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Dan Hunt, president and co owner of FC Dallas. Always great to have you back here.
Yeah, great to see you, Julie.
Also, I want to talk to you being co chair of the organizing committee in North Texas. I know this has been a long, long venture for you being involved with this. How do you feel going in?
Yeah, I'm excited.
I'm about to enter month one hundred and seven working on the World Cup and it has finally all come to fruition, and it's so great to get that first kick coming up in a couple days.
Dallas Sports Commission has estimated more than a one point five billion dollar economic boost to the area, up to over two billion dollars. Does that come to fruition, Yes.
I believe it will come to fruition.
If you think about Super Bowls, the average visitor comes for less than three days, and we have nine Super Bowls with nine games in Dallas.
But visitors are in a World Cup come for just under.
Ten days, and so they'll be staying hotels, spinning at restaurants, buying gas, going to retail. So I say a huge economic boom for our area.
Talk about now it's Dallas Stadium. We know it as AT and T Stadium, but it's certainly Dallas Stadium now. FIFA estimates that it will hold more than ninety thousand people for World Cup Games. If you do the math there, that's more than eight hundred and forty five thousand for the total nine matches. First of all, what do you think of those numbers?
I mean, the scale of this is so massive, and I don't know that we'll be in the nineties for World Cup Games. We're raising the pitch at AT and T Stadium by four or five feet, which we'll have some seat kills associated with that. But you know, if you even think about it, between seven hundred and eight
hundred thousand tickets as a huge number. Frankly, I need for there to be more tickets with the number of ticket requests that I've had over the last couple of months, and so it's great in this entire tournament there could be over seven million tickets available.
Do you think the games in Dallas will sell out? There's been a lot of questions about sellouts period.
Yeah, I think the games in Dallas will sell out.
If you think about the matches that we have five great group stage games with powerhouses like England, Croatia, Japan, Holland Argentina with MESSI.
I think those games will sell out.
When you get into the later games, the opponents aren't defined right because those are elimination games and they're coming out of their different groups.
But this is a sports city.
It has a gigant sports appetite, so I think the stadiums will be full.
I'm want to talk to you about the ticket prices, and again I know those are set by FIFA. It does not go through the host committees. But there's a lot of questions about the pricing, how many were available, and the rollout. Do you think that affects attendance overall?
You know, it's hard to say. I don't think it will affect attendance. The rollout is a little bit non traditional how we would do it in American sports, but FIFA has their way of doing it, and they've gotten some criticism over the prices and they went back and repriced some cheaper tickets. And what it would say, you know, is there's a market demand for this and the revenue
they generate from the World Cup supports soccer globally. Their initial from grassroots to growing the men's game, growing the women's game, all the money associated with prize money, player money to clubs, and just in developing nations and helping the game along. And this is really their pinnacle, tent pole moment that they have every four years. And so
I know there's it's a delicate balance, right. You want it affordable for fans because fans make the game, but you also need to be able to have, you know, the money to help support the game for the next four years.
Soccer is obviously extremely important to you. You are actually a sponsor in Dallas for the World Cup. You are a personal sponsor. Let's talk a little bit about why you decided to do that.
Yeah, I'm proud to be a hometown supporter for Dallas.
It was important to me.
I mean I can put my time and effort behind this, which like I said, has been almost one hundred and seven months, and it also shows them my enthusiasm for it to put financial support. I want this to leave a lasting legacy and that support will go to help creating mini pitches and communities around in areas that need field safe spaces for kids to play soccer, and also help support our local organizing committee. I mean, putting on
a World Cup is incredibly expensive. And also we have this gigantic fan fest at fair Park for those that aren't going to World Cup matches. We'll have thirty five thousand people a day at fair Park.
You've not specified how much you have put in personally. Is it over a million?
It's a multimillion dollar investment, and I'm proud to do it. This is me supporting soccer and also supporting the game I love so much.
I want to take a step back here. Your father, when you look at it, just instrumental in beginning Major League soccer in the United States. What's so interesting to me is he too served as a co chair of the Dallas host committee. That's back in nineteen ninety four. Emotionally, what has this been like for you?
It's been an amazing journey, is what it's been like. So many of the similarities, the hard work that goes into it, the countless meeting, speaking engagements, raising enthusiasm, fighting for the international broadcast. He was so proud of that in nineteen ninety four, having it at fair Park. We get to have it again here in Dallas at the K. Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. This is where the storytelling of World Cup twenty twenty six will take place, broadcasting back
to almost two hundred countries. And that was so important to him, and I see it now as I'm more an older adult and experiencing this and being able to share those commonalities.
It really is that connection.
My Dad's been gone for a long time now, but it just touches the heart. It really brings you back to so many happy memories. He was so proud to bring the World Cup to Dallas in nineteen ninety four.
You were there, and you've been to every World Cup since. You just kind of went through a laundry list of all the games you've been to in all the places. Is there anything that specifically stuck out to you?
Oh?
I mean, there's so many memories.
I've been to every World Cup since nineteen eighty six, seeing over one hundred and thirty World Cup matches.
Here's what sticks out to me.
And this is my big hope for our visitors and guests and the locals going to games, that you create lifetime memories with families and friends. There have been so many great memories, so many great experiences, experiencing cultures. I hope our visitors get to experience this Texas hospitality. We do it bigger and better than anyone else.
Your family's invested so much into Major League soccer over the years. It's the most popular sport in the world, but here in the United States, it's not football, basketball, baseball. Why do you think it's taking this long for soccer to really make those inroads.
Well, if you really think about Major League Soccer, we're only, you know, thirty one plus years old.
Now, if you think about the game in Europe, a lot of these leagues and teams.
Are over one hundred years, so they have this unbelievable history, much longer than anything we've seen so far in soccer.
And if you look at where Major League Soccer.
Has come from nineteen ninety six to today, I mean, it's just a monumental shift. So I think we're on this unbelievable trajectory. Yet it's not the NFL, it's not the end. But my father was a big believer that in fifty years soccer could catch those leagues.
One area where soccer is growing exponentially, and you're very involved with youth.
Sports, youth sports it's right. That is the lifeblood of soccer.
The rest of the world develops a lot of their own players and those players go through to the professional teams. We do it an amazing job at FC Dallas of doing that. If you look at the US men's national team, you'll have four FC Dallas players on the team, Ricardo Peppi, Weston McKinney, Chris Richards.
And alejandras In Dejas.
All four of those players came from the FC Dallas youth system. And that's how the game is blade globally. You develop your own talents and we lead that whole area.
On the business side of this, in terms of your growing brands, broadcast rights, what are your thoughts on Leono Messi and revenue sharing ownership rights? Is that the future here?
MLS was modeled after the NFL.
My father was really the father of Major League Soccer and he borrowed a lot of those revenues sharing models from the NFL. And so yeah, having Linel Messi play in the league has been an unbelievable uptick there. But working with Apple too, this is this amazing change we're about to have. This year, we moved in front of the paywall, so you can watch ted Lasso and watch
FC Dallas without having to pay extra. But we're also changing our schedule to a traditional European calendar next year, and I think that's going to really be a boost for the league.
What do you hope comes from this World Cup? Then?
A couple of things, Like I said, lifetime memories for family and friends. I hope it inspires the American MESSI open it inspires a young person who wasn't going to pick soccer to wind up picking Major League Soccer, picking FC Dallas developing here.
I think that would be great for the game. And look, they say one of the biggest statistics is hosting.
Nations of World Cups, that their national team has a successful tournament, their average attendance increases by thirty percent after the World Cup. So I hope that for all professional soccer in America.
Women's World Cup in the United States in twenty thirty.
One coming, We're going to start working on it in August. We've already started, but really.
Going in August of this year, my stated goal is to bring the final to Dallas in the Women's World Cup in twenty thirty one. I'm so excited for this. I have two young daughters that are soccer players. I want to show them that anything is possible and to get to share more of the beautiful game with local citizens or my fellow Texan. It's going to be an incredible honor a and welcome more global guests to Dallas.
I want to know what keeps you up at night as you put this bid together.
You know, honestly, it's the scale of it. When you think about the number of people that are coming.
To this market.
We are a spread out community, and you know, I think my biggest surprise and all of it, and the thing I'm maybe most proud of is how our entire community has worked together. Dallas and all the suburbs have worked together in such a great fashion. Transportation is obviously a big issue that a lot of people talk about safety and security, but we have come together in a great way. Monica Paul has been an unbelievable leader for us.
I mean, you have been everywhere in the past two years.
Really, Yeah, it's been quite a travel around talking about World Cup across the United States and specifically here in the Metroplex. It's great to share the story, but it's different than nineteen ninety four, so few people knew the World Cup was coming in ninety four. Everybody knows it's coming in twenty twenty six.
Speaking of looking past the World Cup, we do have an inordinate amount of subscribers from Buffalo, New York to the Texas edition. And what do you think about playing on Thanksgiving against the Bills in our new stadium, which I just do want to let you know is supposed to be much better with Lake effect wins.
Yeah, you know what. That has turned into a fierce rivalry, and it really is.
And you've got two top quarterbacks there and two great teams. My brother recently toured the stadium before it opened and he said it's going to be.
Really impressive there.
So I'm hoping I have a happy Thanksgiving and maybe not the same for you, but.
You know, it's going to be an exciting football season.
I mean, the NFL is an amazing product, right and the way these quarterbacks are driving these teams, I can't remember a generation in the NFL of having better quarterbacks and that on field product is unreal.
And I'm looking forward to seeing that one Well, one of us is going to have a great Thanksgiving, But wishing you the best month and thank you so much for being with Ustan.
Yeah, thank you, Julie,