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Inter Miami Forward Lionel Messi controls the ball during the first half of an MLS match against the Philadelphia Union at Subaru Park in Chester, Pennsylvania, on May 24, 2025.
Hard Numbers: It’s called soccer now
The FIFA Club World Cup kicks off on Saturday, with the United States acting as hosts for a competition of the top local teams on the globe, like Real Madrid and River Plate. The expanded tournament will act as a dress rehearsal for next year’s World Cup, the country-on-country tourney that will take place across North America. However, political issues, as well as concerns about audience numbers, are putting a cloud over the competition.
32: There will be 32 football clubs from six continents competing in the Club World Cup, including 12 teams from Europe and six from South America. Inter Miami, a team that counts Lionel Messi in its ranks, earned a free slot as host.
25: The Club World Cup has been running on-and-off for 25 years, dating back to the first competition in 2000. However, this is the first time the tournament will be of such a large magnitude – it usually just comprises seven teams and lasts 10 days. The last seven Club World Cups were hosted in the Middle East and North Africa.
$1 billion: The streaming platform DAZN – owned by former oligarch Sir Len Blavatnik – paid $1 billion for the rights to broadcast the tournament. In an effort to maximize the audience, the platform will air the games for free. $1 billion is, incidentally, also the amount of prize money that will be split among the participants, double the kitty from the last World Cup.
0: US President Donald Trump’s new travel ban, which covers 12 countries, won’t affect any of the players, after the White House made an exemption for athletes and coaches. Admittedly, very few of the players are from one of the countries on the banned list – Mehdi Taremi, Inter Milan’s Iranian striker, is the highest-profile player from a banned nation. Yet Trump’s order defies FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s declaration, made during a White House meeting in May, that “the world is welcome in America.” There’s no exception for the soccer fans from these 12 countries.
SPECIAL SURVEY: Numbers Up North
What do Americans and Canadians really think of one another? What do they make of their governments and of each other’s? Whom would they vote for in each other’s elections? Do they share concerns about key challenges like, say, artificial intelligence, and what do they think about Israel’s war in Gaza?
Ahead of our landmark US-Canada Summit earlier this week, we teamed up with the Montréal-based pollster Data Sciences to find out. Their team asked 2,340 folks on both sides of the border what they really think. Here’s a selection of key findings, by the numbers.
68: What’s the most important aspect of US-Canada ties? 68% of Americans and Canadians say it’s the economy and trade. Security and defense ties came in a close second, but fewer than half thought culture or personal ties were very important. We did not ask about hockey.
70: Things aren’t going great … Huge majorities on both sides of the border are heading into their upcoming elections – in November for the US and before October 2025 in Canada – with negative sentiments. A whopping 70% of both Canadians and Americans are “frustrated” with their federal governments.
26: Still, Canadians are keener to kick out their current government than Americans. Just 26% of Canucks would vote for the incumbent Liberals, whereas Americans are more split – 47% would vote for Trump and 45% would vote for Biden.
21: Even good-natured Canada isn’t safe from America’s partisan splits. There is a 21-point difference between the percentage of Biden voters who see Canada as a “partner” (82%) and the share of Trump voters who say the same (61%). But who, we wonder, are the 2-3% of both candidates’ voters who view Canada as an outright “enemy”? What did Canada do to hurt you?
72: The robots are coming, and 72% of Americans and Canadians are somewhat or very concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence, with almost half worried that a robot or machine could do some or most of their jobs.
25: Canadians are more pro-Palestinian than Americans. Asked whom they sympathize more with, 25% of Canadians said the Palestinians against just 16% who listed the Israelis. South of the border, the views were almost exactly flipped, with 16% of Americans saying they felt more for the Palestinians, while 29% said the Israelis.