Although temperatures have been soaring in recent days, the excitement for the biggest World Cup ever still seems far from reaching its peak. In the meantime, we can already analyze a trend that isn’t limited to soccer but extends to many sporting and musical events, all characterized by a certain degree of expansion: more events, more teams, and larger audiences. The leisure industry is pressing harder and harder on the accelerator, but what are the potential pitfalls? We discuss this with Alessandro Siviero, senior lecturer in the Bachelor of Science in Leisure Management at SUPSI.

Sports events are getting bigger and bigger: it’s not just soccer with more matches and more tournaments - think of Formula 1, tennis, and so on. But there’s more to it, because the 2026 World Cup is introducing European audiences to a different conception of sports. Let’s start there and then delve deeper into the ongoing evolution. 
In the U.S. model, professional sports are part of the entertainment industry. Teams are franchises - that is, brands that must operate within a specific market. If that market no longer guarantees revenue, the franchise can be moved elsewhere. Las Vegas is now one of the most striking examples of this dynamic. Take hockey: a city with no tradition of winter sports managed to win the Stanley Cup. It is a prime example of how, in the United States, sports are an integral part of the entertainment business. The team does not represent a region, but rather a competitive, media-driven, and commercial product. 

SoFi Stadium - (Di Bobak Ha'Eri - Opera propria, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129507885) 

The European model is different. Here, competitions are traditionally governed by the principle of promotion and relegation: winners move up, losers move down. It is a system that links sporting growth to performance on the field. Furthermore, teams have strong regional ties. It would be difficult to imagine a team from Milan deciding, for economic convenience, to move to Rome or even just to Monza. In Europe, a club is not perceived merely as an asset, but as part of the urban and social identity.

This model, however, is finding it increasingly difficult to sustain itself. The underlying principle is that you pay to win: you pay for performance, so you pay the best athletes. Athletes are managed by agents, and agents have an interest in continuously increasing market value. From a financial standpoint, the system becomes fragile: costs often grow faster than revenues, and clubs are driven to seek new sources of income.

The response has been to increase the number of events on the calendar. More competitions, more matches, more international windows—all to boost broadcasting rights revenue. The problem is that this solution risks producing a paradoxical effect: in order to financially sustain the system, events are multiplied to the point of distorting their very meaning.

We see this in soccer. A 48-team World Cup isn’t driven solely by sporting logic. It also—and perhaps above all—responds to the need to sell more games, more broadcast rights, and more attention. The same applies to the growth of competitions like the Nations League, the Club World Cup, the new formats of European cup competitions, and the ongoing expansion of the calendar. Unless we openly choose the closed-league model, the risk is that we’ll end up with a form of gigantism anyway: events that are ever larger, ever more frequent, and ever harder to distinguish from one another.

Estadio Azteca - (Di ProtoplasmaKid - Opera propria, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=191938309)

The same can be said for music.
With digitization, concerts no longer serve merely to promote a record release. They have become the main source of income for many artists, their management, and the entire live music industry. In this landscape, large multinational corporations, such as Live Nation, have established themselves and vertically integrated into the music industry. Today, they manage artists, organize concerts, and control venues, ticketing, and promotion. It is no coincidence that in the United States, this model has come under scrutiny as a potential form of excessive market concentration.

A similar dynamic is also evident in Europe. Streaming revenues - especially for non-top-tier artists - are not sufficient on their own to sustain a career. The solution is to increase the number of live shows. But here a physical limit emerges: an artist cannot multiply themselves indefinitely. So the trend shifts toward ever-larger concerts, focusing on audience size and the sheer scale of the event.

The risk is that the quality of the experience takes a back seat. One of the most recent examples to spark controversy was Cesare Cremonini’s concert, with many people complaining that they watched the performance from terrible vantage points - even behind portable toilets. It’s an interesting sign: it’s no longer enough to say that an event drew 100,000 people. We need to ask ourselves what kind of experience those 100,000 people actually had.

In my view, we’re nearing a saturation point. After COVID, there was a phase in which the industry tried to recoup what it had lost: more dates, more tours, more tickets, bigger events. But this push can’t last forever. There will still be artists capable of drawing hundreds of thousands of people - Vasco Rossi has announced his anniversary concert, aiming for half a million spectators - but in general, I believe we’ll have to return to a more sustainable model of entertainment.

These examples clearly illustrate how the leisure economy is constantly growing. We have more opportunities for cultural and sporting activities, but also increasingly fierce competition for people’s time: sports, concerts, festivals, travel, exhibitions, and so on. All competing with one another.

The problem is that this growth risks eroding the very things that make an event an event: the anticipation, the rarity, the collective dimension, and the feeling of participating in something that will never happen exactly the same way again. In our daily lives, an event is, by definition, something that doesn’t happen often. It’s a break from the routine, an exception. Today, however, we’re faced with a growing number of events organized primarily according to economic logic.

Celebrations in Mexico City after the opening game - (Di Wotancito - Opera propria, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=193831936)

Are we perhaps losing the “event” aspect of events?
Perhaps so. The number of events, the number of people involved, the prices, and the media coverage surrounding them have all increased. It’s a system that will likely continue to work for a few more years, but the margins are shrinking - not just the financial ones, but the emotional ones as well. Because if everything is an event, nothing is truly an event anymore.

You can see this in the way we approach major sporting events as well. From a marketing perspective, practices like using soccer to promote a brand or product remain simple, well-established, and easy to understand. It’s immediate, almost natural marketing. It would be strange not to take advantage of it.

It must be said, however, that the emotional attachment seems to have changed. There’s less atmosphere, less dedicated fan culture, and less of a sense of collective anticipation. If we think back to the European Championship a few years ago, we remember the little flags attached to car mirrors, the themed storefronts, and the cities decked out in colors. Today, these signs seem less common.

We must therefore consider whether the ordinariness of these events - rather than their extraordinary nature - is changing the way people experience them. Once upon a time, the anticipation was part of the experience. Today, the calendar is so packed that anticipation risks disappearing. The World Cup, the European Championship, the Nations League, the Club World Cup, qualifiers, international friendlies: the schedule is nonstop.

The problem isn’t just that there are too many events. The problem is that their proliferation can diminish desire, identification, and emotional engagement. Events continue to grow as an economic product, but they risk losing value as a collective experience.

Celebrations in Mexico City - (Di Eneas De Troya - Flickr, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=193859173)

How do you integrate this evolution of the leisure industry into the Bachelor of Science in Leisure Management program?
Over the course of three years, students explore the design, production, and understanding of the impacts of events - following a very clear workflow. We place a strong emphasis on the qualitative dimension of these events, the experiential aspect. It’s a fundamental part of events, even though today - especially in corporate events - it isn’t always that visible yet. Companies, however, are increasingly moving in this direction - that is, creating content and experiences around the event.

We have a very clear understanding of the skills students need to develop in this area. And by participating in events themselves, they also gain the ability to grasp these aspects, analyze them, and interpret them.

I’d like to add that next year we’ll be collaborating with Winterland again, and we’ll continue to do so in the years to come. In that case, we’ll be focusing specifically on the qualitative impact of events. It’s an area where we strive to stay ahead of the curve - not only in the present but also in terms of the future of the industry.

FIFA World Cup 2026 Granville Block Party - (Di GoToVan - Flickr, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=194211497)

So how do you measure the qualitative experience of an event?
Satisfaction is certainly a primary indicator. Then there’s sentiment - that is, the way people talk about the event, including in the media and on social media. What matters is that someone decides to talk about it, comment on it, and share it.

But the true measure of success comes when an event creates a certain atmosphere. When that event becomes, in a way, an unmissable ritual. At that point, it also generates a series of benefits - not only in terms of reputation but also economically.

The quality of an event, therefore, is measured above all by the way people talk about it afterward, by how they relate to that experience, and by the role that event comes to play in their memories and habits.

One last question: Who will win the World Cup?
I don’t think the United States will go all the way to the title, but I do think they might surprise us and come very close. I still expect a European team to come out on top, though. I see France, most likely, among the finalists. But the United States, in my opinion, could be one of the surprises.