Has the FIFA Club World Cup fulfilled its initial promise?

Early on July 14th Beijing time, after 90 minutes of intense battle, witnessed by 81,118 spectators on-site, Chelsea finally lifted the championship trophy of the first FIFA Club World Cup (the revamped Club World Cup).

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said at a pre-final press conference that over the past month, a total of 2.5 million fans from 168 countries and regions had watched the Club World Cup on-site. More than 20 billion people worldwide had watched the games. "We can say that this edition of the Club World Cup has been a huge success, opening up the 'golden age' of club football."

As the first club event in history involving 32 top clubs from six continents, comparable in scale to the men's national team World Cup and held in the United States, the revamped Club World Cup has attracted much attention since its inception.

Just as the global media has named it the revamped Club World Cup, when people look back after the first edition of the event, despite some negative voices during the process, they will still find that this event has indeed brought many far-reaching changes to the existing world football industry.

Original intention of the reform: Promote the globalization of the football industry

Historically, the Club World Cup has been closely related to the Intercontinental Cup (including the Toyota Cup). At the beginning of this century, the Intercontinental Cup (including the Toyota Cup), which was originally a match between two teams (the European champion and the South American champion), was expanded to the Club World Cup with seven teams. This was because the world football administrators realized that clubs from other continents outside Europe and South America had risen and needed to be included in the Club World Cup map.

After Gianni Infantino took over FIFA, he strongly advocated expanding the Club World Cup from seven teams to 32 teams. The purpose was the same: to promote the further globalization of club football.

This is mainly to fill the gap of product suppliers. Although fans in various countries can watch the UEFA Champions League, all the participating teams are from the leagues under UEFA. The football world lacks a top club event that can rival the FIFA World Cup and deeply cover the six continents of the world.

Although the schedules of players in European leagues are already full, and the Champions League champion is generally recognized as the world's strongest club team, from the perspective of promoting the global development of football, allowing the commercialization of football to reach markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and driving the common prosperity of world football, FIFA, as the world football governing body, has an inescapable responsibility.

This is also the motivation for Infantino to promote the reform of the Club World Cup. He said in an interview with Yahoo Sports this spring, "We say that football is a global sport, but in fact, if you look beneath the surface, you'll find that the elites are very concentrated in a very small number of clubs in a very small number of countries. And I want to bring it to the whole world."

After a month-long competition of 63 games, has the revamped Club World Cup really promoted the globalization and development reform of the football industry as he said?

From this perspective, the answer should be positive.

Exciting competition: Europe didn't dominate, South America and Asia brought surprises

In this edition of the event, although a European team won the championship, non-European teams also had many outstanding performances: All four Brazilian teams advanced from the group stage. Fluminense eliminated Inter Milan, the runner-up of the Champions League, in the round of 16. Al Hilal caused an upset by eliminating Manchester City, which was a huge shock. Even the "wild card" team, Inter Miami, defeated the Champions League team Porto and advanced to the round of 16 ahead of it.

The FIFA Technical Study Group unanimously gave a positive evaluation of the quality of the event. Among them, Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal manager and the group leader, said that the Club World Cup games were much more intense than expected; German football legend Jürgen Klinsmann said that he saw the players enjoying the games and also saw players who were rarely seen before (such as Franco Mastrantonio of River Plate).

Even the new Real Madrid coach, Xabi Alonso, admitted, "The Club World Cup has shown us the high competitive level of other leagues... European teams may not be very familiar with this. Sometimes, we in Europe take it for granted that we are the champions."

In addition, Auckland City, an amateur team from Oceania, and Zhou Tong, a Chinese player in the team, also stood on this global stage. Objectively speaking, it is extremely difficult for Chinese teams and players to stand on the FIFA World Cup stage. Thanks to the Club World Cup, Zhou Tong got such a rare opportunity. Before the start of the games, a documentary about Zhou Tong supported by Hisense was widely spread on social media. Through this documentary, people in China got a close look at Zhou Tong's inspiring story of persevering with his dream in a foreign country.

The picture is from Zhou Tong's personal Weibo

As a new event product, the debut of the revamped Club World Cup has met expectations. Teams from South America, Asia, and Oceania, which are rarely noticed by fans from other countries on weekdays, have all got the opportunity to show themselves. Of course, thanks to the total prize money of up to $1 billion that FIFA offered for this event, all 32 teams, even amateur teams like Auckland City, will receive generous commercial returns.

At the pre-final press conference, Infantino said that this edition of the Club World Cup had an income of nearly $2.1 billion, with an average income of about $33 million per game, exceeding that of any other club event in the world. However, "FIFA will not take a single cent from organizing the event. All the income will be used to support the development of club football. This includes $1 billion in prize money for participating teams and $250 million in solidarity funds."

As the world's number one sport, the exposure opportunities and commercial returns brought by the industrialization of football should be shared by associations and teams from the six continents. The revamped Club World Cup, with its expanded scale, increased commercialization, and generous incentives, is undoubtedly on the right track in achieving the goal of benefiting football in all continents.

Technology with a human touch: Deeply integrated with sports, playing a more important role

In addition to creating a stage for more regional teams and players and truly benefiting the whole world through redistribution, another "legacy" of this edition of the Club World Cup is that it has become a big showcase for the demonstration and rehearsal of multiple new technologies. Compared with the former, the latter is more visible and has a more far-reaching impact.

The technology most closely related to the game results is, of course, the Video Assistant Referee (VAR). Although FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Championship had both introduced this technology before, this edition of the Club World Cup used it to a new height and in new ways. Judging from the operation effect in the group stage, the VAR in this edition performed relatively smoothly, with an average penalty time of about 40 seconds, 42 seconds shorter than that in the 2022 World Cup. This undoubtedly greatly improved the fluency of the games.

Moreover, different from previous major events, this edition of the event allowed the spectators on-site and in front of the TV broadcasts to watch the VAR footage together with the referees: When the referee was checking the VAR on the sideline, footage from three camera angles was shown on the live screen at the same time, namely, the slow-motion replay of the suspected handball, the side view of the main referee checking the VAR on the sideline, and the footage from the video assistant referee's workspace.

It's worth mentioning that besides Zhou Tong, there was another more prominent Chinese presence in this edition of the Club World Cup. Fans who watched the games should have noticed the same logo "Hisense" on the three broadcast images mentioned above. The VAR technology and products used in the 12 stadiums and the VAR referee rooms of this edition of the Club World Cup were all provided by the Chinese company Hisense. This is also the second time that Hisense has provided a technical solution for a world-class sports event after the 2024 UEFA European Championship.

Hisense's success in becoming the VAR partner of a world-class event also benefits from its half-century of in-depth accumulation in the display technology field. From black-and-white to color, from 1080P to 4K ultra-high definition, world-class sports events have become the touchstone for testing the latest technological achievements. From looking up to others in the early CRT era to lighting up the global top sports event stage with cutting-edge technologies such as RGB-Mini LED today, China's display industry has completed the transformation from a bystander to a leader.

In January this year during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in the United States, Hisense took the lead in releasing the world's first RGB-Mini LED TV, achieving a major leap from traditional black-and-white backlighting to RGB multi-primary color backlighting and from single light control to "simultaneous light and color control". After 10 years of research and development, going through countless failures and adjustments, Hisense's two core chips - the world's first RGB light and color control picture quality chip and the high-efficiency RGB LED chip - became the key to breaking the deadlock.

Since 2016, Hisense has not missed any UEFA European Championship or FIFA World Cup. Now it is also on the sponsorship list of the revamped FIFA Club World Cup. One year later, the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico will be fully held in North America. At that time, it is worth paying attention to what changes in the viewing experience Hisense, which has continuously used technology to support the European Championship and the Club World Cup, will bring to the world's football fans.

In addition to VAR, there are also many other new technology applications that have impressed fans deeply. The most discussed one is definitely the referee's perspective broadcast footage, which has brought a brand-new immersive viewing experience. The footage from this perspective is recorded by a microphone with a miniature camera (at the same height as the eyes) worn by the referee, providing a new viewing angle of the game for TV broadcasts and on-site spectators. Among them, the coin toss is shown in real-time, and key moments such as goals are used for replays on the on-site big screen and in the broadcast footage. Judging from the effect of this edition, it is highly likely that this unique perspective will be gradually introduced into professional football game broadcasts around the world in the future.

For example, this edition of the Club World Cup also used a computer-led system for the first time. When a player breaks through the defensive line and is offside by more than four inches (about 10 centimeters), the system will automatically send a signal to the assistant referee, providing real-time technical assistance.

Top world-class sports events are not only stages for top athletes to show their talents but also indicators of cutting-edge technologies and signs of mainstream values. From VAR helping to significantly shorten the penalty time to the referee wearing a miniature camera to shoot first-person perspective footage, we can see that technology is becoming more closely integrated with sports events - in the perception of fans, people are increasingly aware of the "presence" of technology.

Moreover, as a systematic preview of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, this edition of the FIFA Club World Cup, through the close integration of technology and sports, continuously demonstrates the human touch and warmth of technology - opening up VAR footage to spectators on-site and in front of the TV broadcasts and providing first-person perspective footage improve the viewing experience of fans; the application of the computer-assisted penalty system aims to avoid the risk of additional injuries to players caused by delayed flag-raising, which improves the participation experience of players.

The innovation and application of technology in this edition of the Club World Cup may not be as eye-catching as the game results themselves, but the trends it conforms to or leads will appear in more major sports events in the future world of football and even sports, jointly promoting the upgrading of the sports industry in many aspects such as event operation and humanistic care. Promoting understanding, communication, and care among people in human society is undoubtedly the greatest value of sports, and technology is playing an increasingly important role.

Conclusion

Although it is only the first edition after the reform, the revamped Club World Cup, as a deeply globalized club event, has shown its unique value different from the UEFA Champions League and the Intercontinental Cup - in terms of competition, it has become a stage for more teams from continents including Asia, Africa, and Latin America to show themselves; in terms of operation, through events, commercialization, and prize money settings, it benefits clubs in more regions; in terms of technology, since it has a global impact, it has naturally become a testing ground for new technologies and products.

These unique values will help the Club World Cup attract more fans, sponsors, and broadcasters in the future. On this basis, they will jointly promote the more sustainable development of football globally.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Lanxiong Sports" (ID: lanxiongsports). Author: Romano. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.