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FIFA is one of the brands I am watching closely this year amid the impending World Cup. They seem to love controversy, to the point that I wonder if they create it intentionally.

Above is a video in which Megan Matthews and I discuss the top three brands we are watching this year; mine are FIFA/World Cup, the Olympics, and Canada. Megan’s are Gap, Rebel and the Toronto Tempo.

There are already multiple uproars in progress about the tournament, and it does not even start for another six weeks.

Mostly the brouhahas have to do with ticketing. FIFA has been opaque and opportunistic (some might say exploitative and disingenuous), by:

• making the ticket-buying process lengthy and complicated
• charging ticket prices so high that they surprised even people who are price-insensitive
• using a dynamic pricing model that prevents people from understanding how what they bought compares to what is available
• obscuring the exact seats people have purchased, in a way that led people to believe they had purchased the best possible seats, only for FIFA to later release seats that are even better

There are other controversies too numerous to list here, including arguments with host cities about who should pay, and how much, for public transportation to and from games, and the cost of fan festivals (promised by Toronto to be free, and then $10, and then free again).

This is all amid the breathtaking cost to hosts. The total cost for the six Toronto games is $380-million (including stadium upgrades), that bill to be paid jointly by the feds, province and city – in other words, by the taxpayer. The taxpayer is likewise on the hook for the estimated total cost of the eight games in Vancouver, being in a range between $532- and $624-million.

And amid data in the marketplace that FIFA’s promised flood of $3.8-billion in “positive economic output” to Canada, and $40-billion USD in GDP to the United States, is not materializing.

Why is soccer the biggest, most widely-played sport in the world? Because it is cheap to play. All you need is a ball.  This is why FIFA’s exploitative ticket practices are so offensive to what is supposedly the world’s most inclusive sport.

Will it hurt the World Cup brand? Quite possibly. There has been a clear decline in the number of bidders, for example:

• For the five World Cups between 1994 and 2010, there were an average of 3.6 bidders.
• For the five World Cups between 2014 and 2030, there were an average of 2.2 bidders.

A parallel case can be found in what I would argue is an even stronger global brand, the Summer Olympics:

• For the five Summer Games between 1996 and 2012, there were an average of 7 bidders.
• For the five Summer Games between 2016 and 2032, there were an average of 3.4 bidders.

This trend is also clear in bidding for the Winter Games:

• For the five Winter Games between 1998 and 2014, there were an average of 6 bidders.
• For the five Winter Games between 2018 and 2034, there were an average of 1.8 bidders.

In this story about Sidney Crosby, I said something about the power of brand humility. FIFA, if they were really thinking about the long-term survival and success of their brand, could take a page from the Canadian captain.

Check out the video, above, in which Megan Matthews and I discuss the top three brands we are watching this year. I start talking about FIFA and the World Cup at the 8:25 mark.