A comparison I would use is the superbowl. Let's say there was a complete revamp of the NFL, they add a few teams and have two divisions with promotion and relegation. The superbowl takes place every 4 years. Would more people tune in than currently do? Typically, around 100 million people tune in to watch the Superbowl (although as superbowl watch party's are common often with hundreds of people, so that may explain a surprisingly low number on viewership) and the last world cup final had over 500 million people watching. Yes, football is the biggest sport in the world, but I would be willing to bet big money that if the superbowl happened 5 times in 20 years, the viewership would go up and up as it creates far more prestige and meaning than the Lombardi trophy changing hands almost every year. The same can be said for all the popular sports in north America.
A world cup every two years is, as others have said, nothing more than an attempt to make more money. I don't have a problem with that, it's the governing bodies job to sustain profitability and this would probably do it, but I imagine a lot of people 30 years + will slowly stop caring as much about it and because of that, the whole competition loses its romance.
This is very much a case of it it's not broken, don't fix it. The current format works, it allows for national team minnows to have a hope at glory, and it brings people from all over the world together on a different continent to unite in love of the game. If you need any reminder of how football brings people together, search all the news stories prior to the World cup in Brazil. From January to May, almost every major national newspaper raised concerns about violence in the country and how it was going to be unsafe. What happened was most of the country forgot a lot of their differences for a month, and it actually became a launching platform for some political progress in certain Brazilian states (which unfortunately, that progress has been lost due to the handling of Covid). If you have a world cup every two years, in multiple countries, you minimize the chance of helping one troubled country unite. Even Russia, the most obtuse nation in Europe, put on an excellent tournament, having ample time to prepare and make sure they gained some admirers.
A world cup every two years is, as others have said, nothing more than an attempt to make more money. I don't have a problem with that, it's the governing bodies job to sustain profitability and this would probably do it, but I imagine a lot of people 30 years + will slowly stop caring as much about it and because of that, the whole competition loses its romance.
This is very much a case of it it's not broken, don't fix it. The current format works, it allows for national team minnows to have a hope at glory, and it brings people from all over the world together on a different continent to unite in love of the game. If you need any reminder of how football brings people together, search all the news stories prior to the World cup in Brazil. From January to May, almost every major national newspaper raised concerns about violence in the country and how it was going to be unsafe. What happened was most of the country forgot a lot of their differences for a month, and it actually became a launching platform for some political progress in certain Brazilian states (which unfortunately, that progress has been lost due to the handling of Covid). If you have a world cup every two years, in multiple countries, you minimize the chance of helping one troubled country unite. Even Russia, the most obtuse nation in Europe, put on an excellent tournament, having ample time to prepare and make sure they gained some admirers.
