The Club World Cup 2025 is already a shit show – and it’s only just begun

The Club World Cup is already a shit show – and it’s only just begun

FIFA’s new-look Club World Cup kicks off in the U.S. on 14 June 2025 — and while it’s being hyped as the ultimate showdown in club football, no one is convinced.

With 32 of the biggest teams and a whopping $1 billion prize pool, FIFA is marketing the tournament as the “pinnacle of club football.” The winners could bag $125 million, and another $250 million is supposedly going towards “global football solidarity.”

But let’s be real — for many, it’s classic FIFA: flashy headlines, big money, and controversy bubbling underneath.

The European Super League in disguise

Let’s call it what it is — this isn’t just a global tournament. It’s FIFA’s soft launch of a European Super League, only under its own banner and with a shinier logo.

The message is clear: if this Club World Cup gets views and bums on seats, FIFA will double down. Expect more teams, longer formats, and surprise surprise — more European clubs invited in. Not because of sporting merit, but because they bring TV money, brand clout, and global fans.

But here’s the problem: football isn’t a content factory, and European clubs aren’t just global brands. They’re deep-rooted cultural institutions with history, rivalries and working-class heritage that stretches back over a century. You can’t just copy-paste that into Miami or Riyadh.

This tournament is in part about trying to boost the profile of clubs from the USA and Saudi – but in reality, Americans are more interested in watching the big-name teams. For most fans, football in the U.S. is entertainment first, it’s perhaps the most obvious reason ticket sales are so poor.

It’s unrealistic to look at a 65,000-seat stadium and think fans will watch an MLS vs. Egyptian League matchup just because FIFA says this game matters.

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FIFA doesn’t seem to get that Europe’s love for football is tribal, local, cultural. No amount of oil money or stadium LEDs will replicate a wet night at the Emirates, a Merseyside derby, or the chaos of a last-minute goal in the Bundesliga.

Is the Messi hype over?

If ticket sales are anything to go by, the excitement just isn’t there. Prices were slashed last-minute for the opening match (Inter Miami vs Al-Ahly), and barely a third of seats have been sold at the 65,000-capacity Hard Rock Stadium in Miami — even with Lionel Messi expected to feature.

Lionel Messi’s arrival in MLS jettisoned an interest in football in the U.S. once again – US media and American football fans went wild. It was supposed to be the moment football (or soccer, as they insist on calling it) finally broke through in America. But it’s all starting to feel very familiar.

But the hype appears to be coming to an end – even the greatest, can’t make football a “thing” in the USA.

It says a lot.

We’ve seen it before – the arrival of David Beckham in 2007 is one of the best examples. There were sell-out crowds, huge shirt sales, and prime-time interviews — until the buzz wore off.

Football in the U.S. is often a flash-in-the-pan hype cycle — viral, commercial, and quickly forgotten.

Add in Trump-era travel bans and a drop in international tourism to the U.S., and it’s no wonder global fans are giving it a miss.

Club World Cup Poor ticket sales

FIFA has started slashing prices as ticket sales have been incredibly lacklustre. Last week, it was reported that the opening match had fewer than 20,000 tickets sold, in a stadium that holds 65,000.

More surprisingly, the data shows it’s not just MSL and Saudi matches struggling to shift tickets. Other matches in the group stage show entire sections empty for clubs like Manchester City.

When it comes to lesser-known clubs the stadiums are near empty.

That has seen ticket prices slashed to as low as $23 before fees. And honestly, those prices could drop even more.

Trying to take on uefa

So, why is FIFA so desperate to make this work? Despite claims from the FIFA president that he wants to make football “truly global” the only reason for this shit show of a tournament is money.

Gianni Infantino, head of FIFA (football’s global body) believes FIFA should be the wealthiest football body in the world as it represents world football.

But it isn’t – UEFA is.

UEFA is Europe’s governing body and has the top six leagues (England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, France’s Ligue 1, Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A).

FACT FILE: From 2019 to 2022, FIFA made $7.6 billion. UEFA, football’s European governing body, made roughly $19 billion

The Premier League, England’s domestic league, also outearns FIFA – and that money from the EPL goes to its members, the 20 teams in the league that season. It also has a global reach of billions – something the Club World Cup will aim to attract.

UEFA distributes its earnings with the European clubs and its 55 national federations. The clubs and federations then use the money to buy and develop players, who then, in turn, draw fans from around the world, then sponsors want to get involved and media companies pay even more to broadcast them. UEFA’s revenue soars and the cycle continues – football remains in Europe.

“In the 2019/20 season, the Premier League had a cumulative global audience of 3.16 billion, nearly double that of the next two most watched leagues in Europe, the Bundesliga and LaLiga.”

European clubs dominate the game. Even smaller sides like Brentford have the money to attract top talent, thanks to the global football economy. It’s not clear what clubs from outside Europe will really get out of this experiment. Maybe a shock win over Real Madrid will boost a club’s profile, but it likely won’t last.

One final push?

FIFA has been trying to launch a world club championship since the 1960s, from the Intercontinental Cup to the early 2000s Club World Championship. Most were forgettable. And since 2006, apart from Brazil’s Corinthians in 2012, every winner has been European.

They are hoping they will be able to make this one feel more like a World Cup – handy for the USA just a year out from hosting the 100-year-old tournament. It’s not clear where FIFA goes from here if the Club World Cup doesn’t work.

It’s free to watch, and some big names will be there – but will anyone care?

Against a backdrop of complaints that it’s just another FIFA cash grab, players and coaches arguing that the calendar is already packed out and domestic leagues already wrapped up – fans and footballers have already checked out.