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Jeff Carlisle, U.S. soccer correspondent
The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, is among the venues selected to host games at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, with FIFA targeting an announcement on the full list of venues in the upcoming weeks, sources told ESPN.
Other venues under consideration, sources said, include Seattle’s Lumen Field, Orlando’s Inter.Co Stadium, Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium and Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, though none of these have yet been confirmed.
The Guardian was the first to report the Club World Cup venues, while also mentioning that MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, and an undisclosed venue in the Philadelphia area are also set to be named.
The Club World Cup has long been pushed by FIFA president Gianni Infantino in an effort for world soccer’s governing body to garner more of the revenue pouring into the club game. FIFA had planned to launch the expanded version of the tournament, initially with 24 teams, in 2021 in China, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation.
FIFA confirmed in June 2023 that it would launch a 32-team Club World Cup in the U.S. in 2025, scheduling the tournament over a four-week period from June 15-July 13.
But FIFA has run into opposition from other stakeholders in the sport. Players, coaches, and unions — including FIFPRO and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) in England — have all flagged concerns over an increasing workload. Sources have told ESPN that the Premier League is concerned by the imposition of the Club World Cup in the summer window — a space usually taken by international soccer.
There is congestion in the U.S. as well, with the Concacaf Gold Cup set to take place in a similar timeframe, from June 14 to July 6.
To that end, sources have said that the Club World Cup was slated to take place on the East Coast of the U.S. while the Gold Cup would be held mostly in West Coast venues. But the participation of the Seattle Sounders has complicated matters, hence the possible inclusion of Lumen Field as one of the stadiums used for the Club World Cup.
While the logo and audio signature for the competition was announced on Sept. 4, there are still plenty of details that remain to be ironed out.
FIFA announced in mid-July that it had opened a bidding tender for broadcast rights after it was reported that talks with Apple had stalled due to the tech giant’s $1 billion bid falling way short of FIFA’s $4 billion asking price. The Athletic reported that FIFA held a call with potential broadcasters earlier this week in a bid to move the process along, but little to no progress has been made.
Information from ESPN’s Lizzy Becherano and Mark Ogden contributed to this report.