World Cup 2002 - Those Were the Days…

R. Sanborn Brown

Sweden 1958: "The Little World Cup."

Seventeen-year-old Pele makes his debut in Brazil's canary yellow. The great Russian keeper Lev Yashin is back in net for the former Soviet Union. Sweden's FIFA Committee consists of a grand total of six full-time working members. In order to keep costs under control, no new communication lines are installed for the mass media; instead, the Swedish Air Force ends up providing military lines, according to the Asahi Shinbun's "Tales of the World Cup" series. Of the twelve stadia used for the tournament, only two are new. At one stadium there is seating for less than 7,000—and a stand that holds an additional 13,000. Tickets to first round games cost, in current prices, the equivalent of US$4, for the Final $40. Television rights are sold for $15 million. A total of several hundred thousand fans watch the tournament on TV.

Korea/Japan 2002: "The Massive World Cup."

Among others, Argentina's highly touted Javier Saviola will debut this summer, but will any he or anyone possibly be the crowned the next Pele? The dominating Oliver "Genghis" Kahn will between the posts for Germany. Regarding the stadia, all ten of the Korean venues were completed within the last two years. In Japan, all but Yokohama International Stadium (1997) and Osaka's Nagai Stadium (1996) are brand new and were built specifically for the World Cup.

Saitama Stadium underwent extensive renovations in preparation for the tournament. Although many are ecologically-friendly football-only facilities, in both South Korea and Japan the stadiums all seat on average more than 40,000 spectators, with the venues for the opening and final matches both seating well over 60,000. In the expectation that 42 billion viewers will tune in over the course of the tournament, the German media group Kirch paid $1.7 billion for broadcasting rights for the 2002 World Cup and subsequently went bust.

The most expensive tickets to the Final are 84,000 yen, or $750. Moreover, according to the Yomiuri Shinbun, in spite of FIFA's attempts at clamping down on ticket transfers and resale, ticket packages on the Internet are selling, at the low end, from 190,000 yen ($1,460), all the way up to 1.65 million yen ($11,500) for a ticket package than includes food and drink coupons and tickets to two of Japan's first-round games, plus a ticket to both the semi-finals and final.

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