FIFA is an addictive game. After every match of digital football you want to play just one more. If you lose, you don’t want to end on a sour note. If you win, you want to keep that hot streak going. It’s a testament to how fun the game is that you want to keep playing. But, as one Redditor recently highlighted, there’s another aspect of FIFA that is dangerously addictive: the FIFA microtransactions.
According to FIFA, 8.4 million requests have been made for seats at the 2018 FIFA World Cup after two sales phases. The second phase saw a total of 4,905,169 tickets requested, with the majority of those applications coming from Russia. While the top five for requests is rounded out by Germany, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, the percentage of Icelandic people requesting tickets is absurd.
Arsene Wenger, the Professor with an economics degree, is dipping Arsenal’s pocket book into the crypto-currency markets. The club reached an agreement Wednesday with California-based CashBet, which will thus be allowed to advertise at Emirates Stadium. Now Gunners fans can watch ads for fake money while cheering for fake trophies. The Arsenal crypto-currency deal might just be the most Arsenal thing ever.
Every so often you see a story or a headline about how soccer is taking over the U.S. — it’s been America’s sport of the future for at least four decades. The latest stories revolve around a recent Gallup poll, which asked Americans what their favorite sport is to watch. Soccer popularity in America is ranked fourth, easily passing by hockey and inching closer to edging baseball out of the top three.
Philippe Coutinho is finally a Barcelona player after months of speculation, two dubious injuries during transfer windows and several rejected bids from Barcelona. No secret was made of the Brazilian international's desire to move from Liverpool to Barcelona, but few could have foreseen Coutinho's desire being so desirous that he reportedly paid out of his own pocket to help finance the deal, one of the most lucrative in history.
It’d been clear for a couple days now, but a formal press conference at the Country Music Hall of Fame confirmed Nashville as one of two expansion franchises that could begin play as early as 2020 in Major League Soccer. With Los Angeles FC set to join the league in 2018 as the 23rd club, Nashville is now MLS’s 24th side and the third team in the Southeastern United States (Atlanta and Orlando being the other two).
It turns out spending millions of dollars on manager Andre Villas-Boas and immediate want-aways Carlos Tevez and Jackson Martinez amounts to little more than burning money for the Chinese Super League. According to a recent audit by accounting firm PwC and as reported by Goal, the CSL’s clubs are currently in a combined debt of over $600 million.
On December 6 in New York City, four Major League Soccer expansion hopefuls will stand in front of the league’s expansion committee and commissioner Don Garber and make their case to be one of two new sides slated to begin play in 2020. They’ll talk about things like business metrics (“F*ck that,” says Columbus), stadium plans and making bank.
Maybe you haven’t heard, but the U.S. will not be participating in the 2018 World Cup in Russia. But that hasn’t stopped Americans from purchasing more tickets for next summer’s tournament than any other country outside the host nation. And the U.S. isn’t the only country that won’t be competing in Russia to rank in the Top 10 in World Cup ticket sales.
Botafogo took the pitch with an unusual shirt sponsor in what could be a first for professional football on Monday: a YouTube star’s brand on the team’s jersey. Botafogo wore their iconic black-and-white kits with the logo for “Neto’s” located just above the team crest and a logo for Brazilian YouTube star Felipe Neto on the right breast against Palmeiras on Monday.