The World Cup Experience Lives Up to the Hype

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Keep your hands off each other this week, or VAR may kill all your hopes and dreams.

Your humble newsletter writer is on his way home from a World Cup road trip as we speak, so today’s newsletter talks about that experience. Then I borrow from a book excerpt that Reason just published about the history of sports betting. I think you’ll like it! The last section has my latest podcast appearance.

After months of planning, hours of driving, and thousands of dollars spent, my in-person participation in the World Cup has come to an end.

Was it worth it? Absolutely.

I, along with three others, went to Philadelphia for Croatia and Ghana’s group stage match—an entertaining back-and-forth affair that Croatia won 2–1, though the stakes were low, as both teams were almost certain to avoid elimination. From Philadelphia we drove up to Foxboro, Massachusetts, to see the round of 32 match between Paraguay and Germany (whom I’ve spent two decades watching and supporting because of heritage that is admittedly a smaller part of my ancestry than I once thought). Paraguay had already parked the bus before they managed to score a first-half goal. Germany tied it up in the second half and undoubtedly outplayed them, but couldn’t make it matter on the scoreboard. A goal in extra time was called off for a foul that is probably not called more often. Germany fell behind early in penalty kicks but clawed their way back level, only to lose it heartbreakingly in the sixth round of kicks.

My family takes a lot of sports-related trips, so I’m often asking them, “Well, other than the loss, how was the trip?” To answer my own question: Great, but the result is kind of a big deal, too. I didn’t expect Germany to win the whole tournament, but I did expect them to at least win the one game I was at—where they were heavy favorites—which was my first time seeing the German team in person. The sadness is less about losing to Paraguay and more about the denial of communal joy I’d hoped to experience with the other German fans, the unrelenting positive vibes that would have fueled me for a couple more days, and the lifelong memory of having seen Germany triumph in an elimination game in the World Cup.

So missing out on that opportunity sucked. But, as I said, the trip was still worth the time, money, and energy we invested into it. Watching a crushing loss is always a possibility when you travel to see teams you love.

In hindsight, especially with some games commanding a $1,000-plus get-in price, it actually seems like we did the World Cup on the cheap. I don’t think we spent more than $1,000 per person on tickets, lodging, transportation, and food combined for two games and four days on the road. We spent about $220 per ticket on FIFA’s Category 2 tickets (subsidized by scalping other tickets) and both times ended up in upper deck seats near midfield. I picked games within driving distance (although one of us flew in from the Midwest) and stayed with friends where we could—where we couldn’t, just a week out from our stay we still managed to book a reasonably cheap hotel 40 minutes from Foxboro without having to worry about bedbugs.

I’m left wishing I had actually spent more to see another game. The initial prices to go see the U.S. team now seem like they would have been worthwhile, even with the cost of a cross-country flight and hotel.

Here are a few bits of advice for anyone considering a World Cup or soccer trip. Since soccer is expansive and played up and down a large field, there’s not a bad seat in the stadium—at least for viewing gameplay. Being in or near the energetic supporters section would probably be even more fun (I was generally sitting around fellow Americans, but they weren’t neutrals, they had rooting interests). Worry more about the quantity of games you’re going to rather than getting really good tickets to fewer games.

If you’re going to go to the World Cup, you should go to the World Cup: Get to the stadium area early and meet other fans, take in the vibes, and get yourself more hyped up. Don’t just show up right before kickoff and leave right after. While you’re on the trip, go to a Fan Fest and a watch party and immerse yourself in the tournament.

Sometimes I hate soccer. Sometimes I love it. The World Cup is great. FIFA deserves to make billions of dollars off of this!

I have an excerpt to share with readers this week from David Bockino’s recent book Over/Under: An Unexpected History of Sports Betting. I really enjoyed the book and recommend it—the chapters are very digestible, and I was sad to reach its end. The history of sports betting in the U.S. is so much more than the Black Sox scandal, Pete Rose, and the widespread legalization of sports betting in the last decade. The writing is more descriptive than prescriptive, so readers are left smarter and able to form their own opinions.

I learned a lot from the book, and I think you’ll enjoy this excerpt from its last two chapters.

By David Bockino

In May 1995, a supporters group associated with the English football club Stoke City FC launched a campaign demanding wholesale changes to their beloved team. At the time, Stoke City played in Division One, the competition just below the top tier, three-year-old English Premier League (EPL). At the conclusion of every season the best clubs in the First Division get bumped up to the EPL to compete against heavyweights like Manchester United and Liverpool. But Stoke City was languishing, and hope that it would get promoted any time soon was fading. In an advertisement published in a local newspaper, the group asked, “Does the club’s present level of investment in players provide for a real promotion challenge in the future?” Much of the ire was directed toward Stoke City chairman and majority shareholder Peter Coates. Owner of a catering business and a collection of betting shops, Coates had been in charge of Stoke for close to a decade. “Whenever a club is seen not to be doing well there always has to be someone to blame,” he said a few days after the group’s ad. The problem, Coates explained, was a lack of resources. The money being poured into clubs like Blackburn, winners of the English Premier League title, is “the exception to the rule. Generally this does not happen and we would love such a sugar daddy at Stoke. But I don’t think we are going to get one.” He was right. No man was going to save Stoke City. But a woman would.

On January 10, 1998, Stoke City suffered its worst home defeat in history, a 7–0 drubbing by Birmingham City. No longer content with strongly worded missives, angry supporters stormed the field: “They came through the door like a herd of buffaloes,” a former Stoke City player told a reporter. A few days later, Coates resigned as chairman. A few months later, Stoke City was relegated to the Second Division. Almost two years later, Stoke City was sold to a consortium of investors from Iceland.

No longer in charge of a football club, Peter Coates returned to the corporate world to find that his daughter had big plans for the family business. Denise, an econometrics graduate from the University of Sheffield, had doubled the number of betting shops and grown revenue. But her real ambition was to shed the brick-and-mortar model to focus on the internet. Cognizant of the startup costs needed to compete with the offshore operators, Denise mortgaged the buildings and took out a loan. She purchased the domain name bet365.com for $25,000 and in March 2001 launched the company’s website. Four years later, all the shops had been sold and resources were being poured into the online business.

Her bet on the future of the internet paid off (maybe as well as any bet has ever paid off). With Coates’ focus on technology, customer service, and marketing, bet365 became one of the most popular online gambling websites in the world, generating far more revenue than the retail shops ever had. Suddenly the Coates family was flush with cash. In 2006, they bought Stoke City FC back from the Iceland group and Peter Coates resumed his role as chairman. With its newfound wealth, the family could now provide the resources needed to elevate the club’s fortunes. Two years later, much to the delight of its rabid fans, Stoke City finished in second place and was promoted to the English Premier League. Just a decade after her father’s acrimonious exit, Denise Coates had used gambling money to give her community what they had always wanted: a world-class football club.

Read the rest of the book excerpt here.

I went on Reason‘s Freed Up podcast again with Robby Soave last week to talk about New York City’s socialists, discuss the World Cup, and rate dragon names.

The fact that this happened to another team is the only small comfort I have after Germany’s loss (The last replay shows it best.)

An insane way for this PK to sneak in for Morocco 🤯 pic.twitter.com/sUBe1cj69K

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) June 30, 2026

That’s all for this week. Enjoy watching the real event of the weekend, the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest (July 4, noon Eastern).