Infantino clearly wants to see FIFA making billions so he and many others can pocket millions legally. But the only way for this to happen in a non-corrupt way, given that FIFA is non-profit and therefore requires a lot of questionable operations, is to turn FIFA into a business like NFL / MLS.
The problem with that is that it then it is no longer a sport, rather a... business.
CONCACAF join UEFA and reject FIFA's World Cup sell-off plan. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49488584/uefa-boycott... . By the end of this Gianni Infantino will only be left with the Africans .I am African and these Federations will do anything to keep him around because of the unprecedented amounts of corruption...
This statement is weak and wishy-washy compared to the blunt UEFA statement. Kudos to Europe. Here’s hoping CONCACAF can get brave enough to take the moral stance as well.
I am not sure a replacement for Infantino is enough. It seems like FIFA has a culture of corruption and Infantino is merely the latest manifestation of said culture. Some serious reform and restructuring seem needed.
Fifa is a reflection of the world. All members (nations) get a vote. Most countries are corrupt. Thank go there is still a bastion of democracy/fairness left in Uefa.
Agreed, the tickets to the tournament this year were just outrageously priced. Football is historically a working class sport, but $1,000 to watch a team like DR Congo in the group stage is next level criminality. And it's only going to get worse from here.
FIFA looked at this World Cup as an experiment. They wanted to see whether turning the monetization knob all the way to 11 would encounter significant resistance or whether fans would still watch/attend. The US, with its plethora of expensive stadiums and lax regulatory environment for price gouging compared to Europe, was the perfect testing environment. They upped the number of teams to 48 to get more games, used dynamic ticket pricing, added hydration breaks for more commercials in markets that would allow it and added a few other income streams. All this more than doubled their profits because, and this is the important part going forward, fans didn’t push back. They complained, but the still came/watched.
So this will now be the new norm. Host countries will be ones where laws don’t prohibit gouging fans. They’ll come up with creative solutions to meet the rotation requirement like the upcoming host a couple games in South America farce that’s allowing them to go to Saudi Arabia after that. They’ll continue to push the boundaries of decency until they get sufficient pushback.
There was pushback if you look at per-team attendance situations, but there's more than enough people living in the US making a ton of money that can easily afford the crazy prices. It did lower how many people from some big football nations decide to follow their team around. Not just due to the prices, but the travel distances. Just consider the practical logistics for, say, Spain's run. 2 games in Atlanta (Cabo verde and Saudi Arabia), then go play Uruguay in Guadalajara, then Austria in SoFi/L.A, then Portugal in the Dallas metro, back to SoFi for Belgium, again to Arlington for France, and New Jersey for Argentina: That's a lot of travel and hotel changing, because there's no reasonable way to go to a game and come back in the same day.
For all the problems in Qatar's world cup, a fan could watch two games a day, live,because the stadiums were that close. The 2026 bid maximized distances about as much as one could, vs, say, at least limit it all to the west coast, which would still be a lot by normal standards, bout would mean fewer huge metros where you could dip your toe in and ask for a ton of money, as there'd be very few games there.
And again, we are talking a team that won, and was among the favorites to win from day 1, just not being able to fill 1/3rd of the stadium, or anything close.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but I said before any of this mess, and just dealing with the ticket purchasing experience, that this would be the last World Cup I attend.
It’s sad though. The World Cup, while imperfect, remains an event that brings the world together. We don’t have many of those left.
Imagine being more money hungry than EA - a company which makes billions from gaslighting children into gambling money on getting their favourite players.
The point is not how much it made, it is how to transfer that wealth (whether 6B or 60B) out of a non-profit into someone else's account without looking like, or literally being, a criminal.
The new thing is trying to take the organization from a non-profit to a corporation. Mainly so the executives can increase their already large compensation apparently.
FIFA made $~15 billion USD this World Cup, roughly double what they made in Qatar in 2022. There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
I didn't realize the commercial-block-sized "hydration breaks" were that profitable.
For a second, I thought the Americanization[1] of fùtbol would be done gradually and no one would complain as we'd be slowly boiled. I'm glad the corrupt bastards got greedy/impatient and took a big swing.
1. Sports primarily as a business, catering to owners first, sponsors second, broadcasters third, and then lastly, fans. IMO non-profit sports organizations are the best model for fans, who I identify the most with.
Per-ticket prices were a big factor too. By turning it into an open bidding process, every ticket sold at close to its market value, and many above that.
> There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
The $15 billion figure is for FIFA's ENTIRE 2023-2026 revenue cycle, so not just this World Cup. But the obvious "low-hanging fruit" was making the tournamenta lot larger (104 matches instead of Qatar's 64), so a lot more tickets, hospitality sales, ads etc
Also two 3 minute hydration breaks per match, giving broadcasters additional advertising windows.
There are 200+ participating countries. Many of those are on his side, because they’re tiny and easy to bribe: a few million is significant for them and often that money can be siphoned into corrupt pockets.
That said, a World Cup without any of the 55 UEFA countries wouldn’t make sense commercially.
The heads of Football Associations of tiny countries who took enormous bungs to vote for him and then spent the money on some facilities but mostly themselves
I think the evil part is the [at any cost] part, the incentives are irrelevant. An AI that only wants to make paperclips isn't evil because of the paperclips.
> Sepp Blatter weighed in, writing on X: "The close relationship between the Fifa president and the US President [Donald Trump] has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football. No-one has the right to sell our game."
Blatter was corrupt to the core but cared about the actual sport if you look at his record. This new president is like a james bond villian caricature like he actually wants to destroy the sport.
Why only now? UEFA should boycott the world cup, period. It should have been enough even before the Balogun nonsense. They have the best league and the best teams, they have the know how and could easily host the UEFA World Cup.
They could host a tournament without the pay-to-win arbitrary overruling of red cards and the clownish half time entertainment. Nobody would care about the FIFA World Cup.
Hard to think of a modern institution as corrupt as fifa. That may not bother too many people because it’s not their government, but I just think it stinks
FIFA has been monstrously corrupt since at least as far back as the 1970s (Havelange).
I backslid this year, but did completely boycott watching in 2018 and 2022. Russia is a pariah state and should never have been allowed to host, and Qatar was manifestly unsuitable.
The only difference this year is that the bribery and political favors were out in the open.
There are levels to it. Sepp Blatter was notoriously corrupt, but Infantino makes his "envelope full of cash under the table" style of corruption look amateurish.
In the Dictator's Handbook the authors argued that FIFA and IOC function similar to autocratic dictatorships because there is a small group of people who are essential to power. Therefore it is rational to buy them rather than do the right thing by the fans (who have very little power). As cold as the reasoning is, the explanation stuck with me.
Their suggestion is to open up the power structure, e.g. to all past players/Olympians.
Interestingly, both FIFA and IOC are headquartered in Switzerland, a country that is ranked by Transparency International as one least corrupt countries in the world… Draw you own conclusions.
A common factor seems rather that international sports orgs are often very corrupt. Would be interesting to understand why it happens systematically. Lack of good governance structures must be part of it.
I think fundamental issue is that only people who want power, money or influence get involved at highest levels. For rest operating at grass roots or slightly higher and having local impact is more important. Farther you move from there more power hungry and less passionate about underlying thing the people get.
How was it a shit show? I’m genuinely curious. I attended 5 games (Atlanta, LA and Dallas) and was a fantastic experience minus the process to get tickets.
Not OP, but I would guess: "hydration breaks" to inject commercials, half-time shows that felt alien to much of the core audience, and various rule-bending shenanigans (Ronaldo, Balogun).
Hydration breaks a tad weird. Half time shows were pretty subtle, didn’t change the length of the break except for the final. There’s no soccer competition without someone complaining about refereeing. Def always things to improve but I had fun, all people around me seemed to have fun. I flew in an out and always was either public transportation or uefa provided shuttles… It was really well run. Not something you can call a “shit show”
Oh boy, how could I forget about the Iranian team, and the other players/referees/staff that were rejected or stuck at the airport for hours ? It was worse than a sh-t show actually.
> There’s no soccer competition without someone complaining about refereeing.
Yeah, but most of them go without president calling Infantino to change the referee verdict. All the while the president says "I dont even know the game".
> It was really well run. Not something you can call a “shit show”
I can. Oh and not allowing referee in due to his race and mistreating teams due to politics.
An argument I've heard is that since hydration breaks can affect the game, if you are going to have them they should be mandatory and at the same time in all games in a tournament rather than doing them like they did when they were originally introduced in 2014. Then they were only done in games when the conditions on the field got dangerous.
Telling of what? I imagine if you're running around like eg Ronaldo would be during a game, it doesn't matter how air conditioned the space is, he'd still need to hydrate, on account of all the running that happens. I'm no football expert, but I'm lead to believe that does happen during matches.
I think your attitude, which is all too common, is that we should do things according to the "footballing nations" without any other consideration for the rest of the world. North America is part of the world.
The US itself is far and away the world's biggest sporting nation, and many there see football's informality and cynicism as antiquated and, honestly, embarrassing. The world outside of the US wants to protect "their" game, though it's not theirs to begin with, ignoring the existing, systematic issues with it, even making contrived arguments about the word "soccer" itself.
FIFA's shenanigans off-the-field were a problem, but they're not unique to the World Cup nor its location. I'd argue the last Copa America and Cup of Nations had worse issues with officiating/corruption.
First, it was a new formula of the tournament with more teams which explains the headlines about a someone setting a new record every 2 days.
Second, the hydration (ads!) breaks were clearly used to tweak some tactics, player positionning, etc, making it another half-time. It's a strategic opportunity. Why not introduce a 2 min drill, then ? - yuck- That's not football.
Third, I won't talk about that specific red card or that penalty kick, but the fact that players and staff complained so much about the refereeing issues hurts the trust we can have into the game as a whole.
The 27 min half time was only in the final. Every world cup introduces changes that will stick or not (e.g golden goal rule). Hydration breaks probably won’t stay.
I’ve followed the sport all my life and referee complains I would say less than usual.
I like having more teams. Might even extend to 64 next time.
These are difference of opinion. Nothing singles out this world cup as a “shit show” as the OP. It was a great experience to me and pretty much anyone I encountered in the stadiums.
The Iranian team’s treatment is a prime example. The Somalian ref being denied entrance is another. And the Balogun red card is a double example (it shouldn’t have been a red card in the first place, but the precedent that the President of the host country can get a call overturned is even worse).
I am the last person to defend FIFA - I love the UEFA's stance here - but only Balogun's suspension can be pinned on FIFA. Those other things are down to USA politics. Bad, for sure, not really down to FIFA.
Other than those awful hydration breaks, they didn't ruin it much. I didn't love the extended half time in the final, but I was only hate watching Argentina anyway so didn't care much. Better to have the standard interval but not egregious to extend in the final. Overall it was a good tournament, a proper "feast of football" as we used to say. Some fine-tuning to do with the VAR but even then there weren't as many egregiously unfair calls as in years past. (Croatia's disallowed goal being a memorable example because it was so rare.) Many, many good games and some memorable moments - Cape Verde!
besides a significantly more common 4-3-3, I can't think of anything I particularly found entertaining - the waterworks, the extra VARs, the super special offside line. That's no feast. (and I can continue)
This bit was kind of baffling to me. Like, the US has a bunch of large stadiums. Presumably they sometimes get used for stuff. How is it not a constant disaster?
There’s a medium sized (50k capacity) stadium near me, and even _with_ a train station with a train each way every ten minutes right beside it, and within easy walking distance of about five high capacity bus routes, it’s always a bit of a shitshow when a big event finishes. I’ve no idea how it could work _at all_ if you’re just depending on buses and cars, which a bunch of the US stadiums seemed to be.
For local NFL games in a bigger stadium that, most people attending do drive, but do not park at the stadium, rather nearby, then walk the rest of the way. This spreads out the traffic over a much larger set of roads.
Yes. I was there at the france-spain match. Flew in in the morning was directed to the shuttles by super nice volunteers. Reasonable lines that were mostly in the shade and they were handling free water bottles.
I can't agree with that. Host countries share their culture through the World Cup. South Africa had vuvuzelas, Qatar put a bisht on the winning captain's shoulders, and the USA had a half-time show.
The football itself wasn't bad, it was all the other stuff - prices, unfair treatment for Iran, hydration breaks, the whole Balogun thing, the pre-game and half-time shows at the final, Trump photo-bombing the Spanish celebration, etc. Every WC has its own problems and some of these things will be forgotten about soon, but it definitely seemed more ruthlessly commercialised than ever before.
Maybe the way that Infantino nakedly advanced political favors for Trump (the f×××ing peace prize, Folarin f×××ing Balogun) and now wants a fat slice of payback?
In the local minor league hockey games near me the power play (the man advantage resulting from a penalty) is usually sponsored by an electric company. The announcers say things like "..and with that cross-check they're on a TXU Energy Power Play!"
“Looks like this is a card. He already has a yellow (sponsored by Qatar Airwaves), and may be looking at his second. YES! he is receiving is second yellow, this time sponsored by Universal Studio, and here is the red card. Sponsored by Red Bull. He is leaving this game and his team mates one down.”
Second commentator: “It is true, Red Bull gives you wings. In this case, the wings only take you to the shower room.”
I follow a local team and don’t really follow the larger picture, but injuries are sponsored, i always thought that would produce a perverse incentive.
EDIT: not sure why i’m getting downvoted, they post up the injured player on the screens with a private medical company prominently displayed.
I think the mandatory ad break introduced by FIFA at the World Cup was also too much for most football people, not just fans. Changed too much, broke the dynamics, basically the sport became a game of 4 quarters instead of 2 halves. These two things combined together are just over the top and unacceptable (UEFA already said they won't use these mandatory ad breaks anywhere)
This is the closest where I can see a future where we have a rugby union / rugby league like schism.
Of all the things wrong with the World Cup, the most inconsequential ones - hydration breaks and the final half-time show - have attracted the most griping.
Changing the pauses of the game alters the momentum and, as consequence, the results. How is that “inconsequential”? There have been cases of corrupted referees before, but violating the Laws of the Game in plain sight is an unprecedented attack on the sport.
I think hydration breaks can be defensible as long as they are a) conditionally triggered by pre-existing criteria that is b) created by an honest assessment of player welfare independent of economic considerations.
I can't say I think the halftime show is a big deal at all though.
I can agree that it definitely makes it a different game/playstyle but I'm still not sure if it's guaranteed worse. Putting ads during the break is obviously bad and a cash grab but from a gameplay perspective, it's not clear that a short break during the half is necessarily worse.
Every rule in sports is arbitrary, that's not an argument. If you want to do it properly, ask about the spirit of the game, not the laws - and there's clearly a conflict there.
Disrupting the pace of the game twice as many times, oftenly during critical moments is inconsequential to you? You don't sound like quite a sports person.
By this reasoning, are regular football fans really "sports people?" They tolerate wildly inconsistent officiating and diving (and other forms of unsportsmanlike conduct) that occur at every level of the game. Disrupting the pace would be the least of my worries.
I don't mean to be disrespectful but this is a dumb statement. Do you think splitting each half in 2 quarters doesn't have an impact on how the game is played?
the mandatory ad breaks were usa-level bullshit that never happened before, not even when they were playing in the fucking desert (and that world cup should have been boycotted too, but for different reasons.)
a few years ago when the momentum was moving towards tennis, some european clubs proposed a "super league" comprising of only the elite teams, the purpose was again to maximize ad profits (and i should go back to check who actually proposed it, who they were affiliated with). That time they were suggested not to proceed, or else they would be boycotted from all other events, the players too. That was also a good decision.
football (not handegg) it already corrupt enough as it is, and too much money is flowing into it, it's incredible and heart warming that there is still some dignity left in the associations.
Why would non-fans even care? It was a 3 minute break, non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters". I think this is the kind of thing purists care about but most people don't, most don't even know it is new.
I'm most certainly not a football fan, but I definitely know that a match consists of two 45 minute (and then some) halves. It's pretty much equivalent to a non motor enthusiast knowing that there are usually four wheels on a car.
I'd say this is very, very common knowledge in huge parts of the world. It's not something only enthusiasts and purists know.
Sure, but they aren't leaving the field. There are plenty of stoppages in game already which take as much time. In that sense it's nothing new. Do non-fans view it as changing to 4 "quarters"? I'm not sure most people would care. This is what I mean it's the kind of thing that football purists care about but it's a very small thing.
The breaks change the game more than you’d think, especially when the coach gets to have a strategy session with the whole team. Completely changed the momentum in several games.
I don't know... I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're from a country where football isn't very popular. I don't think you realize just how many fans there are. How utterly ingrained it is in the culture of many countries. "non-fans" make up a minuscule minority of the population of at least Europe, and as far as I understand it South America and parts of Africa too. Not sure about Asia (varies wildly between countries, I suppose), but according to [0] it's estimated that about 3.5 billion people are considered football fans.
This is certainly something many people I know have cared a lot about - and again, I'm not a football enthusiast myself, but still the vast majority of the people I know are, because, not being one really is an outlier.
> There are plenty of stoppages in game already which take as much time.
Well. Not really. And those "stoppages" are part of the game. Actually watching the players quarrel with the referee and whatnot is something football fans want to do. It's not comparable.
> non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters"
… By non-fans do you mean people who have literally never heard of football, or something? I’m very far from a fan, no interest at all. But, I mean, I know there are two halves. Everybody knows that.
There still are 2 halves. Framing it as quarters is the entire thing. There are numerous things throughout a game which will cause the game to be paused just as long, which is why there is stoppage time.
except during that time players aren’t huddling around the manager and the rest of the coaching staff. all of whom have their ipads out to discuss stats breakdowns and instruct players on changing tactics and strategies.
that’s what effectively made the hydration breaks turn it into a game of four quarters. lost count of the number of times teams completely changed their strategy after the breaks and went on to score goals etc.
you make the players drink the water from the centre of the field with no coaching staff present then it would have less of an impact. but there’s still an impact as all players can huddle together and discuss things together in a way they normally wouldn’t be able to without a severe stoppage ie a delay going on 5-10+ minutes, which is usually rare.
Europe is full of people who are not fans, but will still hear all about the games when their country plays, because it's basically impossible to avoid. Chat groups, work banter, waiting rooms, everybody will be talking about it ALL THE TIME. There is a base level of knowledge for the sport everybody shares. Maybe it's the same with American Football in the US? As a European, I still have no idea what that is even remotely about.
A game having two main uninterrupted halves is one of those foundational facts. Players train for being able to play for that long without getting too thirsty to continue.
In almost every part of the world, all people know some basic things about football (and I do mean the one where you kick a ball with the foot), like it has two halves of 45 minutes.
The original post mentioned people that weren't fans, though. Who are we talking about that are "football people" but not fans. I'm not trying to be dense, I just don't know which audience this is.
USA is the exception here. In most countries, even people who are not football fans are pretty aware of how it works.
I don't often watch football outside the world cup. I don't support any teams. But I know how football is meant to be played, and I was definitely annoyed about the hydration breaks.
Does USA have people that don't follow american football but will watch the Superbowl? Would those people notice if there were three times as many breaks as usual?
> Does USA have people that don't follow american football but will watch the Superbowl? Would those people notice if there were three times as many breaks as usual?
Well...many if not most of the people who don't follow NFL and watch the Super Bowl are watching it for the half time show and ads, so more breaks would make them happy, heh.
It's still two halves there is just another short stoppage time in which players stay on the field, the same as every foul, goal, and variety of other timing based decisions in football.
I wouldn’t know, I haven’t watched a single football match since 2018. As for short stoppage time, football use to have much less than, say, rugby. Was it different this year?
I secretly hope that Infantino goes ahead with it anyway. UEFA and others will form something new. Something that replaces the incredibly broken and corrupted FIFA with a de-facto and de-jure non-profit governing body.
Then you would have two corrupt organizing bodies.
Something similar happened with FIDE (chess) in the Kasparov years. I believe FIDE is still headquartered in a dodgy dictatorship in Central-asia-stan.
And I've lost count how many global boxing organizations there are, seemingly in competition with each other to minimize sporting legitimacy and financial transparency.
The same UEFA that added redundant matches and teams to the Champions League for money, and that came up with the Nations League because they wanted to extract more money from the national teams?
The Super League was decidedly not UEFA's - UEFA even announced sanctions against the organisers (though I think those were repealed by a court), because it was going to compete with UEFA's leagues.
I don't follow any sport, but I actually don't understand why UEFA and FIFA are non-profits when all the American leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL) are for-profit corporations. It seems to work well in America.
Does it? Who does it work out well for? Franchises continuously extort tax-payer funds for stadia,some team switches host cities every few years, and the for-profit corporations are legal cartels that decides who gets to own a team. The number of ad-breaks is horrendous to anyone who's watched sports elsewhere.
MLB & NFL only changed to for-profit organisations somewhat recently (2007, 2015). afaict NBA has always been for-profit.
Internationally the standard is non-profits. Most sports have both their international organisations and highest standard of play organisations as non-profits - football, tennis, golf, cricket. The international components of baseball, american football, and basketball are all non-profits (though they are lower standards of play than the US internal leagues).
Because they were designed to be decentralised federations, atop the footballing body in each country. More generally, the US is the most capitalist country, whereas the rest of the world does automatically see capitalism as justified, superior or inevitable.
Lastly, football is a grassroots participation sport that is seen by its fans as more of a religion than a conventional act of entertainment. Of course, religion in the US is also often for-profit, but hopefully you get the point.
Why is this out of the gate bad? Note that this is not taking FIFA to private equity, but creating an investors owned subsidiary to run events and commercial operations where the non profit arm will still own 80% of it. With the right protections it could help FIFA make more money and reinvest in the sport, particularly women’s football. FIFA currently makes 40% of what the NHL makes, not the NFL, not NBA. Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
Why is it bad to sell 20% of the biggest tournament in the world to a private company lead by people involved with the most corrupt administration in the history of the US? The model has been working fine for decades, why does it matter that it makes less than american sports?
The most beloved, most watched sport in the world making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure. Non profits are generally inefficient at running businesses. With the right guardrails a private arm that knows how to run a business could help FIFA make a ton of money. And yes a lot of rich guys will become even richer too, so what?
But FIFA is the governing body of a sport, not a business.
Hearing you say this is like hearing someone say that the United Nations is a commercial failure.
Its purpose is to regulate and administer international football on behalf of its member associations, enforce compliance with its regulations, organise international competitions to relieve the member associations of the hassle, administer anti-doping programmes and related integrity measures (lol), and, through its membership of IFAB, help determine and promote the consistent application of the Laws of the Game worldwide. Its revenues only exist to support those functions.
Is there a need for it to have profit motive? Would the world be better if it decided it should have one? I don't see how the answer could be yes to either question.
The mention of guardrails is a little Onion-esque given the organisation and people in question
You are comparing apple and oranges, it makes no sense.
> Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
Soccer makes much much more money than the NHL, it just doesn't all go to FIFA because the vast majority of matches are not organized by FIFA.
The premier league alone makes more than the NHL and that's just one of the european countries. La ligua, bundesliga also each make close to what the NHL makes with much smaller populations.
The fair comparison to FIFA is the IIHF. They make $35M for the hockey world championships vs 15B for the football world cup, you are slightly off, a rounding error.
> FIFA currently makes 40% of what the NHL makes, not the NFL, not NBA.
FIFA holds one significant money-making tournament for a month every 4 years (all due respect to the Women's World Cup in terms of prestige, but its revenue is a small fraction of the Men's World Cup). The NHL runs 6 months a year annually.
Closer to 10 months actually - Oct (Sept if you include the pre-season) through June.
But just to add on for comparison, the NHL has 1312 regular season games. Plus 4 rounds of best-of-7 playoff series with 16 teams making the playoffs. Let's say an average of 5.75 games per round, that's 86 playoff games bringing us to ~1400 games per year.
Over 4 years, that's 5600 games. The FIFA World Cup had 104 games this year. It's actually pretty impressive that the WC can even make 40% while hosting < 2% of the games that the NHL has. Or put another way, 1 WC game is equivalent to 54 NHL games - 2/3 of one team's full regular season.
That’s part of their poor commercial vision. Even the World Cup brings less revenue than one season of the NBA. Doesn’t even make sense to compare it with the NFL.
Again, it doesn't last as long as one season of the NBA or play as many games.
A single NBA season has over 1200 games - over 12 times as many games as the most recent World Cup (104). And that was already the largest-ever WC. Does the NBA have 12x the revenue of the WC?
> Even the World Cup brings less revenue than one season of the NBA
This isn't even true btw. The 2026 WC made $15b and the 2025-26 NBA season made $14.3 billion. [1][2]
Most of the WC's participating teams represent places poorer than the places NBA teams hail from.
You can't run the World Cup like the NBA. That's not how the sport works.
don't be naive. Never in the history of humanity did corrupt billionaire pedophiles do anything help the sport/fans/women/..... They want a piece to get the foot in the door. 10 years from now, we wont even recognise football anymore.
I don't care what american billionaires make with nhl/nfl/..., hands fucking off of football.
Good calls. Honestly, the last World Cup already had way too many unwatchable matches before the quarterfinals. And the hydration pauses to sell more ads. And that halftime show during the final.
Yes, but isn't football already overly commercialised? Why is advertising for sports betting or alcohol any better than the FIFA issue? UEFA should take a look at itself, too.
like so many corrupt organizations lately, FIFA has been getting away with it for a long time and they overplayed their hand. this was a long time coming and i'm really glad to see it.
FIFA made ludicrous amounts of money as a non profit running the last World Cup and want to transition to a for profit corporation to make even more.
UEFA representing the European nations with the most competitive teams and many of the biggest stars, just told them good luck running a World Cup without us.
UEFA's reach affects the remaining 3/10 and beyond. Nearly the same fraction of world cup players (68%) earn their livelihoods playing for European league teams- including many players representing non-European countries at the World Cup.
Right, IIRC they basically banned everybody in Trinidad from FIFA and relocated the HQ.
It didn't help that Chuck Blazer just looked like a pedophile. Not sure if it's a coincidence that he lived in Trump tower. He had two apartments there, one for his cats.
Football/soccer is one place where Europe can easily flex their muscles against American capitalism and corruption. Good on them for saying it loud and clear.
I'm not convinced. There's plenty of large clubs in Europe owned by foreign capital and those clubs have already tried to push a pan-European league for themselves. I can see the FIFA using those teams as leverage to gain a foothold in Europe without UEFA.
* e.g. Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Paris SG, AC Milan and Inter Milan -- in Spain, individual clubs can't be owned by private equity but the La Liga corporation is)
International companies and institutions parking their money in Switzerland genuinely have as much to do with Europe as Russian Oligarchs in London have with the United Kingdom. The country's always been a financial haven for oligarchs, it doesn't tell you much about the rest of the continent.
Infantino who seems to oscillate between Qatar and Switzerland I assume has a rather strenuous connection to the rest of Europe
The FA's worldwide don't need FIFA, they can set up a new world tournament. You will get a lot of poor nations who stick with FIFA for the cash but at the end of the day without European teams the world cup and FIFA will have minimal value. 5 of the last 6 world cup winners were european and it will only get more biased towards Europe. Argentina post Messi have no chance, and Brazil are the furthest away from winning than they ever have been.
Spain have a far more youthful side, who can easily win again. France will come back, as will England. Argentina have few players coming through and many stars will have retired by the next tournament, even youthful Alvarez will be 30 next time out.
FAs coming together and creating a new FIFA will just mean you get another organization that is exactly as corruption-ridden as FIFA. There's no point starting fresh if you don't fix the underlying problem.
I find the UEFA standpoint a little disingenuous since commercial interests have been a top priority in football (soccer) for decades. Claiming that allowing investors to participate will hurt the sport are at the very least a misrepresentation of the current situation.
Although I disagree with his methods and goals I enjoy watching the way Infantino uses power play to stack the cards in his favor.
The only way for the UEFA to reclaim authority would be to demand two-thirds voting rights. The model of "one country, one vote" clearly works to UEFA's disadvantage even though its clubs contribute the majority of FIFA's income.
The super league wasn't UEFA's doing at all. The top clubs themselves tried to break away and self-organize, and they ultimately won some concessions from UEFA (new CL format, more CL money to the big teams)
According to aljazeera's article, "the core investor would be a New York venture capital investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner."
FIFA is just upholding western values. Profit, exploitation and money over everything else. They with FIA and likes are just showing the world what truly matters for western world.
Cue UEFA's leadership being replaced in the next year or two. FIFA has had a taste of the amount of money involved in professional sports. There's no going back.
50 of the 55 member UEFA states took the floor to express their outrage at FIFA, this is not a matter of UEFA leadership being out of touch. The vast majority of the confederation is ready to walk.
I understand that this is a principled stand by UEFA, no doubt about it. But the amount of money in the offering is too large for the clubs (and their superstars) to snub their noses at it. When it comes down to money, principles are the first to be bought and sold.
FIFA has been spectacularly corrupt since at least thd 1970s, and UEFA is not far behind.
When Blatter was kicked out of FIFA for corruption, the USA provided a legal venue for the investigation. Between Infantino and Trump you would think that is off the table.
Infantino clearly wants to see FIFA making billions so he and many others can pocket millions legally. But the only way for this to happen in a non-corrupt way, given that FIFA is non-profit and therefore requires a lot of questionable operations, is to turn FIFA into a business like NFL / MLS.
The problem with that is that it then it is no longer a sport, rather a... business.
UEFA letter is spot on.
CONCACAF join UEFA and reject FIFA's World Cup sell-off plan. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49488584/uefa-boycott... . By the end of this Gianni Infantino will only be left with the Africans .I am African and these Federations will do anything to keep him around because of the unprecedented amounts of corruption...
CONCACAF statement: https://www.concacaf.com/competitions/concacaf/news/statemen...
This statement is weak and wishy-washy compared to the blunt UEFA statement. Kudos to Europe. Here’s hoping CONCACAF can get brave enough to take the moral stance as well.
While the football business is horrible it's nice that this may fail like the Super League.
Now if only that could put a dent in Infantino reelection...
I am not sure a replacement for Infantino is enough. It seems like FIFA has a culture of corruption and Infantino is merely the latest manifestation of said culture. Some serious reform and restructuring seem needed.
Fifa is a reflection of the world. All members (nations) get a vote. Most countries are corrupt. Thank go there is still a bastion of democracy/fairness left in Uefa.
> unprecedented amounts of corruption...
Yes I hear about that a lot. Yuk
But I also hear that FIFA puts a lot of resources into developing the game in African countries.
I am asking: Is that true in your experience?
Who told you that? FIFA?
The experience interacting with FIFA is so terrible already. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if it turned into a profit machine.
Agreed, the tickets to the tournament this year were just outrageously priced. Football is historically a working class sport, but $1,000 to watch a team like DR Congo in the group stage is next level criminality. And it's only going to get worse from here.
FIFA looked at this World Cup as an experiment. They wanted to see whether turning the monetization knob all the way to 11 would encounter significant resistance or whether fans would still watch/attend. The US, with its plethora of expensive stadiums and lax regulatory environment for price gouging compared to Europe, was the perfect testing environment. They upped the number of teams to 48 to get more games, used dynamic ticket pricing, added hydration breaks for more commercials in markets that would allow it and added a few other income streams. All this more than doubled their profits because, and this is the important part going forward, fans didn’t push back. They complained, but the still came/watched.
So this will now be the new norm. Host countries will be ones where laws don’t prohibit gouging fans. They’ll come up with creative solutions to meet the rotation requirement like the upcoming host a couple games in South America farce that’s allowing them to go to Saudi Arabia after that. They’ll continue to push the boundaries of decency until they get sufficient pushback.
There was pushback if you look at per-team attendance situations, but there's more than enough people living in the US making a ton of money that can easily afford the crazy prices. It did lower how many people from some big football nations decide to follow their team around. Not just due to the prices, but the travel distances. Just consider the practical logistics for, say, Spain's run. 2 games in Atlanta (Cabo verde and Saudi Arabia), then go play Uruguay in Guadalajara, then Austria in SoFi/L.A, then Portugal in the Dallas metro, back to SoFi for Belgium, again to Arlington for France, and New Jersey for Argentina: That's a lot of travel and hotel changing, because there's no reasonable way to go to a game and come back in the same day.
For all the problems in Qatar's world cup, a fan could watch two games a day, live,because the stadiums were that close. The 2026 bid maximized distances about as much as one could, vs, say, at least limit it all to the west coast, which would still be a lot by normal standards, bout would mean fewer huge metros where you could dip your toe in and ask for a ton of money, as there'd be very few games there.
And again, we are talking a team that won, and was among the favorites to win from day 1, just not being able to fill 1/3rd of the stadium, or anything close.
Like for live music tickets prices it's hard to collectively do the right thing and boycott. There's just too many people.
But there's always a breaking point... hopefully.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but I said before any of this mess, and just dealing with the ticket purchasing experience, that this would be the last World Cup I attend.
It’s sad though. The World Cup, while imperfect, remains an event that brings the world together. We don’t have many of those left.
For Infantino, they reckon his salary can go from 6M to 60M under this new org…
They also got so greedy that even EA couldn't deal with them anymore and they ended up destroying the Fifa videogame franchise
Imagine being more money hungry than EA - a company which makes billions from gaslighting children into gambling money on getting their favourite players.
FIFA is also a terrible employer
Got friends working for them as developers. They ran away. In months
Based on the quality of their World Cup ticketing website, I’m not surprised. That was the worst ticketing experience I’ve ever endured.
Are you talking about EA or FIFA?
They just made $15bn.
Which is clearly not enough.
The point is not how much it made, it is how to transfer that wealth (whether 6B or 60B) out of a non-profit into someone else's account without looking like, or literally being, a criminal.
A nonprofit can be questioned about how it pays people.
A private company answers only to shareholders.
bingo
These people looked at OpenAI and went "Hey, I can run corruption like that too!"
> and many others
Trump and Kushners
"Joshua Kushner is now the kingpin in driving the sale of the World Cup to investors and family ties are tight around the project"[1]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/30/fifas-sale-...
> UEFA
They are no strangers to certain aspects of it. /s
What's new? I thought it has been known as a big-money thing for some time now.
The new thing is trying to take the organization from a non-profit to a corporation. Mainly so the executives can increase their already large compensation apparently.
Interesting parallels to OpenAI.
FIFA made $~15 billion USD this World Cup, roughly double what they made in Qatar in 2022. There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
I didn't realize the commercial-block-sized "hydration breaks" were that profitable.
For a second, I thought the Americanization[1] of fùtbol would be done gradually and no one would complain as we'd be slowly boiled. I'm glad the corrupt bastards got greedy/impatient and took a big swing.
1. Sports primarily as a business, catering to owners first, sponsors second, broadcasters third, and then lastly, fans. IMO non-profit sports organizations are the best model for fans, who I identify the most with.
Per-ticket prices were a big factor too. By turning it into an open bidding process, every ticket sold at close to its market value, and many above that.
And they took a 15% commission on both sides of every aftermarket transaction. I’ve never seen such an overtly avaricious “marketplace”.
The difference that FIFA ran the whole tournament now. There was no Local Organizing Committee (LOC) like with every single previous event.
> There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
The $15 billion figure is for FIFA's ENTIRE 2023-2026 revenue cycle, so not just this World Cup. But the obvious "low-hanging fruit" was making the tournamenta lot larger (104 matches instead of Qatar's 64), so a lot more tickets, hospitality sales, ads etc
Also two 3 minute hydration breaks per match, giving broadcasters additional advertising windows.
That's your "optimization".
FIFA has announced they plan to officially sell off everything to private investors, dropping all pretense of being a steward of a common good.
What's wrong with making billions? Will this hurt the game somehow?
We've seen the start with "hydration breaks" and a 30 minute half-time.
Investors calling to change red cards because the best players should play, etc
Instead of just various penis challenged nation leaders doing so...
Yes.
The game was already hurt this world cup with the flow destroying „hydration breaks“ to sell more ads.
"The investment fund Fifa is dealing with - Thrive Capital - is led by Josh Kushner, the brother-in-law of Trump's daughter Ivanka." https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cjejl274xx8o
FIFA is famously corrupt. But now they don't bother trying to try to hide the corruption.
This is so highly unusual even sports-allergic HN wants to discuss it. It's like a religious schism in some sense.
It's about brazen corruption in one of the world's most famous institutions. Taking an interest in it isn't as irrational as all that.
I don’t know whos on Infantinos side on this
There are 200+ participating countries. Many of those are on his side, because they’re tiny and easy to bribe: a few million is significant for them and often that money can be siphoned into corrupt pockets.
That said, a World Cup without any of the 55 UEFA countries wouldn’t make sense commercially.
But the USA men might finally do well!
Depending on whether the South American teams show up…
I’ve bad news for you: Concacaf has also unanimously spoken against the plan. :-)
(Though AFAIK they haven’t yet threatened a boycott.)
I like this map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_cup_winners.svg
Two world wars and one world cup...
The heads of Football Associations of tiny countries who took enormous bungs to vote for him and then spent the money on some facilities but mostly themselves
Kushner
Trump and his family.
His son in law is running the investment firm https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-fifa-investors-kushner-...
In turn Trump wants to nominate Infantino for Secretary General of UN https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/22/trumps-pick-for-the-next...
There is nothing this family does not see as an opportunity for corruption. Comically evil.
as an opportunity for profit*
I think it’s important to clarify the incentives at play, people are rarely evil for the sake of being evil
I think the evil part is the [at any cost] part, the incentives are irrelevant. An AI that only wants to make paperclips isn't evil because of the paperclips.
> Sepp Blatter weighed in, writing on X: "The close relationship between the Fifa president and the US President [Donald Trump] has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football. No-one has the right to sell our game."
Sepp Blatter for crying out loud.
Blatter was corrupt to the core but cared about the actual sport if you look at his record. This new president is like a james bond villian caricature like he actually wants to destroy the sport.
Who better to recognize corruption?
That's like John Gotti saying Al Capone was corrupt.
It takes one to know one, yep.
The companies that want a piece of FIFA, I assume.
Edit: I just realized you meant who here on hn, in which case I assume the hardcore capitalists/libertarians. But they can speak for themselves.
On HN? The capitalist/libertarian/Elon posters, Meta employees, etc.
Why only now? UEFA should boycott the world cup, period. It should have been enough even before the Balogun nonsense. They have the best league and the best teams, they have the know how and could easily host the UEFA World Cup.
They could host a tournament without the pay-to-win arbitrary overruling of red cards and the clownish half time entertainment. Nobody would care about the FIFA World Cup.
Fork it!
About time
Hard to think of a modern institution as corrupt as fifa. That may not bother too many people because it’s not their government, but I just think it stinks
FIFA has been monstrously corrupt since at least as far back as the 1970s (Havelange).
I backslid this year, but did completely boycott watching in 2018 and 2022. Russia is a pariah state and should never have been allowed to host, and Qatar was manifestly unsuitable.
The only difference this year is that the bribery and political favors were out in the open.
There are levels to it. Sepp Blatter was notoriously corrupt, but Infantino makes his "envelope full of cash under the table" style of corruption look amateurish.
Even in the festering pit of slime that is FIFA, Infantino stands out for his festeringdom and slimitude.
Russia a pariah state, as opposed to the US. Good thing freedom won and the US was allowed to host.
What an excellent example of the most Russian thing of all: whataboutism.
> Hard to think of a modern institution as corrupt as fifa
IOC is about the only organisation that comes close to it I think.
In the Dictator's Handbook the authors argued that FIFA and IOC function similar to autocratic dictatorships because there is a small group of people who are essential to power. Therefore it is rational to buy them rather than do the right thing by the fans (who have very little power). As cold as the reasoning is, the explanation stuck with me.
Their suggestion is to open up the power structure, e.g. to all past players/Olympians.
Interestingly, both FIFA and IOC are headquartered in Switzerland, a country that is ranked by Transparency International as one least corrupt countries in the world… Draw you own conclusions.
A common factor seems rather that international sports orgs are often very corrupt. Would be interesting to understand why it happens systematically. Lack of good governance structures must be part of it.
I think fundamental issue is that only people who want power, money or influence get involved at highest levels. For rest operating at grass roots or slightly higher and having local impact is more important. Farther you move from there more power hungry and less passionate about underlying thing the people get.
I'm so happy to see they care enough to take a stand. The last World Cup was a sh-t show. I expect the LA olympics to be no better.
How was it a shit show? I’m genuinely curious. I attended 5 games (Atlanta, LA and Dallas) and was a fantastic experience minus the process to get tickets.
Not OP, but I would guess: "hydration breaks" to inject commercials, half-time shows that felt alien to much of the core audience, and various rule-bending shenanigans (Ronaldo, Balogun).
Hydration breaks a tad weird. Half time shows were pretty subtle, didn’t change the length of the break except for the final. There’s no soccer competition without someone complaining about refereeing. Def always things to improve but I had fun, all people around me seemed to have fun. I flew in an out and always was either public transportation or uefa provided shuttles… It was really well run. Not something you can call a “shit show”
Balogun and Ronaldo red card overturns had nothing to do with "refereeing". It was clear corruption and favouritism.
Also the treatment of the Iranian team was comically awful.
Oh boy, how could I forget about the Iranian team, and the other players/referees/staff that were rejected or stuck at the airport for hours ? It was worse than a sh-t show actually.
> There’s no soccer competition without someone complaining about refereeing.
Yeah, but most of them go without president calling Infantino to change the referee verdict. All the while the president says "I dont even know the game".
> It was really well run. Not something you can call a “shit show”
I can. Oh and not allowing referee in due to his race and mistreating teams due to politics.
> There’s no soccer competition
Ahhhh, you're American!
Here to give you the occasional reminder that Irish people (sauf a few weirdos in Dublin) also call the sport soccer.
I’m spanish living in the US
The fact that you had 'hydration breaks' in enclosed, fully air-conditioned stadiums is very telling.
An argument I've heard is that since hydration breaks can affect the game, if you are going to have them they should be mandatory and at the same time in all games in a tournament rather than doing them like they did when they were originally introduced in 2014. Then they were only done in games when the conditions on the field got dangerous.
Not all stadiums were enclosed
Telling of what? I imagine if you're running around like eg Ronaldo would be during a game, it doesn't matter how air conditioned the space is, he'd still need to hydrate, on account of all the running that happens. I'm no football expert, but I'm lead to believe that does happen during matches.
Also a funny trump red card
I think your attitude, which is all too common, is that we should do things according to the "footballing nations" without any other consideration for the rest of the world. North America is part of the world.
The US itself is far and away the world's biggest sporting nation, and many there see football's informality and cynicism as antiquated and, honestly, embarrassing. The world outside of the US wants to protect "their" game, though it's not theirs to begin with, ignoring the existing, systematic issues with it, even making contrived arguments about the word "soccer" itself.
FIFA's shenanigans off-the-field were a problem, but they're not unique to the World Cup nor its location. I'd argue the last Copa America and Cup of Nations had worse issues with officiating/corruption.
This is the most american centric take I’ve seen all week! Bravo!
There are many other nations with just as much influence in sports outside of the US. The only difference being that the US doesn’t care about them.
Football is a global game, everyone’s, not another thing for the US to dictate and ruin.
First, it was a new formula of the tournament with more teams which explains the headlines about a someone setting a new record every 2 days.
Second, the hydration (ads!) breaks were clearly used to tweak some tactics, player positionning, etc, making it another half-time. It's a strategic opportunity. Why not introduce a 2 min drill, then ? - yuck- That's not football.
Third, I won't talk about that specific red card or that penalty kick, but the fact that players and staff complained so much about the refereeing issues hurts the trust we can have into the game as a whole.
And that 27 min half-time... Seriously ?!
The 27 min half time was only in the final. Every world cup introduces changes that will stick or not (e.g golden goal rule). Hydration breaks probably won’t stay.
I’ve followed the sport all my life and referee complains I would say less than usual.
I like having more teams. Might even extend to 64 next time.
These are difference of opinion. Nothing singles out this world cup as a “shit show” as the OP. It was a great experience to me and pretty much anyone I encountered in the stadiums.
>Hydration breaks probably won’t stay.
It was already introduced in the local women league...
The Iranian team’s treatment is a prime example. The Somalian ref being denied entrance is another. And the Balogun red card is a double example (it shouldn’t have been a red card in the first place, but the precedent that the President of the host country can get a call overturned is even worse).
I am the last person to defend FIFA - I love the UEFA's stance here - but only Balogun's suspension can be pinned on FIFA. Those other things are down to USA politics. Bad, for sure, not really down to FIFA.
Other than those awful hydration breaks, they didn't ruin it much. I didn't love the extended half time in the final, but I was only hate watching Argentina anyway so didn't care much. Better to have the standard interval but not egregious to extend in the final. Overall it was a good tournament, a proper "feast of football" as we used to say. Some fine-tuning to do with the VAR but even then there weren't as many egregiously unfair calls as in years past. (Croatia's disallowed goal being a memorable example because it was so rare.) Many, many good games and some memorable moments - Cape Verde!
> proper "feast of football" as we used to say.
besides a significantly more common 4-3-3, I can't think of anything I particularly found entertaining - the waterworks, the extra VARs, the super special offside line. That's no feast. (and I can continue)
The ticket prices and scalping (sorry, authorized re-selling to find the market clearing price) were robbery.
Sports people (I was listening to Bill Simmons) rated it pretty highly.
There was nothing egregious and it was widely attended.
The way that the Iran team was only allowed into the USA on match days was a disgrace.
Refusing entry to a Somali referee on the spurious grounds of links to terrorism was a disgrace.
The overturning of Falorin Balogun's ban was a disgrace.
The ticket prices were a disgrace. The transport to the stadiums was a shambles.
I could go on.
> The transport to the stadiums was a shambles.
This bit was kind of baffling to me. Like, the US has a bunch of large stadiums. Presumably they sometimes get used for stuff. How is it not a constant disaster?
There’s a medium sized (50k capacity) stadium near me, and even _with_ a train station with a train each way every ten minutes right beside it, and within easy walking distance of about five high capacity bus routes, it’s always a bit of a shitshow when a big event finishes. I’ve no idea how it could work _at all_ if you’re just depending on buses and cars, which a bunch of the US stadiums seemed to be.
For local NFL games in a bigger stadium that, most people attending do drive, but do not park at the stadium, rather nearby, then walk the rest of the way. This spreads out the traffic over a much larger set of roads.
Acres upon acres of parking lots.
I attended games in Dallas and was shocked at how well the city / FIFA handled transportation. Especially for a city that usually has none.
Yes. I was there at the france-spain match. Flew in in the morning was directed to the shuttles by super nice volunteers. Reasonable lines that were mostly in the shade and they were handling free water bottles.
The World Cup final is supposed to be a war and the half time show turned it into a clown fest.
I can't agree with that. Host countries share their culture through the World Cup. South Africa had vuvuzelas, Qatar put a bisht on the winning captain's shoulders, and the USA had a half-time show.
Now if only it had been a good half-time show...
The football itself wasn't bad, it was all the other stuff - prices, unfair treatment for Iran, hydration breaks, the whole Balogun thing, the pre-game and half-time shows at the final, Trump photo-bombing the Spanish celebration, etc. Every WC has its own problems and some of these things will be forgotten about soon, but it definitely seemed more ruthlessly commercialised than ever before.
The fact a ban was overturned as a political favour.
Maybe the way that Infantino nakedly advanced political favors for Trump (the f×××ing peace prize, Folarin f×××ing Balogun) and now wants a fat slice of payback?
It's only a matter of time before there are sponsors on the Yellow and Red cards...
Guaranteed slots to the tournaments for patrons
In the local minor league hockey games near me the power play (the man advantage resulting from a penalty) is usually sponsored by an electric company. The announcers say things like "..and with that cross-check they're on a TXU Energy Power Play!"
Hawkeye in GAA games is sponsored by Specsavers.
The red card for covering your mouth while talking to an opponent is brought to you by Telegram.
“And that’s the second State Farm Yellow Card for Haaland!”
“Looks like this is a card. He already has a yellow (sponsored by Qatar Airwaves), and may be looking at his second. YES! he is receiving is second yellow, this time sponsored by Universal Studio, and here is the red card. Sponsored by Red Bull. He is leaving this game and his team mates one down.”
Second commentator: “It is true, Red Bull gives you wings. In this case, the wings only take you to the shower room.”
I follow a local team and don’t really follow the larger picture, but injuries are sponsored, i always thought that would produce a perverse incentive.
EDIT: not sure why i’m getting downvoted, they post up the injured player on the screens with a private medical company prominently displayed.
Outstanding. I hope the muscle through and make it happen.
I think the mandatory ad break introduced by FIFA at the World Cup was also too much for most football people, not just fans. Changed too much, broke the dynamics, basically the sport became a game of 4 quarters instead of 2 halves. These two things combined together are just over the top and unacceptable (UEFA already said they won't use these mandatory ad breaks anywhere)
This is the closest where I can see a future where we have a rugby union / rugby league like schism.
Oh and guess who is behind the investment group: https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-fifa-investors-kushner-...
I agree completely with your assessment of the water breaks, but the games were extremely entertaining and I watched as much as I could.
Of all the things wrong with the World Cup, the most inconsequential ones - hydration breaks and the final half-time show - have attracted the most griping.
Changing the pauses of the game alters the momentum and, as consequence, the results. How is that “inconsequential”? There have been cases of corrupted referees before, but violating the Laws of the Game in plain sight is an unprecedented attack on the sport.
I think hydration breaks can be defensible as long as they are a) conditionally triggered by pre-existing criteria that is b) created by an honest assessment of player welfare independent of economic considerations.
I can't say I think the halftime show is a big deal at all though.
They should also not be used an excuse for teams to be coached as a group.
I can agree that it definitely makes it a different game/playstyle but I'm still not sure if it's guaranteed worse. Putting ads during the break is obviously bad and a cash grab but from a gameplay perspective, it's not clear that a short break during the half is necessarily worse.
How does it violate the laws of the game?
Every single break time decision in football is arbitrary already.
Every rule in sports is arbitrary, that's not an argument. If you want to do it properly, ask about the spirit of the game, not the laws - and there's clearly a conflict there.
Disrupting the pace of the game twice as many times, oftenly during critical moments is inconsequential to you? You don't sound like quite a sports person.
By this reasoning, are regular football fans really "sports people?" They tolerate wildly inconsistent officiating and diving (and other forms of unsportsmanlike conduct) that occur at every level of the game. Disrupting the pace would be the least of my worries.
I don't mean to be disrespectful but this is a dumb statement. Do you think splitting each half in 2 quarters doesn't have an impact on how the game is played?
The VAR calls 5 minutes after the fact were the most bothersome thing to me
Good thing you don’t watch Premier League. The World Cup VAR was snappy in comparison.
… and the 9+’ stoppage for every match.
the mandatory ad breaks were usa-level bullshit that never happened before, not even when they were playing in the fucking desert (and that world cup should have been boycotted too, but for different reasons.)
a few years ago when the momentum was moving towards tennis, some european clubs proposed a "super league" comprising of only the elite teams, the purpose was again to maximize ad profits (and i should go back to check who actually proposed it, who they were affiliated with). That time they were suggested not to proceed, or else they would be boycotted from all other events, the players too. That was also a good decision.
football (not handegg) it already corrupt enough as it is, and too much money is flowing into it, it's incredible and heart warming that there is still some dignity left in the associations.
> the most inconsequential ones
This is like saying “customers aren’t worried enough about the corporate process - they only care about the end product!”
There was extensive coverage and discussion of Trump getting the Balogun red card overturned.
Thank you! An actual problem!
Why would non-fans even care? It was a 3 minute break, non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters". I think this is the kind of thing purists care about but most people don't, most don't even know it is new.
I'm most certainly not a football fan, but I definitely know that a match consists of two 45 minute (and then some) halves. It's pretty much equivalent to a non motor enthusiast knowing that there are usually four wheels on a car.
I'd say this is very, very common knowledge in huge parts of the world. It's not something only enthusiasts and purists know.
Sure, but they aren't leaving the field. There are plenty of stoppages in game already which take as much time. In that sense it's nothing new. Do non-fans view it as changing to 4 "quarters"? I'm not sure most people would care. This is what I mean it's the kind of thing that football purists care about but it's a very small thing.
The breaks change the game more than you’d think, especially when the coach gets to have a strategy session with the whole team. Completely changed the momentum in several games.
I don't know... I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're from a country where football isn't very popular. I don't think you realize just how many fans there are. How utterly ingrained it is in the culture of many countries. "non-fans" make up a minuscule minority of the population of at least Europe, and as far as I understand it South America and parts of Africa too. Not sure about Asia (varies wildly between countries, I suppose), but according to [0] it's estimated that about 3.5 billion people are considered football fans.
This is certainly something many people I know have cared a lot about - and again, I'm not a football enthusiast myself, but still the vast majority of the people I know are, because, not being one really is an outlier.
[0] https://www.topendsports.com/world/lists/popular-sport/fans....
> There are plenty of stoppages in game already which take as much time.
Well. Not really. And those "stoppages" are part of the game. Actually watching the players quarrel with the referee and whatnot is something football fans want to do. It's not comparable.
“I’m not sure what the big deal about tripling the number of tire changes in the race is.”
> non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters"
… By non-fans do you mean people who have literally never heard of football, or something? I’m very far from a fan, no interest at all. But, I mean, I know there are two halves. Everybody knows that.
I think by non fans they just mean americans, it’s almost impossiible to not be aware of the basic rules outside of there.
There still are 2 halves. Framing it as quarters is the entire thing. There are numerous things throughout a game which will cause the game to be paused just as long, which is why there is stoppage time.
There aren’t usually numerous 5-minutes pauses in a football match, no.
except during that time players aren’t huddling around the manager and the rest of the coaching staff. all of whom have their ipads out to discuss stats breakdowns and instruct players on changing tactics and strategies.
that’s what effectively made the hydration breaks turn it into a game of four quarters. lost count of the number of times teams completely changed their strategy after the breaks and went on to score goals etc.
you make the players drink the water from the centre of the field with no coaching staff present then it would have less of an impact. but there’s still an impact as all players can huddle together and discuss things together in a way they normally wouldn’t be able to without a severe stoppage ie a delay going on 5-10+ minutes, which is usually rare.
Why would anyone be in favour of more ad breaks?
I'm not arguing for ad breaks, I'm saying non-fans would not even be aware this is something new.
This is the thing that is too much? I just don't get it. The entire thing is a spectacle to sell ads.
Europe is full of people who are not fans, but will still hear all about the games when their country plays, because it's basically impossible to avoid. Chat groups, work banter, waiting rooms, everybody will be talking about it ALL THE TIME. There is a base level of knowledge for the sport everybody shares. Maybe it's the same with American Football in the US? As a European, I still have no idea what that is even remotely about.
A game having two main uninterrupted halves is one of those foundational facts. Players train for being able to play for that long without getting too thirsty to continue.
In almost every part of the world, all people know some basic things about football (and I do mean the one where you kick a ball with the foot), like it has two halves of 45 minutes.
On the other hand, it gives a chance for fans to turn off the TV when the game isn’t great
No one really gives a shit what Americans who don't follow football think, though.
The original post mentioned people that weren't fans, though. Who are we talking about that are "football people" but not fans. I'm not trying to be dense, I just don't know which audience this is.
USA is the exception here. In most countries, even people who are not football fans are pretty aware of how it works.
I don't often watch football outside the world cup. I don't support any teams. But I know how football is meant to be played, and I was definitely annoyed about the hydration breaks.
Does USA have people that don't follow american football but will watch the Superbowl? Would those people notice if there were three times as many breaks as usual?
> Does USA have people that don't follow american football but will watch the Superbowl? Would those people notice if there were three times as many breaks as usual?
Well...many if not most of the people who don't follow NFL and watch the Super Bowl are watching it for the half time show and ads, so more breaks would make them happy, heh.
Most football non-fans absolutely know that a football match is supposed to be two halves.
It's still two halves there is just another short stoppage time in which players stay on the field, the same as every foul, goal, and variety of other timing based decisions in football.
I wouldn’t know, I haven’t watched a single football match since 2018. As for short stoppage time, football use to have much less than, say, rugby. Was it different this year?
This would only be true if they did not allow the hydration breaks to be used as a group coaching opportunity.
It's a pity that those letters are not sent for many many other things.
Somewhere in this fetid swamp of corruption, you just know the trump crime syndicate has its greasy hands on the pie.
*hands on a peace of the pie
Europe, united at long last!
USA vs Australia grand final!
I secretly hope that Infantino goes ahead with it anyway. UEFA and others will form something new. Something that replaces the incredibly broken and corrupted FIFA with a de-facto and de-jure non-profit governing body.
Then you would have two corrupt organizing bodies.
Something similar happened with FIDE (chess) in the Kasparov years. I believe FIDE is still headquartered in a dodgy dictatorship in Central-asia-stan.
And I've lost count how many global boxing organizations there are, seemingly in competition with each other to minimize sporting legitimacy and financial transparency.
The same UEFA that added redundant matches and teams to the Champions League for money, and that came up with the Nations League because they wanted to extract more money from the national teams?
And attempted to hive off the best teams into a super league, even though this would have destroyed national leagues across the continent.
The Super League was decidedly not UEFA's - UEFA even announced sanctions against the organisers (though I think those were repealed by a court), because it was going to compete with UEFA's leagues.
It's crazy that as despicable an organization as UEFA is, they're still far better than FIFA.
Infantino has been a disgrace, I hope they manage to get rid of him, but I have very little hope.
I don't follow any sport, but I actually don't understand why UEFA and FIFA are non-profits when all the American leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL) are for-profit corporations. It seems to work well in America.
> It seems to work well in America.
Does it? Who does it work out well for? Franchises continuously extort tax-payer funds for stadia,some team switches host cities every few years, and the for-profit corporations are legal cartels that decides who gets to own a team. The number of ad-breaks is horrendous to anyone who's watched sports elsewhere.
MLB & NFL only changed to for-profit organisations somewhat recently (2007, 2015). afaict NBA has always been for-profit.
Internationally the standard is non-profits. Most sports have both their international organisations and highest standard of play organisations as non-profits - football, tennis, golf, cricket. The international components of baseball, american football, and basketball are all non-profits (though they are lower standards of play than the US internal leagues).
American sports leagues are also non-profit organizations. Profits go to the individual teams. So no, FIFA should not be run by private equity firms.
Because they were designed to be decentralised federations, atop the footballing body in each country. More generally, the US is the most capitalist country, whereas the rest of the world does automatically see capitalism as justified, superior or inevitable.
Lastly, football is a grassroots participation sport that is seen by its fans as more of a religion than a conventional act of entertainment. Of course, religion in the US is also often for-profit, but hopefully you get the point.
Are they? Their revenues are limited and they can’t really extend their influence outside USA. Meanwhile European games are watched globally
Why is this out of the gate bad? Note that this is not taking FIFA to private equity, but creating an investors owned subsidiary to run events and commercial operations where the non profit arm will still own 80% of it. With the right protections it could help FIFA make more money and reinvest in the sport, particularly women’s football. FIFA currently makes 40% of what the NHL makes, not the NFL, not NBA. Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
Why is it bad to sell 20% of the biggest tournament in the world to a private company lead by people involved with the most corrupt administration in the history of the US? The model has been working fine for decades, why does it matter that it makes less than american sports?
The most beloved, most watched sport in the world making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure. Non profits are generally inefficient at running businesses. With the right guardrails a private arm that knows how to run a business could help FIFA make a ton of money. And yes a lot of rich guys will become even richer too, so what?
But FIFA is the governing body of a sport, not a business.
Hearing you say this is like hearing someone say that the United Nations is a commercial failure.
Its purpose is to regulate and administer international football on behalf of its member associations, enforce compliance with its regulations, organise international competitions to relieve the member associations of the hassle, administer anti-doping programmes and related integrity measures (lol), and, through its membership of IFAB, help determine and promote the consistent application of the Laws of the Game worldwide. Its revenues only exist to support those functions.
Is there a need for it to have profit motive? Would the world be better if it decided it should have one? I don't see how the answer could be yes to either question.
The mention of guardrails is a little Onion-esque given the organisation and people in question
> help FIFA make a ton of money
It's a non-profit. So who cares? Why is more money automatically good?
> making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure
They aren't alike. The NHL doesn't happen once every 4 years.
The point of Fifa is not to make money. The point of it is to further the interests of the sport.
Besides, your tally of sports incomes is wrong since you didn't include UEFA revenue, which is also football money, in the count.
Good thing it's a sport and not a commercial operation then!
guardrails, yea pedotrump pissed all over existing guardrails in this wc. and you want to sell him a piece of fifa :D
> a commercial failure
Not everything has to have the teeth of capitalism continually biting down harder and harder. Plateaus are ok (and this is nowhere near a plateau)
You are comparing apple and oranges, it makes no sense.
> Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
Soccer makes much much more money than the NHL, it just doesn't all go to FIFA because the vast majority of matches are not organized by FIFA.
The premier league alone makes more than the NHL and that's just one of the european countries. La ligua, bundesliga also each make close to what the NHL makes with much smaller populations.
The fair comparison to FIFA is the IIHF. They make $35M for the hockey world championships vs 15B for the football world cup, you are slightly off, a rounding error.
> FIFA currently makes 40% of what the NHL makes, not the NFL, not NBA.
FIFA holds one significant money-making tournament for a month every 4 years (all due respect to the Women's World Cup in terms of prestige, but its revenue is a small fraction of the Men's World Cup). The NHL runs 6 months a year annually.
Closer to 10 months actually - Oct (Sept if you include the pre-season) through June.
But just to add on for comparison, the NHL has 1312 regular season games. Plus 4 rounds of best-of-7 playoff series with 16 teams making the playoffs. Let's say an average of 5.75 games per round, that's 86 playoff games bringing us to ~1400 games per year.
Over 4 years, that's 5600 games. The FIFA World Cup had 104 games this year. It's actually pretty impressive that the WC can even make 40% while hosting < 2% of the games that the NHL has. Or put another way, 1 WC game is equivalent to 54 NHL games - 2/3 of one team's full regular season.
That’s part of their poor commercial vision. Even the World Cup brings less revenue than one season of the NBA. Doesn’t even make sense to compare it with the NFL.
So what. The point of the World Cup is a worldwide celebration of soccer, interchange of culture. It belongs to the people.
It's one of the only things left whose purpose is not just to make as much money as possible.
Again, it doesn't last as long as one season of the NBA or play as many games.
A single NBA season has over 1200 games - over 12 times as many games as the most recent World Cup (104). And that was already the largest-ever WC. Does the NBA have 12x the revenue of the WC?
> Even the World Cup brings less revenue than one season of the NBA
This isn't even true btw. The 2026 WC made $15b and the 2025-26 NBA season made $14.3 billion. [1][2]
Most of the WC's participating teams represent places poorer than the places NBA teams hail from.
You can't run the World Cup like the NBA. That's not how the sport works.
1. https://www.sportico.com/leagues/basketball/2025/nba-revenue...
2. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/18/fifa-record...
NHL/NFL/NBA are national leagues, the FIFA world cup a tournament that takes place every four years. You’re comparing apples and pears.
As a pundit - more 'water works', the addition in the last world cup was beyond lame.
>FIFA currently makes 40% of what the NHL makes,
That's entirely irrelevant, if FIFA even makes zero - most of the money is in the local leagues. FIFA is just there for the world cup
don't be naive. Never in the history of humanity did corrupt billionaire pedophiles do anything help the sport/fans/women/..... They want a piece to get the foot in the door. 10 years from now, we wont even recognise football anymore.
I don't care what american billionaires make with nhl/nfl/..., hands fucking off of football.
> Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
Maybe fans would prefer that it stayed that way.. making just enough money to keep the sport going, without the profit motive.
> Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
The NFL makes much less money than nVidia The world has gone mad! That's just insane.
This whole thread is full of people that cannot conceive a model where profit is not the goal
Welcome to HN. It wasn’t always this way, but it sure is now!
Good calls. Honestly, the last World Cup already had way too many unwatchable matches before the quarterfinals. And the hydration pauses to sell more ads. And that halftime show during the final.
It was incredibly entertaining and I watched as many games as I could.
Yes, but isn't football already overly commercialised? Why is advertising for sports betting or alcohol any better than the FIFA issue? UEFA should take a look at itself, too.
You can be against more than one thing.
I wonder if this might lead to UEFA and othe similar orgs simply banding together to create their own FIFA.
Good to see some "balls" can still be found
like so many corrupt organizations lately, FIFA has been getting away with it for a long time and they overplayed their hand. this was a long time coming and i'm really glad to see it.
ELI5? What are the factors and implications?
FIFA made ludicrous amounts of money as a non profit running the last World Cup and want to transition to a for profit corporation to make even more.
UEFA representing the European nations with the most competitive teams and many of the biggest stars, just told them good luck running a World Cup without us.
There is no World Cup without UEFA.
An even funnier fact is that players who play for clubs in Europe (UEFA) won't be allowed to represent their countries.
UEFA is Europe basically. So like the nexus of modern football
7/10 of the currently top ranked national teams are UEFA members.
UEFA's reach affects the remaining 3/10 and beyond. Nearly the same fraction of world cup players (68%) earn their livelihoods playing for European league teams- including many players representing non-European countries at the World Cup.
CONCACAF too
Right, IIRC they basically banned everybody in Trinidad from FIFA and relocated the HQ.
It didn't help that Chuck Blazer just looked like a pedophile. Not sure if it's a coincidence that he lived in Trump tower. He had two apartments there, one for his cats.
Okay, got to admit I did _not_ have “Trump breaks the World Cup” on my bingo card.
E is for everything TTD
I mean he breaks everything, so....
Football/soccer is one place where Europe can easily flex their muscles against American capitalism and corruption. Good on them for saying it loud and clear.
I'm not convinced. There's plenty of large clubs in Europe owned by foreign capital and those clubs have already tried to push a pan-European league for themselves. I can see the FIFA using those teams as leverage to gain a foothold in Europe without UEFA.
* e.g. Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Paris SG, AC Milan and Inter Milan -- in Spain, individual clubs can't be owned by private equity but the La Liga corporation is)
This is a joke, right? I can’t think of any league as blatantly corrupt as FIFA on any level.
What are you on about? FIFA is not a league and certainly not in charge of european football
It seems like Europe, yet again, have to stand up for ethics, morality and try to deflect corruption. It's so tiresome.
It’s standing up for football. Far more important.
This is UEFA we are talking about.
Remember that when (FIFA president) Blatter was investigated for corruption, (UEFA president) Platini was also banned.
...and Infantino was the UEFA secretary under Platini before taking Blatter's place as head of FIFA.
It's almost like you cut the head off a snake, and it grows back a slimier and more poisonous head.
Well, FIFA is also an European organization. Swiss, to be exact.
It’s located in Switzerland, but it’s a global organization and has really close ties with the US president
You don't understand, good things come from the EU, bad things come from those filthy non-EU Europeans.
International companies and institutions parking their money in Switzerland genuinely have as much to do with Europe as Russian Oligarchs in London have with the United Kingdom. The country's always been a financial haven for oligarchs, it doesn't tell you much about the rest of the continent.
Infantino who seems to oscillate between Qatar and Switzerland I assume has a rather strenuous connection to the rest of Europe
Sorry to be a pedant, while switzerland is in the european landmass, it is not a member of the EU.
Sorry to be a pedant too but no one said EU.
Maybe. But we take football quite seriously.
Isn't Infantino European?
Swiss.
The FA's worldwide don't need FIFA, they can set up a new world tournament. You will get a lot of poor nations who stick with FIFA for the cash but at the end of the day without European teams the world cup and FIFA will have minimal value. 5 of the last 6 world cup winners were european and it will only get more biased towards Europe. Argentina post Messi have no chance, and Brazil are the furthest away from winning than they ever have been.
There will be no cash for the poor nations without the European teams competing.
> Argentina post Messi have no chance
Hold my beer
Spain have a far more youthful side, who can easily win again. France will come back, as will England. Argentina have few players coming through and many stars will have retired by the next tournament, even youthful Alvarez will be 30 next time out.
FAs coming together and creating a new FIFA will just mean you get another organization that is exactly as corruption-ridden as FIFA. There's no point starting fresh if you don't fix the underlying problem.
I find the UEFA standpoint a little disingenuous since commercial interests have been a top priority in football (soccer) for decades. Claiming that allowing investors to participate will hurt the sport are at the very least a misrepresentation of the current situation.
Although I disagree with his methods and goals I enjoy watching the way Infantino uses power play to stack the cards in his favor.
The only way for the UEFA to reclaim authority would be to demand two-thirds voting rights. The model of "one country, one vote" clearly works to UEFA's disadvantage even though its clubs contribute the majority of FIFA's income.
Yes, it's a stretch to believe that UEFA is objecting strictly on a point of principle.
UEFA seems to think people have forgotten that they tried to buy off top teams from the national organizations into a European super league.
In effect they did it anyway with CL.
The super league wasn't UEFA's doing at all. The top clubs themselves tried to break away and self-organize, and they ultimately won some concessions from UEFA (new CL format, more CL money to the big teams)
I think they meant the original idea of the European Super League from the 1980s (that preceded the Champions League)
Wow! You have my respect, UEFA.
Europe is where all the money is made in football. UEFA just want more of the pie.
FIFA is a repulsive pit of corruption but UEFA isn't much better.
Remember Blatter and Platini?
Blatter was president of FIFA, not UEFA.
Yes, and when Blatter was investigated for corruption both he and Platini, president of UEFA, were banned.
This was barely 10 years ago, it's not ancient history.
Platini is still suing Infantino now.
In even more recent history, both were cleared by a court of wrongdoing [1]. Infantino is clearly worse in every respect.
[1]: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/44397617/ex-fifa-chie...
Who can decide the precedence of a louse and a flea?
And Infantino has been in high leadership in UEFA (not president), then FIFA
..
You seem to believe things that bring people joy are a waste of human potential. Please explain. Are we only meant to be machines that produce 16/7?
I wish sports would be sports, business be business, and politics politics. Whenever they mix, it is for the worse.
Good. Good riddance.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49112089
According to aljazeera's article, "the core investor would be a New York venture capital investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner."
Welcome. Not a dupe if some time has passed between submissions without much discussion or upvotes. And this is the source.
Dupe of a dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108292
Welcome. Not a dupe if some time has passed between submissions without much discussion or upvotes. And this is the source.
FIFA is just upholding western values. Profit, exploitation and money over everything else. They with FIA and likes are just showing the world what truly matters for western world.
Put it this way - Europeans don't generally call themselves from "the West" in 2026 - it's an American geopolitical fantasy.
To be fair, China and Russia participate in the fantasy.
American values, not western.
US values, from the culture of the last 40 years.
We're really going to act like the entire world doesn't have issues with this.
Given this is a worldwide institution dealing with this, I think you are both casting the new too small.
Famously before either the US or Western world, these values were never celebrated.
Or maybe not, since it's Europe who are objecting here?
Yet it’s the very west uefa protesting.. right
Cue UEFA's leadership being replaced in the next year or two. FIFA has had a taste of the amount of money involved in professional sports. There's no going back.
50 of the 55 member UEFA states took the floor to express their outrage at FIFA, this is not a matter of UEFA leadership being out of touch. The vast majority of the confederation is ready to walk.
I understand that this is a principled stand by UEFA, no doubt about it. But the amount of money in the offering is too large for the clubs (and their superstars) to snub their noses at it. When it comes down to money, principles are the first to be bought and sold.
FIFA has been spectacularly corrupt since at least thd 1970s, and UEFA is not far behind.
When Blatter was kicked out of FIFA for corruption, the USA provided a legal venue for the investigation. Between Infantino and Trump you would think that is off the table.
Expect some kind of back door deal.