The World Cup is For Sale??
Lemme See What I Got in My Wallet, Real Quick
I promise you, dear readers (all 100+ of you as of this week - THANKS), I didn’t mean for Just the Sandwich to be a soccer-only blog. I had all the plans in the world of making this week’s sandwich about my recent obsession with the Commonwealth Games. Stemming from my blurb about it last week, I’ve been obsessed with everything from the mascot, the fact that the original hosts in Victoria, Australia pulled out and Glasgow had to swoop in at the last minute, all the way to this cleaner guy getting some shine by shaking his ass:
Not bad for the former British Empire Games:
But no, this OTHER story had me stopping in my tracks. FIFA, that upstanding organization dedicated to the organic and fair growth of soccer (association football), is putting the World Cup on the market for investment.
The gist of it is this: FIFA has plans to spinoff its “commercial operations” of the World Cup, (that is, it’s development funds, revenue, television rights, etc.) into a separate entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE). This corporation would be open to investment like any other regular company. I don’t have to be a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist to see what the problem here could be. The investment scheme won’t be open for you and me to invest $7 for funsies. No, only the guys with the biggest pockets are going to be qualified to join. And well, that could easily sway the largest international football competition into the hands of sovereign wealth funds, hyper-rich individuals, and everyone’s favorite Peace Prize winner, the Current President of the United States. From The Athletic (paywall):
Nor has the identity of that frontrunner aided matters. After six weeks — and the rest — of cosying up to United States President Donald Trump, the news someone in Trump’s extended orbit was the likeliest investor in FFE merely, for some, added to the growing list of examples of Infantino prostrating himself and football in exchange for favour.
That someone is Joshua Kushner, who heads up the investment vehicle, Thrive Eternal, that is “expected to lead the proposed investor group for FFE”.
Kushner is the brother of Jared, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and it didn’t take too long for a relational line to be drawn.
Well, it’s too late to go back to the dancing cleaning guy now.
Anyway, the response was swiftly condemned. UEFA, the premier organization that oversees soccer in Europe, specifically had an emergency meeting where they said they are keen to pull European teams from participating from future World Cups if this FFE thing goes through.
You know it’s bad when corrupt organizations are calling out corrupt organizations because they are too gosh darn corrupt. This got layers like a Chris Nolan movie. CONCACAF, the similar group that is in charge of North American and Caribbean soccer, sided with UEFA, but like most things involving soccer in North America, nobody cared.
But what does that mean moving forward? Like if the idea of taking a World Cup (a tournament that has long left its humble beginnings and is getting larger and larger with each iteration) and making it investable doesn’t work out in its current form, is it cynical to believe a similar but more clandestine method to get the same result would come from this? In other words, what’s to stop FIFA to spin off ticketing, real estate, or in-game technologies into second-party companies and have people invest in those? Admittedly I’m speculating, but I also know that businesses get really clever when they want something and things get in their way.
Things like equity and fair play.
Can you have a World Cup without Europe (arguably the home to the world’s strongest teams) and North America (the region that is totally fine with paying through the nose for sporting events?) Hard to say, but I guess what I learned today is something I should know, but I always forget: Whether the former British one or not, “empires” always rule sport if you look hard enough.
That said, who wants to send me to the 2030 World Cup? Wheeeee!