Boston Soccer 26 CEO Mike Loynd said “fund-raising has been a challenge” for the local World Cup organizing committee, according to Silverman & Serres of the BOSTON GLOBE. Loynd said events in Massachusetts around the 250th anniversary of the U.S. have “put a lot of demands on fund-raising in the corporate environment,” but Boston Soccer 26 is “going to land at a very fiscally responsible, very exciting event for Massachusetts and Boston.” Loynd indicated that the committee’s budget “may wind up dipping below” $100M, a “far cry from” the $170M the committee projected in 2023. Loynd: “We had very lofty goals in the beginning. ... We’ve kept our workforce pretty tight. In general, that was kind of our plan: do the best we can on the fund-raising, do the best we can to keep costs down, and try and do the most fiscally responsible thing.” Loynd hinted that, like other host cities, Boston “may have to downscale its earlier plans for an extravagant FanFest at Boston City Hall Plaza.” Silverman & Serres note a “major fund-raising obstacle has been FIFA’s strict exclusivity rules, which prevent host committees from signing sponsors from the same business sectors as FIFA’s partners.” To date, the host committee has announced “just three local sponsors for the event: State Street Corp., a financial services company; Meet Boston, which promotes tourism; and Sanofi, a French drugmaker.” The latest sign of strain was the abrupt resignation two weeks ago of Boston Soccer 26 Chief Commercial Officer Jon Persch (BOSTON GLOBE, 4/1).
Boston Soccer 26 CEO says World Cup fund-raising ‘has been a challenge’
