In the run-up to the Club World Cup, Gianni Infantino walked the fine line of aggressively promoting the expanded tournament, while not exactly sitting down for lengthy media interviews. Public appearances showing off a glitzy CWC trophy, or photo-ops in the White House? Sure.
But when it came to one of the few extended conversations, the FIFA President made a curious choice: iShowSpeed. Seriously.
It was a wonderfully choreographed event, Infantino “surprising” the streamer, who has 36.5 million followers on Instagram and 41.2M subscribers on YouTube. “Speed” played along with the whole act, pretended to be shocked, and asked a few basic questions, in a skit-adjacent format, that basically served as an infomercial for the Club World Cup.
A cynic might call it avoidance of some real issues. In reality, it was smart business, Infantino realizing that much of the soccer culture in the United States exists online - and with a younger demographic. And as the Club World Cup rolls from the group stage into this weekend’s knockout round, influencers, streamers and social media personalities have been the fuel keeping the movement going.
“He had the FIFA Club World Cup trophy in the room where they're exploding fireworks and doing crazy sh*t, you know?” John Shin, who goes by GoodVibesJohn to his 98,000 Instagram followers, told GOAL. “But that's basically the entertainment industry, especially for the younger generation. And I think what FIFA and Infantino, particularly, what he's trying to do, is he's tapping into that sort of space.”