My first job out of university was organising football (soccer) tournaments all throughout Asia. I love sports, sports marketing and event planning so the two 'relatively' major world-class tournaments in the world that are coming here to Brazil are something I love to keep tabs on. The lack of organisation, facilities, stadiums are almost laughable but I think the Brazilians will still pull it off....
FIFA is insisting on the sale of beer at the stadiums and within their exclusively controlled zones. But the Brazilians are holding out as beer is not in sold in stadiums at football games. It was banned in 2003 as a way to try and combat violence between rival fans. Apparently it hasn't made much of a difference as fans will drink earlier and heavily before the game (not unlike some areas in the UK!).
But these big tournaments are controlled more so by the sponsors than people who are running it for the love of the game.. slightly hypocritical to be pushing beer drinking when they should be encouraging healthy-living... (I also question their relationship with McDonalds who sponsor all their youth tournaments..). The World Cup is sponsored by Budweiser, bad American beer, so no one is really going to drink it anyways... It will be interesting to see what their compromise is as I know FIFA will not budge since Budweiser has already paid them silly money to sell beer.
The ticket prices are also still to be determined and it will be interesting to see how high they set them. If they take Sao Paulo prices into consideration it will exclude the majority of the people and, in my opinion, defeat the purpose of having a Brazilian World Cup.
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