Fans Have Passion, But Not A Fortune

By Roxana Popescu, International Herald Tribune
Published: June 9, 2006

For people looking to attend the World Cup in style, there will be mobile concierges on hand, luxury goody bags, open bar receptions and rounds of golf between matches. It could get downright glamorous. But for hoi polloi, those ardent if strapped fans crossing an ocean, or sometimes two, to watch the games in Germany for the next month, sticking to a budget will require a few compromises, and an open mind on just about everything.

Sleeping arrangements, for starters.

"I'm renting a motor home," said Cesar Castro, who lives in Boston and works for an Internet company. Castro, who is cheering on his native Colombia, will travel with three friends for a month to see seven games, spending about $1,000 per person on the RV. "We were looking at hotels and we got afraid of how much it was going to cost," he said.

As for high-priced paraphernalia? "I wouldn't splurge on jerseys," said Robert Bonfiglio, a math teacher in Colorado who has attended the past two World Cups, in France and South Korea. "You can always buy bootleg copies of that stuff on eBay for $15 to $20."

Unlike other sports, soccer is not entirely about the bling –yet. Many people are aiming to do more with less and maintain a low profile, including those who could afford to splurge.

"I could stay at any hotel I wanted to," said Emil Chynn, an eye surgeon from New York. "But the hardcore fans are not thrones staying at the nice hotels. They're the ones who are going to be sleeping on the floors of hostel rooms in sleeping bags." He settled on a mid-range hotel for this trip.

If the opening games are when the sports bets start to be settled, the biggest gamble will be whether the tournament brings in the windfall that economists have projected. The German tourism board expects three million visitors, five million additional hotel bookings and complementary expenditures of €500 million, or $638 million. Marco Bargel, chief economist for Deutsche Postbank in Bonn, has said that being host to the quadrennial soccer fest could lift the country's gross domestic product by 0.5 percent.

After the 2002 games, South Korea estimated that consumer spending had totaled about $4 billion, while indirect benefits were estimated at about $15 billion, according to government figures.

However, while countries may covet global sporting events like the World Cup and the Olympics for the jobs and investment opportunities they create, it is not guaranteed that the increase from direct and indirect foreign revenue will be significant or lasting.

Travel agents said the games in Germany had three things that might count in their favor. They are more accessible to the great bulk of soccer fans than the 2002 games in Asia were, the infrastructure is good enough to encourage recreational tourism and soccer is finally heating up in the United States.

"Soccer was really kind of secondary" in America, said Robert Tuchman, president and chief executive of TSE Sports and Entertainment, a corporate sports travel agency in New York. But that has changed. "We have 250 to 300 people going over there," he said, a level of attention that rivals some of the company's biggest domestic events: the Super Bowl football championship, the Final Four in collegiate basketball, and the Masters golf tournament.

Another factor is side travel. Anbritt Stengele, owner of Sports Traveler, a sports travel agency in Chicago, said most of her high-end clients were mixing sports with recreational tourism, typically staying seven to 10 days.

Bonfiglio, the teacher from Colorado, said he would fit in several stops in 11 days. "I have about a week in between matches, so during that time I'll be traveling," he said. "I may take a day or two and go to Sweden. My mother has some cousins there."

The biggest spenders are, of course, corporate travelers. The average cost per person for a five-day corporate- sponsored trip to see the early matches is $4,500 and jumps to $6,500 for the finals, Tuchman said.

For a bigger purse, PrimeSport, an agency in California that bills itself "the global leader in hard-to-get event packages,” offers an $11,689 "Prestige" tour for the final match. It features three nights' accommodation at a five-star hotel in Berlin, a top price Category 1 ticket, hospitality events with an open bar before, during and after the match, preferred stadium entrance, gourmet catering, round-trip transportation to the match and a ticket holder and lanyard. Airfare is not included.

Even for those paying out of pocket, three million tickets at a wide range of prices make the tournament accessible to people who worked the lotteries, saved up the airline miles and wouldn't mind getting cozy with these at cushions on overnight trains.

Rod Hernandez, a college student in New York who went to the2002 World Cup with his father, is counting on spending under $1,000 in 10days, including airfare. He is paying for his trip using a tax return and savings. That breaks down to $130 on a ticket obtained in a lottery, $450 on a rail pass, $157 on the plane ticket (discounted because his uncle works for Delta Air Lines), free housing for several nights with a friend in Paris, and the difference on a side trip to Amsterdam.

What about food, souvenirs and extra hostels – still less than$1,000? "Actually, it's coming out more than that now," he said, after reflecting a moment. German Sferra, a soccer marketer from Dallas who went to the last three World Cups, is spending $1,000 on semifinals tickets, $100 on train travel, and he is using mileage points for his air travel. The rest is up for grabs.

"I'm going to live it up, but part of living it up is trains and buses," he said. "It's not necessarily about the high-life. I'm there to meet the people that are that passionate about the sport."