‘It’s maddening’: FIFA licensing delays threaten Massachusetts’ World Cup party plans – The Boston Globe

Without those approvals, municipalities cannot legally show the matches in public, leaving many local organizers frozen in place — unable to lock in vendors, rent giant screens, hire security, or recruit volunteers.

If the licenses do not come through soon, the vision of fans of diverse ethnicities and generations gathering in a rolling soccer party from one end of Massachusetts to another could fade before the first whistle at Gillette Stadium, on June 13.

“It’s maddening,” said Sandhya Iyer, economic development and tourism director for Lexington, which is planning a watch party at the lawn of the town’s visitors center. “The World Cup is right around the corner, but we can’t invite people to a celebration that might not happen.”

FIFA did not respond to multiple requests from The Boston Globe for comment on its licensing process.

The only two entities to receive FIFA licenses so far are the City of Cambridge and the MetroWest Tourism and Visitors Bureau, which is organizing events in Franklin and Marlborough, according to the state Executive Office of Economic Development, which has been helping local communities alongside Boston’s World Cup host committee. Officials in at least two municipalities, Framingham and Weymouth, have decided against holding World Cup watch parties due to concerns over security and costs.

Compounding the frustration, local planners say they have been unable to get clear answers — or even reach a real person — at FIFA. Instead, they are routed back to the organization’s online licensing portal, where they repeatedly encounter the same three words: “Application in Review.”

The licensing delays are just the latest manifestation of mounting frustration with FIFA, the Zurich-based organization that owns and runs the World Cup.

Chief among the concerns is ticket pricing, which for many fans has become prohibitively expensive. For the highly anticipated France-Norway match on June 26 at Gillette, remaining tickets range from $750 to $5,680 each.

Speaking at an event last week in Beverly Hills, Calif., FIFA president Gianni Infantino defended the ticket prices, saying they reflect demand to watch the World Cup as well as laws in the United States that allow tickets to be resold for thousands of dollars above face value. Tickets are available via resale platforms including FIFA’s own marketplace; last month four seats for the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey were listed at just under $2.3 million each.

Now FIFA — already accused of squeezing millions from soccer fans — is facing a new charge: acting like a party crasher, spoiling the festivities the World Cup is supposed to inspire.

“This is all wildly unconventional. It’s like being a month out from a big event and not having a venue,” said Greta Teller, a soccer marketing consultant from Roslindale who is assisting more than two dozen organizations statewide on World Cup festivities. “The frustration is that nobody can get a straight answer [from FIFA], and that makes planning really difficult.”

The community watch parties are anything but small undertakings.

While the events vary in size, they’re costly and labor-intensive to stage — one reason the Commonwealth is helping foot the bill. A single giant screen to broadcast the games during the tournament can run up to $100,000. Security, portable toilets, food vendors, signage, and trash removal can add tens of thousands more. And then there’s the FIFA public-viewing license itself, which can range from about $1,000 to $20,000 depending on expected crowd size.

In Easthampton, preparations for a five-day World Cup watch party that would coincide with a festival to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday have been months in the making. The city has lined up a half-dozen food trucks, musical bands, two breweries and a local production company to operate the big screens and lighting at Millside Park. The event is expected to cost about $250,000; a $100,000 state grant will cover part of the expense, while the remaining $150,000 will come from private and in-kind donations, city officials said.

Mayor Salem Derby of Easthampton said many of those plans hinge on the yet-issued FIFA license. Until the license comes through, the city cannot finalize contracts with key vendors. And with Easthampton facing a projected $6.5 million budget deficit next fiscal year, Derby said officials are reluctant to spend money upfront without clear authorization to broadcast the games.

Derby called the FIFA licensing process “nerve-wracking,” adding, “You would think [the license] would be the easy part — that FIFA would want us to broadcast these games.”

That uncertainty is being felt elsewhere, including about 100 miles east in Lexington, where local planners envisioned a 10-day celebration on the spacious lawn at the town’s visitor center, with a beer garden, food trucks, two large screens, and soccer games for kids.

But two months after it submitted its application for a FIFA viewing license, Lexington’s plans are in limbo.

Iyer, the town’s economic development and tourism director, said she checks the FIFA website multiple times each day, hoping for any new information. Each time, the status is unchanged: “Application in Review.”

Now, town planners are exploring whether to scale back the festivities and have smaller watch parties at a movie theater or restaurants that already broadcast games and do not need a special FIFA license, Iyer said. “It’s hard to nail down specifics if we’re not even sure we can show the games,” she said.

In Lowell, the Revolutionary Valley Regional Tourism Council is finalizing plans for 14 watch parties around the city, with an expected $10 admission fee and capacity for tens of thousands of attendees. The group has already matched its $75,000 state grant and raised more than $200,000, but still needs about $400,000 more to meet its target.

Its initial FIFA license application, submitted in February, was rejected on March 10 because a full list of sponsors wasn’t yet in place, said council executive director Brian Bradbury. A second application was resubmitted in early May after most logistical details were finalized.

“We anticipated that it was going to be a quicker, smoother process, that it’s something that’s been done a million times and that they’d be able to give the license to us in a turnkey way,” said Bradbury. He said the initial license refusal was for “unnecessary” reasons.

“It is frustrating, and if we don’t have our license by next week, it’s going to be much more frustrating. We expected a quicker process.”

Even organizations that received FIFA licenses say the labyrinthine process and delays left them scrambling to finalize plans at the last minute.

MetroWest Boston Visitors Bureau is organizing a total of five free MetroWest Regional Fan Zones: three outdoor watch-party festivals in Marlborough June 11-13, and two in Franklin, June 24 and 25.

After filling out a relatively simple FIFA application form in mid-December, MetroWest did not receive its license until mid-April.

“The timeline was certainly more extended than we had hoped,” said Stacey David, MetroWest executive director, whose group received $120,000 from the state and is still trying to raise funds from the private sector to cover costs. “So now we’re crunched.”

Other grant awardees simply have their fingers crossed their licenses will come through.

Chelsea is planning one of the biggest watch parties in the state: 38 continuous days, 60-plus matches in Chelsea Square.

“That’s going to take us a lot of marketing, and the more time we have, the better it is,” said City Manager Fidel Maltez. “I think our team is trying to be respectful and appreciative but . . . we need this approval as soon as possible.”

Chris Serres can be reached at chris.serres@globe.com. Follow him @ChrisSerres. Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com. Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi.