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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
804 on a Tuesday. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Halford Brough, Sportsnet 650. Half an hour of the morning is brought to you by Sands & Associates. Are you drowning in tax debt? If you are, Sands & Associates can often reduce your debt by up to 80% with no upfront fees. Visit them today at sands-trustee.com. We are now in hour three of the program.
Paul Runnels, the Director of Talent Productions for the upcoming FIFA Fan Fest, is going to join us in just a moment here to kick off Hour 3. Hour 3 of this show was brought to you by the BC Construction Safety Alliance. Making safety simpler by giving construction companies the best in tools, resources, and safety training. Visit them online at bccsa.ca.
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So the FIFA World Cup is just around the corner. So too is the FIFA Fan Fest at PNE. Joining us now is, as mentioned, the director of talent and productions of said Fan Fest. Paul Reynolds joins us here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Good morning, Paul. How are you?
Good morning. I'm doing great. It's a beautiful sunny day down here. So a sea of activity going on right now, getting ready for next week.
Yeah, the excitement is building. And, you know, we wanted to take the opportunity to almost give you a platform here and speak to our listeners. And I guess big first easy question. What do you want people to know about this FIFA Fan Fest?
So this is not the P&E business as usual kind of setup that they're going to be coming to. We have got an enormous site that has got a whole range of activities. We've got nine massive Jumbotron LED screens. We've got two stages with over 130 bands performing across the 28 days of operation. We've got food trucks. We've got customized food and beverage areas, elevated experience.
amount of effort that's gone into building this out. We've got all kinds of sponsor activations, 3D interactive stuff. It is going to be a lot of fun down here.
So what kind of work are you doing right now? What are you busy with right now?
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Chapter 2: What is the FIFA Fan Fest and what should attendees expect?
If people are able to, I'd recommend coming early, but I'll also remind, you know, if you have a ticket, you're guaranteed access into the festival. So there's no scenario where a ticket holder would be denied access, even if we're at capacity for the main site.
So that's one of the, one of the benefits of holding a ticket for the amphitheater is that you will always be able to come in and you can, in fact, you can come and go throughout the day. So you could come in the morning, watch the first match leave for four hours and come back on that same ticket and and be guaranteed access to come in and then maybe watch the concert that night.
What are the ticket options? So there's reserved seating that's available, and there's also the lawn general admission area. Both of those are paid purchase tickets. The lawn is by far outselling everything. It's a cheaper price ticket, so we've got really, really strong sales up there. The reserved seating is, again, on the Team Canada days, the final, things like that.
Weekends, they're selling very well. And some of the days where we don't know what soccer is going to be played are a little soft right now, but that's understandable because we don't know what the games are going to be. So once you get out of the group round, we'll start seeing ticket sales for those later days probably go through the roof. The floor of the amphitheater...
is a non-ticketed first-come, first-served opportunity. So there's 2,700 capacity down there. So the first 2,700 people that come in on any day without a ticket, so they come onto the site for free, they come into the amphitheater for free, and they're able to enjoy the day in the amphitheater.
If they leave the amphitheater to go out to the rest of the site, then they have to get back in line to get back in. Like they're not... their, their access is good for as long as they're in the building. But once they go out onto the main site, then they're kind of back into the realm of the rest of the gang.
And if they want to come back into the amphitheater later, they just have to line up and it's sort of one in one out kind of thing.
But the amphitheater isn't the only place to watch the games at the festival.
Okay.
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Chapter 3: What unique features will the FIFA Fan Fest offer?
Lots of great information out there. And I hope it's a success out there at the P&E. And I can't wait to see the new amphitheater because it looks pretty cool.
It is very cool. Well, I hope to see you down here.
Thanks, Paul. Appreciate it. That's Paul Reynolds, FIFA Fan Fest Director of Talent and Productions here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650.
I wonder if they're expecting some people to buy the tickets when they get out there because they're like, I don't want to wait in line. Give me a ticket. I don't care if it's $100. I just want to go into the amphitheater, and I don't want to wait in line.
I don't know what the walk-up is going to be for. Here's the thing. June 12th, Canada. Massive.
Yeah.
Opposed to other days. The walk-up and the free ticket might be a great option. Because, you know, there are going to be some soft times during the group stage where the matches aren't going to be filling fan fests across North America.
Targeting lazy people is never a bad idea, though. Because, like, I might be one of those people where I'm just like, I don't want to win this lineup. Yeah, exactly. It might work on me.
That right there, the last 10 minutes we spoke with Paul was the most clarity I've gotten on exactly how the operation is going to work. And it hasn't been.
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Chapter 4: How can visitors prepare for the FIFA Fan Fest event?
So I don't know. I guess maybe you can bring in a blanket. I don't know. Check the website beforehand. So you're going to sit there and that's going to be like 40 bucks. And I have a very good feeling that that will be the first area of the ticketed sites to sell out. And then maybe some people might be like, well, OK, fine.
I'll pay the hundred bucks and I'll sit in a seat and I'll get ins and outs. But. You want to think long and hard, especially for the big games. Like, if you want to go out and watch Canada play, obviously. You know, the other big games are going to be England, Spain, France, that sort of thing. But the FanFest does look... Look, it looks pretty cool.
And, you know, if you want to go out there and enjoy some food, it sounds like there's going to be a lot of food trucks and also areas where you can... It's not just food trucks. It's actually just good food out there. So go to the website and check it out. As cynical as we've been about some of the FIFA stuff... Us? I think just in general. I'm not even talking about us.
I'm just talking about people in general... I want this to be successful. I want people to have fun at the World Cup. If you are a sports fan, okay, if you don't want to get over your cynicism and you hate FIFA and you just want to say, I don't want any part of this, fine. But just know that as a sports fan, as a Canadian sports fan, This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The World Cup is in Canada. And it's coming to our city in Vancouver. And Canada is playing two games in our city at BC Place. That will not happen again in my lifetime. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So, as cynical as I am about this... I'm also very excited. I'm going to be hanging Canadian flags outside of my house and maybe an England flag as well. Sure.
I want people to get excited for this and I want them to enjoy it. At the FIFA Fan Fest, if you don't want to pay for it, You might have to make some sacrifices and wake up early and go out there and get in line, and maybe you're going to have to wait a bit, right? But I think the experience, especially for the Canada games, is going to be terrific.
I think you're going to have a really good time if you want to go enjoy this. And I think there are going to be some people that are like, oh, I don't want to be part of that. But all I will say is that I've talked to multiple people that ā
When it came to the Winter Olympics in 2010, they were like, you know, I actually made plans and I went out of town because I didn't really want to be part of it. I think it was going to be a big hubbub. Biggest regret I've got. You know? Yeah. Like, I regret that because everyone had a good time in Vancouver.
Now, I'm not promising the same scenario in the Winter Olympics, but again, as a sports fan, you should try to embrace it if you can, because, you know, look, you're not going to get these opportunities very often. And I have talked a lot about,
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Chapter 5: What are the opening times for the FIFA Fan Fest?
Yeah. You know, the amount that tickets have been priced for some group stage matches, which could be, quite frankly, poor, both in terms of quality and atmosphere. It's untested. We might be fooled. These matches might end up being really compelling and really engaging because of the magnitude of the event and what's at stake.
But because we've never seen this before, just the size of the event... I don't know what the response is going to be. It's a month-long competition.
Well, I think it's like, I kind of agree with what Paul said, and I know you touched on it too, Bruf, but it's like leading up to the Olympics, people were excited, but it wasn't until it actually started that it got crazy. It was like a wave that hit the city. What I'm saying is... And I can see it happening with FIFA, with the World Cup the same way.
But the Olympics, even at bars, it's going to be awesome.
It's going to be crazy.
People are going to get into the hype like crazy. right away.
The only thing is the big difference for me is that the Olympics was two and a half weeks. It was jam packed. There were a lot of different price points of entry for people to go to see things. And it wasn't just soccer, right? So there are some very inherent differences. And I, I'm as a, as an observer of how things have happened in this city and
With all of these big events, I made a special note of, I'm going to see what the lead-up is to the Whitecaps-LAFC match and what the aftermath is. It was an interesting development because the Whitecaps did 50,000 twice last year. They did it when Messi came to town and they did it when LAFC and Sun came to town. And that was... And look where the Whitecaps are now. The dynamics of everything.
It's really just fascinating to watch it because it's such a unique city and this is such a unique event. I'm not really in the predictory game on this one. I'm going to wait and see what happens. But... We got one final half hour to go on the Halford and Brough show on Sportsnet 650.
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Chapter 6: What are the ticketing options for the FIFA Fan Fest?
Could be Matt Stafford's last year in the National Football League. But the Ty Simpson draft, by the way, he's a quarterback. Now let's unpack this. The Rams used the 13th overall pick at this year's draft to take the quarterback or what they perceive to be as the quarterback of the future.
Now, not only did they not use that 13th overall pick to draft a win now type guy, like maybe another wide receiver of the number that were on the board. They also reached for Simpson, who was not expected to be a guy that was going to go on the first 15 picks of the NFL.
That was an absolute shocker.
Really doesn't make any sense, but they are a wildly aggressive team. I think that they are going to be fascinating to watch and, quite frankly, easy to watch because they've got seven primetime games this year. They are fully committed to trying to win a Super Bowl in the last year of probably what's going to be Matt Stafford's last year of his career. And it's a great case study.
I just can't come to grips with the Ty Simpson pick. It does not make any sense. Fun day in the NFL, though. By the way, so that buried not only the A.J. Brown news, but also the news that Russell Wilson is pivoting to television. Right. He's going to be an analyst this year. He will not be playing quarterback.
I wonder how he's going to be at that. Is he going to be good or annoying?
Okay, so... My thought here is that it sounded like networks were clamoring to get him on board.
He's a very well-spoken guy.
It sounded like he had a lot of options. By the way, he's now finalized a deal to join CBS Sports and be one of their NFL analysts. So obviously, network executives thought highly enough that there was a bit of a bidding war for his services. Every time I heard that, my first question was, why? He is well-spoken in the sense that he doesn't stumble over his words, and he's smooth when he talks.
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Chapter 7: Who is responsible for organizing the FIFA Fan Fest?
That's how a team comes together. Nobody that's smart... thinks that the Canucks are simply going to draft their way out of this, but it does start with the draft. That's where it has to start.
Well, and also, the next two years, I wouldn't expect many trades of significance for guys that are going to be here for the long haul. I'd be shocked, actually, if that happens.
Yeah, I mean, hopefully they can find someone. As long as it doesn't cost them too much in terms of draft capital.
Anyone that, I think anyone.
I think there's always, when you give guys opportunities, there's always going to be guys that surprise you. A turn into players. But sometimes you have to monetize those players. Like, I think they should explore trading Drew O'Connor. And as much as I love his story, they should explore trading Lena Scarlson.
Yeah, but I was talking about bringing a guy in. Yeah. Like, I don't think that should be on the table this offseason. Any guy that you bring in should be of the short-term variety. For example, and I wanted to get to this earlier in the show, but I haven't, but I can do it now. I've always been a fan of Matthew Barzell. I always thought it would be great to bring him home. Not anymore.
It doesn't work anymore, right? Barzell, according to Bruce Garriock and the Ottawa Citizen, is going to be on the move. New York Islanders are exploring the market for Barzell right now. And he also had a nugget that reports indicated that the Utah Mammoth were close to pulling a deal on Barzell last summer. I think then they pivoted and went to Paterka.
You know who I'm most curious about on the trade market now that we're hearing a little bit more? Who? Nico Heischer.
Yeah, that's an interesting one, too.
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