I don’t see anything wrong with Atlantas stadium, but there is no way it’s held there, none. It’s capacity, like NRG, is a non-starter. From what I can neither city even put in a bid to host the final.
The selection process for marquee matches will take place in the ensuing months and all cities that have been selected to host will have the chance to lobby for the marquee matches but there’s a general consensus that Mexico City will be opening match and the semis and final are going to be in the US with a less than a handful seriously considered. The World Cup bid is a triparty united bid but make no mistake the US is the defacto lead and evidenced by the US having more members on the bid committee and organizing team.
Full disclosure: I worked as part of the owner’s rep team during the pre-construction phase of MB Stadium in 2013-14 so I have a few good contacts with the stadium management team and the Atlanta Sports Council, ASC (ATL’s counterpart to the Harris County Houston Sports Authority). My buddy who works for ASC told me weeks ago that ATL has a chance to get the final but that it will mainly be a politicking decision along with the metrics (capacities etc.) He specifically said “FIFA gonna FIFA”. lol
Now will ATL be selected for the Final? I wouldn’t bet on it but I wouldn’t be that shocked if they were.
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Easy there, Norb! That’s one of my babies you’re talking about lol
I don’t think I ever heard a person criticize the Halo or the Shutter either. The roof opening at MB Stadium is comparable in size to the one at AT&T Stadium if not a tad larger if I remember correctly so I wouldn’t call it small exactly. Have you been to MB Stadium?
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While the US is pretty much the host, the number of hosts mostly comes down to best available stadiums. Canada has 2 sites, both less than 45K. They’d don’t have the stadiums we do. If there was something close to an NFL stadium in Montreal and Edmonton, then they’d be hosting. Same goes with Mexico. The US was always gonna have more sites, but the huge disparity is 100% a function of our stadium infrastructure.
Unless they can expand Atlanta to 100k, they aren’t getting the final. It’s pretty much, NY, LA and Dallas, I’d be shocked if one of those weren’t selected.
An ATL final capacity wouldn’t be that far off from modern final capacities. And with this being FIFA, all ATL has to say is we’ll compensate FIFA for 10k seats at a price of $500 per or something. Also LA is limited capacity wise as well.
After reviewing some bud materials I find it interesting that Dallas has 25k “premium” seats compared to NYC‘s ~12k, ATL’s 15k and LA’s 13k. My revised order would be: 1. Dallas, 2. NYC 3A. LA 3B. ATL
FIFA bribing should always be considered, but that $500 would be more like 1500-2k, plus the tax for FIFA guys to go to Atlanta over LA or NYC, so probably 4k.
I’d thought I heard SoFi can be expanded, ut quick google search didn’t turn up much outside of 100k+ for concerts.
It sounds like he has his sites set on a US city.