Since then, it hasn\u2019t really gone away. The All Whites\u2019 opening match of this year\u2019s World Cup was TVNZ\u2019s biggest streaming day on record<\/a>. I\u2019ve sat in bars early on weekday mornings with passionate fans sipping their Guinness. People who\u2019ve never spoken to me about football before are suddenly talking about Cabo Verde, VAR and Erling Haaland (a lot about Erling Haaland).<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just that the country likes football, which has been among our most played sports for a while. But now we\u2019re going out of our way to watch it on screens and in stadiums in unprecedented numbers. Even my grandparents, who only learnt what the word \u201cstreaming\u201d meant last week, have a TVNZ+ season pass.<\/p>\n The success of the women\u2019s World Cup, co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia in 2023, plus the growing popularity of the game across the Pacific region, begs the inevitable question: could we ever (co-)host a men\u2019s World Cup?<\/p>\n Several proposals have been put forward for how it could be done. A New Zealand-Australia bid seems the most natural, with the two nations having co-hosted major tournaments before, while a more bizarre trans-Pacific bid between New Zealand, Fiji and the United States<\/a> has also been floated.<\/p>\n These proposals face some limitations. For a start, stadiums need a minimum of 40,000 seats to meet Fifa\u2019s World Cup hosting requirements \u2013 New Zealand and Australia don\u2019t have enough stadiums that big to host the tournament alone, especially not the new expanded format (and Fifa are now mulling expanding it to include even more teams in future). And the long distances and threat of jetlag seem certain to kill off any New Zealand-USA bid.<\/p>\n But there is one way that New Zealand could be part of hosting a men\u2019s World Cup. Along with our Pacific neighbours Australia and Indonesia, we could pull off one of the greatest sporting tournaments in history.<\/p>\n There are plenty of naysayers, particularly after Australia withdrew their bid for the 2034 tournament. But their reasons<\/a> largely relate to that edition specifically, given Saudi Arabia\u2019s growing influence over Fifa and calls for unity within the Asian Football Confederation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our prospects as co-hosts for 2038 are very different.<\/p>\n The first hurdle is that, with Qatar having hosted in 2022 and Saudi Arabia to come, Fifa may be reluctant to award another World Cup to the Asian Football Confederation to which Australia and Indonesia belong.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be real though, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand are literally a continent apart from the Middle East. Giving the South Pacific its first opportunity to host the world\u2019s premier sporting event would be a huge boost to football\u2019s growing popularity in the region. And let\u2019s not forget that just three of the 23 World Cups to date have happened entirely outside of Europe and the Americas.<\/p>\n Time zones would prove the next major challenge, but this is a challenge every World Cup learns to overcome. Look at the pubs staying open until 5am<\/a> for England\u2019s Round of 16 appearance in this year\u2019s tournament, or the 410 restaurants and bars that applied to stay open<\/a> to show World Cup matches in Sweden over the current tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n A 7pm kick-off in Auckland or a 5pm kick-off in Melbourne would be a beautiful pub-breakfast-friendly 8am in London. While European and American audiences might need to set a few early alarms, a Pacific World Cup would align with one of Fifa\u2019s biggest growth markets \u2013 East Asia<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here at home, we would benefit from the improved local infrastructure that major tournaments often leave behind. Our critical infrastructure could also benefit from a World Cup \u2013 we\u2019ve seen this before in New Zealand, including the dramatic facelift on Auckland\u2019s waterfront<\/a> ahead of the 2021 America\u2019s Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n Warm-up matches hosted in smaller stadiums would help spread these positive impacts across the country, and our Pacific neighbours could benefit as well \u2013 picture Noumea\u2019s Stade Numa-Daly Magenta, Port Moresby\u2019s National Football Stadium\u00a0and Nadi\u2019s HFC Bank Stadium packed with travelling fans cheering their team on in warm-up matches.<\/p>\n Australian ambitions to host the men\u2019s World Cup in the past have drawn concerns from other sporting codes that soccer\u2019s gain will be their loss. Former chief executive Andrew Demetriou once defiantly said AFL \u201cdo not \u2013 and will not \u2013 accept second place for Australian football<\/a>\u201d. This view is shortsighted. Beyond the obvious benefits of improved stadiums, the World Cup would give our codes the opportunity to play in front of a global market \u2013 see the Tartan Army packing out Fenway Park to watch the Boston Red Sox. Ironically, a Fifa World Cup could be the greatest global advert for Super Rugby, NRL and AFL in history.<\/p>\nEden Park during the 2023 women\u2019s World Cup (Photo: Eden Park\/Facebook)<\/p>\n
The 82,000 seat Jakarta International Stadium hosted the U17 World Cup in 2023 (Photo: Nodanodaboo via Wikipedia)<\/p>\n