The is a first-of-its-kind tournament that, in FIFA’s dreams, is precisely what its name suggests. It’s a 32-team extravaganza modeled after soccer’s actual , with one key difference: top professional clubs, such as Real Madrid — rather than national teams, such as Spain — are the contestants. It is scheduled to begin June 15, 2025, in the United States. And when it does, , it will be “innovative, inclusive, groundbreaking and truly global.” It represents a novel concept in sports, where the vast majority of pro teams compete exclusively within national or continental borders; the Club World Cup, on the other hand, will feature multinational pro teams — soccer’s equivalent of the New York Knicks or Kansas City Chiefs — from Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It is, in theory, a true world championship. But it’s . Its launch has been dogged by organizational missteps, financial battles, player workload concerns and resistance from the European soccer establishment. The resistance has been so fierce that, until recently, some insiders questioned whether the 2025 tournament would even happen at all. Now, though, puzzle pieces are squirming into place. have been chosen. A has been signed. The , Dec. 5, in Miami. The full schedule is expected shortly. The Club World Cup, in other words, is happening. And the following is an attempt to explain it, beginning with the basics, then the complexities. The Club World Cup opens June 15, 2025, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. It concludes July 13 with the in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The full schedule — dates, locations, matchups, kickoff times — should be released soon. The 12 U.S. venues set to host games are: • Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta • Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina • TQL Stadium in Cincinnati • The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California • Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida • GEODIS Park in Nashville • MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey • Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida • Inter&Co Stadium in Orlando, Florida • Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia • Lumen Field in Seattle • Audi Field in Washington Which stadium are you looking forward to visiting? 🏟️ — FIFA Club World Cup (@FIFACWC) Most are on or near the U.S. east coast because of its proximity to Europe, which will send 12 teams, and which boasts coveted media markets. East-coast games will minimize travel (for teams and fans) and inconvenient time differences (for TV viewers). FIFA also made this decision in coordination with CONCACAF, soccer’s North and Central American governing body, which will stage its continental championship, the Gold Cup, simultaneously and . The 32 clubs set to participate are ... Manchester City (England), Chelsea (England), Real Madrid (Spain), Atlético Madrid (Spain), Bayern Munich (Germany), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Juventus (Italy), Inter Milan (Italy), PSG (France), Benfica (Portugal), Porto (Portugal), RB Salzburg (Austria) Inter Miami (U.S.), Seattle Sounders (U.S.), Monterrey (Mexico), Pachuca (Mexico), León (Mexico) Flamengo (Brazil), Palmeiras (Brazil), Fluminense (Brazil), Botafogo (Brazil), River Plate (Argentina), Boca Juniors (Argentina) Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia), Ulsan (South Korea), Urawa Reds (Japan), Al Ain (UAE) Al Ahly (Egypt), Wydad (Morocco), Espérance (Tunisia), Mamelodi Sundowns (South Africa) Auckland City (New Zealand) In 2023, the Club World Cup’s 32 berths to Europe (12), South America (6), CONCACAF (4), Africa (4), Asia (4), Oceania (1) and the host nation (1). To earn those berths, there were — one simple, one complicated. The simple path was via continental championships. Every club that won the UEFA Champions League, the Copa Libertadores, the CONCACAF Champions Cup, or the Asian and African equivalents between 2021 and 2024 qualified automatically. Beyond those champions, slots were filled by a , but with a caveat: only the top two clubs from any given country could qualify via rankings. So, even though Liverpool ranked eighth in Europe, the Reds missed out because Man City and Chelsea won the Champions League in 2023 and 2021. Barcelona, meanwhile, ranked two spots behind Atlético Madrid — because Barca underperformed in the Champions League over the last four seasons. Salzburg ranked 18th, but snuck in because others from Spain, Italy and Germany also ran up against the two-per-country cap. In South America, four different Brazilian clubs swept the Libertadores titles. Argentine giants Boca and River claimed the two additional seats at the table. In Africa, Al Ahly won three of four Champions League titles, so Espérance and Mamelodi Sundowns joined them and Wydad in the field. In CONCACAF, things were straightforward, with four distinct winners ... except for the “host nation slot.” FIFA never said how a team could claim that slot — until October when FIFA president Gianni Infantino appeared in South Florida, unannounced on the final day of the MLS regular season, to . The Club World Cup will run just like past men’s World Cups, with the 32 teams divided into eight groups of four. The top two in each group will advance to the Round of 16. From there, single-elimination games will decide a champion. For roughly two decades, FIFA ran another tournament also called the Club World Cup. That, though, was a shorter seven-team tournament played annually in the winter, and contested by only the most recent champion of each continent (plus one club from the host country). That tournament has now morphed into the “FIFA Intercontinental Cup.” The 32-team quadrennial summer tournament that will launch in 2025, and that you’re reading about now, is distinct, and unconnected to the seven-team annual version — other than the “Club World Cup” name. The European giants, . Their betting odds and relative standing could change between December and June, but for now the favorites are Manchester City (+320), Real Madrid (+360), Bayern Munich (+600), Chelsea (+700), Inter Milan (+950) and PSG (+1000). A glitzy, bizarre, painfully long draw in Miami sorted the teams into the following eight group: Palmeiras (Brazil), Porto (Portugal), Al Ahly (Egypt), Inter Miami (U.S.) PSG (France), Atlético Madrid (Spain), Botafogo (Brazil), Seattle Sounders (U.S.) Bayern Munich (Germany), Auckland City (New Zealand), Boca Juniors (Argentina), Benfica (Portugal) Flamengo (Brazil), Espérance (Tunisia), Chelsea (England), León (Mexico) River Plate (Argentina), Urawa Reds (Japan), Monterrey (Mexico), Inter Milan (Italy) Fluminense (Brazil), Borussia Dortmund (Germany), Ulsan (South Korea), Mamelodi Sundowns (South Africa) Manchester City (England), Wydad (Morocco), Al Ain (UAE), Juventus (Italy) Real Madrid (Spain), Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia), Pachuca (Mexico), RB Salzburg (Austria) That’s the million-dollar question of the Club World Cup. With intercontinental club competitions so scarce, not a soul knows for sure how clubs from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, MLS, East Asia, North Africa and elsewhere will measure up to the likes of Bayern, PSG and Porto. The assumption — based on rosters and salaries — is that the European teams are superior. But betting markets are somewhat skeptical, and suggest the gap might be thinner than Westerners realize. , Palmeiras is +1900 to win the title — same as Dortmund and Juve. Al Hilal and Flamengo are +2500 — same as Porto and Benfica. There are grounded in analytics that attempt to rank clubs across borders and seas. Most lead to a middle-ground conclusion: the Man Cities, Real Madrids and Bayerns of the world stand confidently atop the sport, but not all European teams do. Upsets will be possible. , which include over 13,000 clubs, rate the 32 Club World Cup contestants as follows: Inter Milan (2, 98.9) Manchester City (3, 98.4) Real Madrid (5, 97.4) Bayern Munich (8, 95.7) PSG (9, 95.7) Chelsea (12, 94.5) Juventus (13, 94.2) Atlético Madrid (14, 93.6) Borussia Dortmund (20, 92.4) Benfica (21, 92.4) Porto (26, 91.3) Al Hilal (30, 90.7) Botafogo (55, 87.9) Palmeiras (58, 87.4) Flamengo (68, 86.4) River Plate (99, 84.8) Al Ahly (106, 84.5) Inter Miami (113, 84.2) Seattle Sounders (143, 83.2) Monterrey (144, 83.2) RB Salzburg (150, 83.0) Boca Juniors (160, 82.5) Fluminense (166, 82.5) Mamelodi Sundowns (220, 80.8) Espérance (324, 78.8) Ulsan (361, 78.4) Pachuca (375, 78.2) Urawa Reds (389, 77.9) León (400, 77.8) Wydad (565, 75.8) Al Ain (678, 74.7) Auckland City (4082, 59.0) Probably. In fact, FIFA’s published state that all participating clubs must “field their strongest team throughout the competition.” But there are questions around how “strongest team” would be defined, and how that rule would be enforced. And there is context. A select few of the biggest clubs, such as Real Madrid, don’t seem all that enthusiastic about participating. They will have to be incentivized to come and try to win. How? With tens of millions of dollars in prize money and appearance fees. Sort of — to the extent that all of modern sport is about money. The Club World Cup is FIFA’s attempt to monetize soccer’s biggest clubs and players — which double as the sport’s most marketable brands. Currently, the vast majority of club soccer games, and therefore revenues — from broadcast rights, sponsorships and more — are controlled by domestic leagues, such as the English Premier League; and by continental confederations, namely UEFA, which runs the hugely profitable Champions League. FIFA, meanwhile, makes billions off the World Cup, a quadrennial showpiece for national teams. But because the Champions League is an annual bonanza, UEFA’s revenues are far greater. Those revenues trickle down to European clubs and national soccer federations, which use the money to recruit or produce players — and consolidate their supremacy. So, FIFA created the Club World Cup, which, for the first time, could allow the global governing body to profit off those same clubs — and share some small percentage of the spoils with 200-plus national soccer federations around the world, rather than solely the European ones. FIFA argues that this would be a . Critics argue it's a “cash grab”; part of a personal battle between Infantino and UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin; and a ploy to reinforce Infantino’s political power — because the presidents of the 200-plus national soccer federations sharing the spoils double as FIFA’s electorate. UEFA and the top European leagues, meanwhile, have and Infantino’s plan, because they want to keep all Real Madrid- or Manchester City-related revenue to themselves. The players and their unions are. FIFPRO Europe, a branch of the global players’ union, has called the Club World Cup a “tipping point” in the broader context of soccer’s ever-congested calendar. They’ve against FIFA, which “unilaterally set” the calendar, with space carved out for the Club World Cup. They that, especially with the new tournament extending seasons by a month, players’ bodies and brains are becoming overworked and overwhelmed. The leagues, on the other hand, say they’re concerned about workload; but really, they want to protect their market share. They already organize dozens of games per club every year; the Club World Cup will merely add a few games for a small handful of teams once every four years. The leagues want to preserve their primacy on the calendar. Their problem is that FIFA controls both the Club World Cup and the calendar. So they, too, have and attacked “FIFA’s conflict of interest.” They’ve argued to the European Commission that FIFA is abusing its position as both a commercially minded organizer and regulator of soccer. Their case, which many experts believe has merit, could muddy the future of this new tournament. The vast majority of the 32 do — and hundreds of others worldwide would love to. (Mainstream European media have largely ignored non-European perspectives.) A noisy minority, however, want to they’re well compensated. Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti explained the dynamic in this past June — albeit with words he later walked back: "One single Real Madrid game is worth €20 million, and FIFA wants to give us that amount for the entire competition. ... Just like us, other clubs will refuse the invitation." Real Madrid and the rest of the clubs have since said they’re committed to the tournament. But behind the scenes, sources have told Yahoo Sports, they’re demanding hefty sums of cash. The last month that some want “significant eight-figure [appearance] fees in addition to prize money.” The question, then, for FIFA, has been: Where’s that money coming from? FIFA, anticipating immense interest in the Club World Cup, initially budgeted billions of dollars in revenue. But broadcasters and sponsors — the two main sources of potential income — were lukewarm. Negotiations with Apple collapsed. At the start of December, no television partners had been announced; and sponsors had only just begun to appear. FIFA, by all accounts, will fall short of its target, leading — and how much it will be able to pay the participating clubs. Part of the answer came Wednesday, when FIFA announced that DAZN, a struggling sports streaming platform, would broadcast all 63 Club World Cup games to viewers around the world for free. But the finances of that deal — and of the Club World Cup more broadly — remain murky. How much DAZN is paying for the tournament, , and whether the rights will be sublicensed to major TV networks in some countries is all unclear. Two people familiar with the deal told Yahoo Sports that, in its entirety, it’s worth around $1 billion. But in their press releases, FIFA and DAZN called the 2025 Club World Cup broadcast rights “the start of a broader partnership.” It’s unclear what portion of the roughly $1 billion is for the Club World Cup, and what portion might be for other rights that are part of a more extensive package. (Spokesmen for FIFA and DAZN both declined to comment on the speculation about potential Saudi involvement.) For now, in the U.S., the answer is no — DAZN, a platform that very few U.S. sports fans use, will be the exclusive broadcaster, and the only place to watch games. FIFA, though, mentioned in its news release “the possibility of sublicensing to local free-to-air linear broadcast networks.” This means that, for example, Fox could pay FIFA and/or DAZN to broadcast some of all of the 63 games. If there is no such sublicensing, the DAZN deal will be disastrous for the visibility of the tournament in the U.S. Nope. , you can “ ” in tickets, but FIFA has not said when or how you’ll be able to buy them. It could be. In many ways, it should be. But with budgets reportedly slashed, and planning far behind schedule, most insiders expect the 2025 edition to be a mixed bag of vibrancy, mishaps, full stadiums and duds. Even a mixed bag, though — in the absence of boycotts or legal interventions — should be enough to get the Club World Cup off the ground, and in position for success in 2029 and beyond.KitchenAid's viral Evergreen stand mixer keeps selling out, but it's finally back in stock ahead of the holidays

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Before the season began, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen was named one of the biggest trash talkers across the league. Now? The MVP favorite and All-Pro has been nominated for an award that is usually the opposite of his usual antics. Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Allen was selected as the Bills’ nominee for the 2024 Art Rooney Sportsmanship Award Monday morning. The annual award is given to “an NFL player who best demonstrates the qualities of on-field sportsmanship, including fair play, respect for the game and opponents, and integrity in competition.” It's the second time since 2021 that Allen has been nominated for the award. Buffalo's franchise quarterback has been known as a dynamic leader of his career and one of the best players in the NFL today. He's the front-runner for the league's MVP award with 23 total touchdowns and has the Bills playing at a high level with a 9-2 record. Related: Who Should Bills Fans Root for in Week 12? Probably the most interesting thing about Allen's nomination, though, is the fact that his on-field antics and trash-talking abilities speak to the opposite of what the Rooney Sportsmanship Awards. By being named the biggest trash-talker in the league during the offseason, it shows Allen's opponents know how the quarterback handles being one of the best players in the league. Allen may not win the award overall, but it is a sign that some current players are a bit split in how they see the Bills' quarterback. And that confusion will only grow as Buffalo continues to find ways to win this year. Related: 'No Surprise' Who Bills Midseason MVP Is

France Admits World War II Massacre of African TroopsThe much-hyped Mike Tyson fight against YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul showed the potential power of Netflix to create live, global sports events on streaming video. For many people though, it also demonstrated the limitations of the technology. Thousands of Netflix users reported technical difficulties while trying to watch the fight. Frustrated viewers contended with buffering and blurry video, a result of tens of millions of households trying to watch the bout at once. It’s the kind of thing that, if the event were aired on a traditional network, would have provoked angry calls to cable companies. Live sports is considered one of the great opportunities for streamers, including Netflix, which need mass audiences tuning in to please advertisers. Companies including Amazon and Apple are spending big, driving up the price of live sports rights and encroaching further on the turf of legacy network rivals. But sports are also a challenge for tech firms. Even without buffering or grainy feeds, live streams are typically delayed compared with cable and satellite broadcasts, which means streaming audiences risk seeing spoilers on social media if the events are simulcast. For Netflix, the stakes are high. The company will host its first live NFL games on Christmas, including one featuring a halftime show from Beyoncé. Netflix is also preparing to air WWE’s “Raw” pro-wrestling franchise starting next year. Brandon Riegg, Netflix’s vice president of nonfiction series and sports, said he has “full faith” in the company’s engineering team, which learned much from the Paul vs. Tyson live match and will adjust before the NFL games. Netflix said it worked quickly to stabilize the viewing for a majority of its subscribers during the boxing event, in which the 27-year-old Paul defeated the 58-year-old Tyson. “We were overwhelmed in the sense of the expectation — it far exceeded our expectations in terms of how many people came to the fight,” Riegg told The Los Angeles Times. “It’s as simple as that. As much as we forecast how many people would come, many, many more people came. It’s impossible for our engineering team to test that magnitude of traffic and viewership unless they have a real, live thing, which is what happened.” On the bright side, Netflix showed that it can be a big draw for sports fans, with an average audience of 108 million live viewers globally tuning in for the fight. Netflix said there were 65 million live concurrent streams, calling it the “most-streamed global sporting event ever.” Industry observers say the day is coming when streamers could place their own bid to host the Super Bowl on their platforms, as long as they can handle the traffic. “Once they prove that they’re capable of delivering a consistent, robust, top-of-the-line, premium experience for these events that consumers have grown to expect, then I have no doubt that we’re going to get there,” said Rob Rosenberg, a former Showtime Networks executive and founder of New York-based Telluride Legal Strategies. The technological challenges aren’t unique to Netflix. Glitches have arisen during other live events streamed on competitors’ platforms, including on YouTube during an NFL game last year and on Amazon’s Prime Video during a Thursday Night Football game in 2022. There are various reasons why buffering occurs, particularly with a highly-anticipated program. When a sporting event is being live streamed, the captured video is released in smaller segments of a few seconds in length that are then transmitted to streaming subscribers and decoded by the users’ devices. If too many devices are seeking those video segments at the same time, it can cause a backlog. Streamers can try to solve the problem by rerouting traffic, but even that sometimes isn’t enough. Streaming services can try to prepare ahead of time by buying more bandwidth capacity from the internet service providers, but it can be difficult to guess how many people will watch, especially if the streamer is new to a particular type of content. There may be limits on how much bandwidth companies can buy. For example, Australia has much less available bandwidth compared with the United States, said Simon Wistow, a co-founder and vice president of strategic initiatives at cloud computing company Fastly. Wistow added that if streamers buy too much capacity and it isn’t used, that’s wasted money. “There’s a lot of complexities, a lot of things go on,” Wistow said. “The scale of internet traffic just gets bigger and bigger every year.” Netflix said it will improve its systems to better handle live events at unprecedented scale and work with ISPS to continue increasing its capacity. The company has been steadily putting on more live events, such as a hot dog eating competition, Screen Actors Guild Awards and a tennis exhibition match. The company’s first live event was a Chris Rock comedy special last year, which has drawn 23.5 million views. An early effort at live streaming, a “Love Is Blind” reunion special, encountered technical trouble due to a bug that went unnoticed until people tried to watch the program. The Paul vs. Tyson event was a new milestone for Netflix’s live streaming efforts. For some viewers, like Florida resident Malcolm Scott, the streamer’s issues were unacceptable. Scott even sued Netflix for breach of contract last week, alleging that Netflix viewers missed large portions of the fight. Netflix declined to comment on the lawsuit. Brian Comiskey, a futurist at the trade group Consumer Technology Assn., chalked Netflix’s problems up to technological growing pains. “At the end of the day this is content being delivered from thousands of miles away via files,” said Comiskey, calling himself a millennial who remembers what it was like pre-smartphone. “This is a tremendous step in technology, but it only gets better from there.” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s chief media and business officer said he believes Netflix will be ready to stream its games. “I think it shows the power of their global platform, their international reach, which is one reason why we did this deal,” Rolapp said during the Sports Business Journal Media Innovators Conference. “So, I think what they did was pretty extraordinary.” Get local news delivered to your inbox!

ICYMI: MOBILion Forms Advisory Board to Drive Proteomics InnovationNEW YORK, Dec. 14, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of ordinary shares of ASML Holding N.V. ASML between January 24, 2024 and October 15, 2024, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), of the important January 13, 2025 lead plaintiff deadline. SO WHAT: If you purchased ASML ordinary shares during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement. WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the ASML class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=31159 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for more information. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than January 13, 2025. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company at the time. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers. DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, during the Class Period, defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the issues being faced by suppliers, like ASML, in the semiconductor industry were much more severe than defendants had indicated to investors; (2) the pace of recovery of sales in the semiconductor industry was much slower than defendants had publicly acknowledged; (3) defendants had created the false impression that they possessed reliable information pertaining to customer demand and anticipated growth, while also downplaying risk from macroeconomic and industry fluctuations, as well as stronger regulations restricting the export of semiconductor technology, including the products that ASML sells; and (4) as a result, defendants' statements about ASML's business, operations, and prospects lacked a reasonable basis. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages. To join the ASML class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=31159 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm , on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/ . Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Contact Information: Laurence Rosen, Esq. Phillip Kim, Esq. The Rosen Law Firm, P.A. 275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor New York, NY 10016 Tel: (212) 686-1060 Toll Free: (866) 767-3653 Fax: (212) 202-3827 case@rosenlegal.com www.rosenlegal.com © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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