FIFA’s Grand Experiment Sets The Stage For The Grander Show…

You never get a second chance at a first impression, the saying goes. Well, when staging a big event in multiple cities with millions of details and lots and lots of unknowns and millions of dollars at stake, having a dry run on massive scale is a pretty unique opportunity.

That’s a big part of what FIFA accomplished with the Club World Cup, and the lessons learned, the best practices established and the nuances which can be massaged will provide for a great case study as the World Cup comes to North America next summer.

People will debate whether the Club World Cup is needed, whether there was too much professional soccer for a still emerging men’s professional sport in the past month and on and on. The reality is that FIFA proved a concept on a grand scale, had the rarest of opportunities to seed the marketplace and actually see, no guess, a what the challenges and opportunities will be, for next summer, go to learn about everything from traffic patterns to turf issues to volunteer capabilities, all without having to guess next year.

It was a great stress test for the system to see where he leaks exist, and what new tributaries can be formed in the coming year.

For brands, I was a solid way of seeding the market for what lies ahead. For media, it helped form bonds and identify growing opportunities for engagement …locally, nationally, regionally…ha can grow in the coming year without coming in with lesser of a familiarity.

For causes, it built good will and started to seed programs ha will continue to solidify the base of a soccer playing region still taking root.

It’s hard to think of a grand scale even like the Club World Cup that, at least in Norh America, served as a test for an even larger scale even a year in the making. You don’t  play a Super Bowl or an All Star Game and then come back to do it again next year. The event moves on. Maybe the only test case would be the US Open, which is rooted in one place and can build form best practices year over year, but that is one event, same place, not multiple cities, multiple venues and next year multiple countries  like the World Cup will be.

Usually with big events you plan, execute, hope all goes well, and take lessons learned to the next place. For FIFA, his is the rare opportunity to do all that and come back to many of the same places and one up the experience in a year’s time.

A great experiment with a chance to get even greater when the games return next summer. Let’s see what has been learned, what an amazing chance to improve.