So I just spent a good chunk of the last four days out at Wake Med Soccer Park in Cary. Yeah. And for those people, by the way, this is the Adam Gold Show. We're heard in Wilmington, and we're heard in Asheville, among other places.
So all over the state, we go from the coast all the way to the mountains. That goes without saying, sort of. So you might not have come down to check this out.
Sure. And I totally understand because, frankly, nobody really knew about it. I mean, we knew that it was coming. And to be perfectly honest, they didn't have a hard time selling tickets, but in terms of generating interest in it. There weren't a ton of people that really knew that.
So what's what's what's going on? But if you're a fan of 5200 people buying tickets to what was it, seven sessions of soccer. Obviously, not every single one of those tickets is purchased, but most of them were, not to mention suites, not to mention VIP areas.
If you're a fan of that, then that's what this is. This just was for four days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. There were 16 matches played.
16? I think 16 matches played each day. Well, each on Thursday.
There were. I guess 16 played on Friday as well. There were 63 total matches played over.
So I got my math wrong. There were 63 total matches played in four days using what amounted to five fields that were each about half the size of a regular of a regulation soccer field. The goals were smaller. But there was a ton of energy and a ton of excitement. And if you like feistiness, yeah, there was a little extra in a lot of matches. For instance, Borussia Dortmund, at least their uniforms, because that was hardly Borussia Dortmund quality because they went 0-3. Borussia Dortmund got into a fight on like a fistfight. Oh, on the field. Yeah.
Wow. You know, I was watching MMA this weekend, so we were kind of watching soccer. There was a team called Dallas FC. That's not an MLS team. There was only one MLS team that provided that entered the tournament, and that was Charlotte FC.
So thank you to them for coming up. But Dallas FC was ultimately kicked out for one of their players, or maybe more, using a racial slur at one of the players from the team that was outfitted by. I'm not sure it was anything that West Ham really said. Outfitted by West Ham from the Premier League.
But it got feisty, and maybe that's because there was a million dollars on the line that it got feisty. And when it was all said and done, John Mugar threw out the check to Newtown Pride FC for $1 million. How that will be distributed, where it goes, I guess it's kind of up to them. Each team designated a charity. So there will be a charitable donation back to Newtown, Connecticut. And yes, it is where Sandy Hook Elementary School is. We all know what happened there.
It was about a dozen years ago with the school shooting. So if you want to feel good about the winner, that's a great way to do it. But that team had a strategy and executed it, and it was just an amazing four-day stretch over in Cary. And now, the number one question that was asked of me, I will ask of John Mugar, who is the man behind the soccer tournament.
It was just the basketball tournament, now we've got a million dollar soccer tournament. So before I ask you the question that was asked of me probably 15 times this weekend as I spent a lot of time out there, let me just ask you how it went from your perspective, your expectations going in, and what the four-day stretch was like. Thanks, Adam.
Thank you for all the kind words and support. It went extremely well. Obviously, this is our inaugural event. We had to make a ton of assumptions. We had never really run the festival atmosphere like this before. Our motto was always the tennis U.S. Open up in New York. We wanted that up-close access to athletes, play, intense play, and I think we achieved all that.
We feel pretty good about it. So when you were looking for a festival atmosphere, there were food trucks, there were games. And I know especially Saturday afternoon, you could hear it from the stands.
There was a lot of chatter going on in that little fan fest area. Are there things you would add? Would you start that sooner? What would you do differently in terms of that type of stuff? There's a lot we want to add. I think that for me, the coolest stuff was bouncing from field to field, down in the lower field, bouncing back up to the stadium, interacting with the brackets, seeing teams walk through the footprint. So the more we can expand the event out of the actual stadium and onto the whole grounds collectively and get teams and players of reason to move throughout the grounds as well, the better this event will become. So do you anticipate in the future you may be using only one half of the stadium and not using two fields on the stadium and moving more stuff into the back fields?
That's interesting. That's been sort of a debate point with our team the last 24 hours, because some people have come up to me and recommended playing two games at once in the stadium. And we always thought that that would be a little bit overkill and confusing, but others think it would be pretty awesome to just bounce back and forth and always have a game going on in the stadium in addition to the three other fields.
So it's all up in the air at this point. John Mugar with the soccer tournament is here. So let me ask the question, will you be back next year to Wake Med Soccer Park?
We would love to. I mean, I am blown away, as is our whole team and the players at the support. Unbelievable show of support for four straight days. I mean, we heard that that is the hotbed of the sport, and we found out firsthand.
I've always said it's a basketball. If the community shows up for us, then we're going to show up for them. And I'd be hard-pressed to say anything different other than it was an incredible, incredible show of community support. We would love to go back there.
Well, I speak for them when I say they would love to have you back. Again, I went out Wednesday for some of the Media Day festivities. How hard was it? Well, I don't know how hard was it. How did the Rexham thing come to come to come to fruition? Did did they just jump in early?
How much of that kind of helped the rest of it? It was huge. I think every every big team, not just Rexham, every big team we got was an opportunity for us to introduce this event to new fans and new fan bases. Rexham, I just believe, is America's soccer team right now.
I think it's the most popular soccer team in America at any level, any league. And so I think the fan of Rexham is more of a casual soccer fan who is more open to experimental rules and innovation like we have. So I think that was a perfect a perfect one for us to nag. And we wound up getting them just through blind emails and outreach to Sean Harvey at Rexham.
And he answered one of them and it went from there. I determined that they were the home team, even against the U.S. women, because I was at that match on I guess it was Thursday evening. And I swear the amount of people wearing Rexham T-shirts eclipsed everything that I saw over the really the four days.
I was out there for two almost two full days. It was just tremendous. They really were the home team. So in terms of what you're looking for going forward, I think it would be confusing to have two games going on in the stadium just for public address purposes. But I guess you have that for the games on the backfield as well. Would you would you try to enclose the fields a little bit more? I think what we want to do. One thing we need to address is there's an enormous supply demand imbalance. I mean, we were sold out of six out of seven sessions.
Yeah. And for a first year event, which has never even put the product in front of anybody before to be filled out before we did, that is insane to me. So what we want to do is try to figure out a way to get more people in there because it was such a cool exclusive experience and we want to keep it that way. We don't want to have too many people throughout and make it frustrating for people to move throughout. So and the other thing is there's a huge supply demand imbalance of the team to get over 450 people inquire about entering.
And I've since been slammed since our championship yesterday with even more inquiry. So you can just go beyond the 32 team format. The World Cup in 2026 is going to be 48.
Right. This is the type of thing where we can expand on that footprint, maybe take over more fields and expand the whole event footprint. Well, there are more there are more fields at Wake Med Soccer Park that that you guys didn't get a chance to use. And there was even another field in the back. Well, I guess field six because the weather never got bad. Field six, I don't believe, was really used.
So there there are even more fields at your disposal. Let me get to John Mugar from the soccer tournament is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. Let me just get about the rules. I saw Hoosiers Army and I forget who they played in that match play. Get down to two V two.
So it's a field player for each plus the goalies for each. It was absolutely hysterical. Like who came up with that concept and can we get can we get to it sooner? I didn't even see that. I was waiting for two V two and I didn't even see that.
I got to go watch watch the tape on that. So the concept came from partially TVT. We decided we want to end all games on a made basket to go to Elam ending. So he set a target score instead of playing until the clock runs out. And the idea for peeling a player off was from someone on our team, Tim Brodson, who, you know, if the targets were ending, it's a pretty cool concept, but you could literally be playing for an infinite amount of time in soccer.
So how do you expedite the end of the game and ensure it's going to be played in a reasonable hour to an hour and 20 minute window? And that was the answer. We had no idea how that was going to go. Huge experiment and to have gone through 63 games where it went not only well, but I think extremely well.
We're very lucky. It was just tremendous to to watch something like that. We all also the target score allows for massive comebacks as Zala did over. I guess it was Komo in where they were down. I think it was it was, I think, three nothing going into the target score time.
So the first two for one and Zala came all the way back. It was tremendous. My only my only criticism of the the way the games looked was at times. The goalkeepers would slow the game down to where there was just passing out, you know, back by the center stripe for whatever reason. But there was booing at times from the crowd that wanted to see action. Is there can we get a shot clock? Adam, you should be on our team because you are just directly in my mind right now.
These are all the points that we all observed as well. And a shot clock was raised to me that is an idea. There's, I think, a rule in football where you can't pass the ball back to the goalkeeper keeper two consecutive times, which might alleviate it.
But in the end, I just wonder, you know, is it really a problem? You know, it's simple. Is it bad when like a team that's down three nothing can do that? And they had to play very smart possession oriented soccer. And they did that. And the other team didn't play great possession oriented soccer. So they were rewarded for it despite the slow play.
I thought I still think there's something to be said for how we had it. Each week, we dive into the mind of the con artist, uncovering the secrets behind the biggest Ponzi schemes you've never heard about. Are we talking about Bernie Madoff or Charles Ponzi?
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Subscribe to the Ponzi playbook wherever you get your podcasts. I'm not arguing one. I mean, I loved it, but I did hear I did hear booing and I understood what they were trying to do. Also, in the last the last semi-final, the team that played Azala had just had to do the comeback. And that actually got down to, I think, 2v2 plus the keeper. So it was 3v3. They had just played. They played the last match in the heat Saturday afternoon. And I think they were just spent when we got down to it. It was gosh, it was so much fun.
You had to be proud of everything. Yeah, I thought I thought that may be another factor that contributed to the slower play at the end of the game. I think these players are playing seven games over four days and some of them maybe not in the prime of their playing career.
But but but with Zola, they did what they had to do. And it still was entertaining for me what this whole thing boils down to is 63 game winning goals. And then the celebration thereafter. That's very unique to this format. Those are the best highlights that come out of it. And credit to anybody who can master that model.
Real quick before I let you go, John Mugar from the soccer tournament. Rather than prove present a check for one million dollars, why not put a million dollars in cash on the side of the field? Yeah, I know people have brought that up with basketball, just felt to Vince McMahon for me. I got I got to know my role and who I am and who Vince is and let him do his thing and let me do mine. And I can't do the briefcase. That's my problem. You're not a briefcase kind of guy. I'm not. I just I can't bring out that leverage. How about just a cartoon bag with a dollar sign on it?
No, I mean, a styrofoam check is sad enough as it is, but I just I can't go with it with a cash. Well, congratulations on the event. Absolutely tremendous. I'll buy my tickets as soon as you announce the next the next field. I appreciate your time.
John Mugar from the soccer tournament. Congratulations again. And we'll talk to you down the road. Thanks so much for your support, Adam. You got it.
Take care. That was again, I can't stress enough how much fun the entire event was. And I think maybe John's on to something that that there were that maybe the Rexham fan is a casual fan. I don't know. But I will tell you this. There were fifty two hundred soccer experts there. And I kid you not.
Every session. Yeah. I heard conversations about what we were, what the teams were, who these players were, whether they were right or not. There was so much confidence oozing from the people who professed to be experts about this. I'm not criticizing or anything because for all I know, they were right. Did you feel like you were seeing Twitter in like person? Oh, 100 percent. It was so it was so Twitter is great. Just in your face. My gosh.
But what a what an absolute blast. If I were them. I think you can use the stadium for both team for both games. But I wouldn't have two games going on at the same time. And I would make that they had there by Chris Paul was out there. Oh, no, Paul was out there for every session. Now, part of it is because he is he I think he has a stake in the basketball tournament. That helps.
So it's the same company. So I think that he was out there as a show of support, although for all I know, he loves the sport as well. But the. The one negative in having one game go on on the field one and one game go on and field two on the stadium, is that with nothing going on on field two, all you could see because there was nothing preventing you from seeing the other field. All you could see were empty seats.
Yeah. And that's a bad visual. Whether or not there's no game going on there. That's why there's no seats. But what they need, I think, would be like a raised VIP section in between the two fields. So you can't see into the other stadium. Yeah.
And it does. It looks like so much more of like a small, you know, very intimate stadium. Look, it was an absolute blast. I'm gushing too much about it because it was it was just a ton of fun.
No, that's right. Can't wait for next year. The weather wasn't bad either. That doesn't hurt, even though you might have melted a little bit on one Saturday. Seriously. And now this goes for any any game where you go to Wake Med Soccer Park because the the seats on one side of the field are plastic.
OK. Now, it's not necessarily better on metal, but on plastic. Bring something to sit on. Seat cushion. That isn't doesn't have to be a seat cushion.
Could be literally can be a newspaper. A towel. Yeah.
Anything. I could not believe the heat coming off the seat. Did you just fry your skin off?
It was spectacular. Hey, anybody that grew up with the slides, the aluminum? Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. We know the absolute the absolute worst. But I was able to endure my rear end nearly melting.
Yes. To to watch Saturday afternoon for quarterfinal soccer matches. My my son was a ball boy for for the last three of them. And then he was like, the semis.
I can work the semis to dad. Look at him go. And I'm like, dude, we've been here all day, all day. So we watched the semifinals at home once we got to the quarterfinals. Everything was on Peacock.
Oh, OK. Actually, the championship match was on CNBC. Very good. Well, well done. Well done, event.
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