Fifa’s WC depravity knows no bounds. If you agree, avoid all their sponsors

So we now find that a report by the Commission for Loyalty, which is a bit like the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK, but with a willingness to take on the big players rather than just respond when big advertisers want to take a swipe at the little guys, found that, “Fifa broke rules against unfair competition by making claims about the tournament that could not be proven, while using controversial offsetting measures that would not comply with Swiss standards. Fifa, which is based in Switzerland, has been warned to “refrain” from making such claims again.”

Fifa said it was “considering an appeal.”   As indeed it always does.

In essence, the reports finds that Fifa lied, lied, and lied again.   It’s hard to believe isn’t it?  An international sporting body lying about its ecological credentials.  Whatever next? 

Even more interestingly, the Commission looks set to investigate greenwashing in sport, along with sportswashing – which is incredibly relevant in England with Newcastle being taken over by a Saudi enterprise (most likely the Saudi state) and the Saudi state lining up to buy such clubs as Manchester United, and indeed many others, in the biggest sportswashing exercise ever.

It is just a shame that more newspapers and news outlets are not covering the story.

The New Weather Institute, which submitted a complaint from the UK, said that it had submitted a complaint to the Adevertising Standards Authority in England alleging that “Fifa’s claims that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was carbon-neutral are wrong and likely to mislead consumers in the UK, therefore breaching multiple provisions of the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing and specifically the provisions on misleading advertising and on environmental claims.”

Overall therefore, “Fifa has been found out for using false green claims as a substitute for real climate action.”    What’s more the argument is made that football is being used to promote lifestyles that threaten, “the future of athletes, fans and the sport itself.”

In fact, the whole notion that Qatar could possibly be the “first carbon-neutral World Cup” was tripe.  Even the pre-games estimate was that Qatar would produce more CO₂ than any previous event.   The idea that this could be offset by “planting of gardens around the stadiums” was mindless gibberish (my phrase not theirs).  Everyone who participated in the event, or indeed watched any advertising around the event on TV, was part of a giant sportswashing environmental con-trick.

The regular said, “Even though [Fifa] repeatedly hints that it will fully offset the emissions to be definitively calculated at a later date, it is unable to provide proof that the estimated emissions have been offset. In addition, it is unclear whether [Fifa’s] offsetting measures comply with Swiss standards, eg the complete and sustainable removal of C0₂ from the atmosphere.”

Fifa has now been told not to make such claims again “unless it can provide, at the time of disclosure, full proof of the calculation, using generally accepted methods, of all C0₂ emissions caused by the tournament and proof of the full offsetting of these C0₂ emissions.”

Of course what all broadcasters and reporters of the world cup should do is now make fulsome apologies, equivalent to the size and scope of their coverage of the polluting world cup.

A further report, published by Carbon Market Watch before the World Cup, was also highly critical of Fifa’s claims of carbon neutrality.  Unsurprisingly Fifa rejected these claims without putting forward any evidence to support its case.

But this is an important moment for broadcasters who in part excused their bending the knee to Qatar, while ignoring its total lack of human rights, by saying that it was a carbon neutral event.

Of course what Fifa could have done was choose a country that was a) not so hot (and thus needing less air conditioning) and b) which already had stadia, and so not needing a massive building project which produced a range of stadia that have since never been used.  Fifa and the media stand together in their guilt.  (And that’s before we come to the issue of the way the migrant workers were treated, and how many died).

The sponsors who went along with this charade and thus enabled further damage to the planet were