Locally Gathered, Not Simulated

Somewhere around the third drink, someone pointed at the stadium boards and said: notice how every sponsor logo, every bit of local signage, has been swapped out for the official FIFA lineup? They’d read about it somewhere, how FIFA takes over host stadiums and wipes them clean of their usual advertisers, their usual character, in favor of the approved list. A logo laundering, basically. Meanwhile, they have all this approved color palettes, approved posters for each city trying to create local flavors. A unified way of being 16 different cities! Attempting to produce the appearance of specificity without the risk of the real thing. We spent two minutes being annoyed about corporate money in sports, as one does, and then the conversation went somewhere else entirely.

It went to the Norwegians and them rowing everywhere. It went to the Scots, who by all accounts had apparently emptied Boston of its beverages. It went to a bit about how many Korean-Mexican babies were about to be conceived, and whether they’d be good enough to make the 2046 squad… of which country we wondered.

None of that was on brand. None of it was in the deck. FIFA didn’t know if the Scots were taking over the bars any more than other nationals. Nobody planned for the Norwegians rowing everywhere, except for Norwegians off course. Most of us hadn’t yet considered Cape Verde as our next destination. FIFA’s entire contribution to our conversation in that party was a tightly controlled color palette and rules about which beer you’re allowed to sell inside the gates. Where we were not at, at that moment.

And that’s the thing I can’t stop noticing this tournament, every time the camera gets a glimpse of a white-washed Levi’s logo outline: the organization is stewarding its own image, not the celebration. Those are different jobs, and only one of them is actually happening. The party is real… weeks of strangers finding each other, cities absorbing them, countries losing their minds together, culture colliding in the stands… the game itself as the one truly uniform thing everyone agreed to. A genuine collision of everyone in the world who cares about this specific ball going into that specific net. That part is carrying itself, at full volume, regardless of FIFAs guidelines.

I don’t think this is a hot take. I think most people who love the game already feel this and just don’t bother to say: ‘we’re not here for the brand. We’re here despite it.’ Or maybe they do, I didn’t ask everyone. The broadcasters get closer to the real thing than the organizers do, because their job is to point a camera at the crowd. To capture the aliveness.

Somewhere there’s a very expensive slide deck about “bringing the world together.” It’s authors didn’t do that. We did. They just always find a way to stand next to us while we do.

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