Welcome to Athletic Interest.
So, which nation will win the World Cup 2022?
No, seriously, the AI office is running a friendly prediction competition and this writer really wants to win!
Talking of “gambling”, this will be the first World Cup where Americans are allowed to place bets. No, this has nothing to do with their insistence on calling it soccer, it’s simply that before a Supreme Court ruling in 2018 sports betting was illegal in the majority of U.S. states.
With the recent change of rules, there are an estimated 20.5 million Americans that will be placing their first (legal) World Cup bets. Experts predict that they will spend up to $2 billion on gambling during the tournament.
With so much money at stake, it would be useful to have some way of accurately predicting the outcome of games.
Imagine if you could predict whether a penalty will go in based on the facial expression of the player.
Well, we conducted our own scientific study to find out if this would be possible…and you might be surprised by the results.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
📉 Another week, another Crypto collapse.
The sudden downfall of the FTX crypto exchange platform may not have registered for you, but it has far-reaching implications in the sports world.
The Bahamas-registered company, which filed for bankruptcy less than a week ago, was involved in a number of huge sports sponsorship contracts.
This includes a $135M naming rights deal for the Miami NBA arena and branding on the Mercedes AMG F1 team.
All of these high-profile deals have now gone up in smoke. Some athletes like Tom Brady and Shohei Ohtani even held equity in FTX which will now be completely worthless.
Perhaps this will encourage athletes and teams to think again before entering into long-term deals with companies in unstable industries.
This brings us to Odell Beckham Jr.
🏈 A year ago, the NFL wide receiver signed with the LA Rams for $750,000 - and announced he would convert it into Bitcoin. If he held on to it, he is now deeply in the negative.
This might explain why he is looking for other ways to make some money: he has just announced that he is suing Nike for breach of contract.
Beckham Jr originally joined Nike in 2014, before signing a bumper $47 million extension in 2017. Leaked excerpts of the legal complaint show that Beckham Jr is accusing Nike of structuring the deal in a way that made it ‘nearly impossible’ for him to trigger certain payments.
Beckham Jr believes that this case could ‘set a precedent’ that forces sponsors to ‘fulfill their obligations.’
In reality, this will probably be either dismissed or settled behind closed doors.
🏆 The Qatar World Cup will be the first ever to be held in the winter instead of the summer.
This unprecedented change to the schedule, coupled with strict rules on alcohol, a lack of hotels and concerns over the safety of LGBTQ+ individuals, led some to suggest that this World Cup would suffer from low attendance.
And yet, initial images shared on TikTok, seem to show thousands of fans from across the world descending on the small Arab country.
Not that everyone is convinced. Some users were quick to notice a number of potential discrepancies:
The majority of the fans shown supporting countries like England, Portugal, and Tunisia, were of South Asian descent (the key demographic of migrant workers in Qatar.)
There were no women present in any of the clips.
Some people believed that they saw the same people supporting different nations.
While these observations have led many to accuse Qatar of paying migrant workers to be ‘fake supporters,’ others have pointed out that there are several fans in countries like India and Pakistan who love football and they may have decided to make the relatively short trip to Qatar to support certain teams.
That being said, Qatar has faced other allegations of paying for support. The Times reported that several England fans were offered money and free plane+match tickets in return for spreading positive messages about Qatar on social media.
🇳🇴 Someone who definitely would have loved a chance to go to the World Cup (with or without a fee) is Erling Haaland.
Haaland’s Norway team missed their chance to qualify for Qatar, but luckily Haaland will have another option to keep himself entertained.
Ashton United, of the seventh tier of English football, have approached Manchester City about loaning Haaland for the next 28 days.
You would be forgiven to assume that this is a joke, but Ashton United have confirmed the news on Twitter.
While it is unlikely that Man City will accept the request, Ashton have certainly benefited from the media attention that followed their outlandish request.
Haaland wasn’t the only one offered a new challenge this week. Cristiano Ronaldo was offered a way out of Man United by non-league side Blyth Spartans with a slightly less serious offer.
👟 No World Cup would be complete without the customary Nike and Adidas adverts.
With the brands only getting the opportunity to make a World Cup advert every four years, there is immense pressure to make the best adverts possible.
In our opinion, both brands have succeeded, but you can take a look for yourself:
🎾 One more thing. Half a year ago we published this video:
And now this happened:
What ridiculous rule do you want us to change next?