Would you subject yourself to hour after hour of Fox's World Cup coverage if it meant being paid $50,000, but also meant you had to spend the entire World Cup posted up in a glass cube in the middle of Times Square?
That's the proposition on offer from Fox, English-language broadcast rights holder for this summer's men's World Cup, and Indeed, the website you might turn to when searching for a new job.
The two entities teamed up to create the gimmicky role of "Chief World Cup Watcher," with the selected winner tasked with watching all 104 matches of the World Cup from what Fox calls a "custom-built, dream viewing space," but in reality, it's a glass cube they're erecting in the middle of Times Square, a place avoided like the plague by many (most?) New York City residents.
So the Chief World Cup Watcher will be on display like an exhibit at your local zoo, but that seems to be the point, and Fox and Indeed even call that out in their job listing for the role, saying "If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in a zoo exhibit, but with climate control and better Wi-Fi, this is your moment."
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The whole thing gives the vibe of reality-TV theater mixed with a built-in marketing opportunity for Indeed. All applicants are required to use Indeed's site to apply, and they're asked to create a short video on social media detailing why they're the ideal person for the job, with the instruction from Fox/Indeed to "show us your content creation skills."
Therein lies the rub, as the saying goes. While the Chief World Cup Watcher's job description might appear to be "sit around and watch the World Cup," Fox appears to really be hiring for the role of Chief World Cup Influencer, with the added twist of being trapped in a glass case while you watch all your soccer.
They're not letting you collect those 50 G's unless you put in some serious social-media influencer work, so make sure your vertical video and social media strategies are all finely tuned before you submit your application, which you can do here, if you're up for it.
It all brings back memories, maybe not fond memories, of when Major League Baseball tried this exact approach with its short-lived MLB Fan Cave. Beginning with the 2011 MLB season, a few handpicked baseball sickos got sent to a glass-walled space in lower Manhattan, where their task was simple: Watch thousands of MLB games while living alongside other likeminded, baseball-crazed strangers, and turn that experience into some compelling social-media content.
The MLB Fan Cave parallels are a bit hard to avoid, too, because the identity of the chosen Chief World Cup Watcher is getting revealed on June 6 during Fox's broadcast of a New York Yankees vs Boston Red Sox game — it all comes back around in the end.
Fox is wisely tweaking the MLB Fan Cave formula by referring to the glass cube their Chief World Cup Watcher will inhabit as an "office," not their cave nor their dwelling, and explicitly promises that the winner of the job won't have to sleep in their glass cube. Importantly, Fox and Indeed promise that they will cover both housing costs and the incidentals their Chief World Cup Watcher accrues during their 39-day stint as the public face of "watching soccer," so you thankfully don't have to worry about paying rent in one of the country's most expensive cities for housing.
Working in Times Square is one thing, living there another: Hopefully the Chief World Cup Watcher, whoever they may be, has some free time to escape from their entrapment and explore the city beyond tourist-heavy Midtown.
Any interested applicants have until May 17 to put their name in the hat, so think long and hard about how badly you really want to spend 39 days on public exhibition in Times Square, something usually reserved for the likes of The Naked Cowboy.
