Conference alone raked in an estimated $340 million, according to a 2019 analysis by The Associated Press. During the same span, meanwhile, women's basketball teams including powerhouses Connecticut, Tennessee and South Carolina earned zilch. Among the numerous books on sports written by Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, is 1999's 'Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports,' in which he argued for the NCAA to adopt a unit-based payment system for women's basketball. Zimbalist told NBC News that when Myles Brand was the NCAA president from 2003 to 2009, he had spoken with Brand about fixing what he called the discriminatory disparity that saw men's teams, but not their women's counterparts, paid for their performance. 'It never had any justification,' Zimbalist said. Why did it take 34 years to fix? The longtime argument against such a move — that the men's tournament drew more viewers and was thus more valuable — ignored that the women's tournament nonetheless also drew millions of viewers as well, and could have drawn even more had it been marketed equally to the men's, Zimbalist said. 'It never would have made any sense to say that women should get paid zero, because the women in fact were attracting customers and revenue,' he said. That 34-year gap between the first tournament payouts for men and women was why in January, when an NCAA council approved a fund to start the payments, Danielle Donehew, the executive director of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, called it a 'momentous victory' that was 'the culmination of decades of hard work.' That victory arrived, in part, because of pressure. In 2021, women's basketball players taking part in the NCAA Tournament documented on social media the disparities in how they were treated compared to the men, ranging from paltry weight rooms to meager gift bags. With players agitating for equal treatment and the public asking questions, the NCAA hired a law firm to conduct a gender equity assessment. The findings, released in 2021, were scathing. 'The NCAA's broadcast agreements, corporate sponsorship contracts, distribution of revenue, organizational structure, and culture all prioritize Division I men's basketball over everything else in ways that create, normalize, and perpetuate gender inequities,' wrote the firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP. The NCAA instituted a few changes immediately, such as allowing the women's tournament to finally use 'March Madness' in its marketing, after previously limiting its use solely to the men's tournament. Four years after the Kaplan report, there were indications last summer that unit-based payouts were coming to women's basketball. And when they were officially approved in January, the NCAA attempted to reward women according a standard equal to or better than the men, whose units earnings are paid out over a six-year period. The fund that pays out units in the women's basketball tournament is capped at $15 million this year because it represents 26% of the NCAA's annual revenue from the media rights deal it inked with ESPN to broadcast the women's tournament, the same percentage men's teams drew in 1991. Men's teams in the tournament currently take in a slightly lower percentage of annual revenue, about 24%. Still, the total pool of money available to be earned by men's teams in the tournament this year is over $200 million more than the women's pool. Where a unit in the women's tournament will be valued at around $114,000 this year, a unit in the men's tournament is worth around $2 million. The reason? Television. It wasn't a coincidence that men's teams began earning payouts in 1991; that year, CBS began a six-year agreement, valued at $1 billion at the time, to exclusively broadcast the men's tournament. Revenue from the rights to broadcast the Division I men's basketball tournament have skyrocketed since. Last year alone, the NCAA's deal granting CBS and Turner the rights to broadcast the men's basketball tournament brought in $950 million — the lion's share of the NCAA's $1.3 billion in revenue, according to financial statements. Next year, the deal alone will pay the NCAA more than $1 billion — bringing in more in one year than the NCAA will be paid over the entire life of its current eight-year, $920 million contract with ESPN to air the women's basketball tournament along with the championships of more than 20 other NCAA sports. The NCAA could have broken off the women's basketball tournament into its own media rights deal, but opted to keep it as part of a larger package. The women's tournament portion of that package is valued at about $65 million annually, NCAA President Charlie Baker told the AP last year. 'Yes, it's a bundle,' Baker said at the time, 'but it's a bigger bundle and it's a bigger bundle that will be much better.' Fueled by the popularity of then-Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark facing dynastic South Carolina, last year's women's NCAA championship game drew a record 18.7 million viewers — 4 million more than the men's title game, making it the most watched basketball game since 2019, including the NBA. 'If you want to go back to this historical argument and say, 'Oh, we should remunerate based upon the value that they create,' then women should be getting paid more this year than the men, not 1/15th the value of the men,' Zimbalist said. 'To me, it's highway robbery. It's the worst example of exploitation of women that you can imagine. So they wait 34 years, and then they finally give them crumbs. And I don't know what Charlie Baker thinks he's doing, but I think it's totally unacceptable.' Whether the enormous difference in the value of units between the men's and women's tournaments can be narrowed won't be known until 2032, when the media rights deals for both tournaments next come up for bidding. Packaging the women's basketball tournament in that bundle with other NCAA championships undervalued the women's tournament, according to the 2021 Kaplan report, whose analysis suggested the rights for the women's basketball tournament alone could have sold for $81-$112 million in 2025. Yet the NCAA opted to keep women's basketball as part of that larger bundle when it reupped its deal with ESPN last year. 'The ultimate question would have been in the NCAA's mind and their consultants' mind is, 'OK, if we sell the NCAA women's tournament with all the other events, we're going to get X. If we sell the women's tournament alone and the other championship events, we're going to get X plus Y. Well, is that number going to be bigger than if we just sold them all together?'' said Bob Thompson, a former television executive at Fox Sports who now runs his own consulting firm, Thompson Sports Group. 'And they could face the possibility that someone would say, 'I want the women's tournament, I don't want anything else,' and then those events, they're sort of sitting there off by themselves, and is anybody going to really go after them? And for the NCAA, it's extremely important that those events see the light of day and are on television, and is on as broad-based television as possible, which is why I think they're very happy with the ESPN deal and putting the entirety of it on ESPN.' Experts are watching to see in the future whether the NCAA will spin off the women's tournament into its own media rights package, combine it with the men's tournament or keep it in a bundle. Within women's basketball, the drastic difference in value between men's and women's payouts is noted. But having them at all, starting this year, was described by Duke coach Kara Lawson in January as a 'step forward that is really valuable.'
