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By Tony Attwood
In recent days, the story has been breaking that the boss of Fifa does quite well, financially, out of football. Although that might not be the full story, because actually he does quite well out of sport. For he is not only in charge of Fifa, he is also administrator of the International Olympic Committee and has been for some six years. I imagine he is paid quite well by both.
And in fact it was Infantino’s decision to fly to each venue and watch every WC game that made me think money wasn’t being spent in a way that I would like it to be spent. (Not that anyone asks me of course).
Fifa makes lots of dosh by charging TV companies for the rights to cover its international games, and ceremonies like the World Cup. But what is perhaps not fully appreciated is that the countries taking part can’t claim any costs back from Fifa. When England takes its players to the States for the WC, the FA pays and uses the money that it made from the FA Cup and selling TV rights. If we watch an England game on TV, we are paying Fifa and its officials, while the FA and other organisations running national football teams have to pay all their own costs – they can’t claim any expenses back from Fifa.
Trying to work this out I recokon Fifa’s income is about $450 million A YEAR. Obviously it has expenses – – like all those fancy offices in Switzerland, regional HQs and of course first class plane flights to the games (they don’t pay admission costs). I reckon (and of course I have not seen their finncial returns as they are secret) they make a profit of about $280 million a year, after paying for the cost of flights, running their HQ in Switzerland and handing out some prize money.
But actually that “profit” word is wrong, because Fifa is a charity, so it doesn’t make a profit – it has to use it, so Infantino flies first class to each and every match.
Now, against this Fifa declares itself to be a non-profit organisation. But its earnings are going up year by year as advertising revenue and sponsorship rolls in. You can get an idea of what is going on by looking at “2024 Financials in Review: 2024 Revenue,” although you might like to note that their estimates are often wrong. They make a lot more than they “expect”, especially from TV.
They also make money from advertising by companies around the matches that FIFA organises although the start of a campaign not to touch any product that advertisers via Fifa is causing a bit of annoyance.
So Fifa sells marketing rights as well as tickets to the games, and then gives the countries taking part a bit of that money. Meanwhile, countries have to bid for the rights to run a World Cup or similar competition. It’s Fifa that gets the dosh but the taxpayers in the country hosting the event have to pay for building new road, new stadia, extended airports and the like.
Countries say events bring in tourists, but Fifa doesn’t pay for anything like enough to cover the costs of stadia, airports, roads etc, it only pays for the accommodation of players and officials. So Fifa’s costs are low – and a world cup earns them about $11 billion, mostly from TV rights. Which means that for those of us in the UK some of our annual TV licence fee goes straight to Fifa.
Fifa sells sponsorship rights – and there are loads of those, with some sponsors having their name on everything and others just buying into one country’s performance. Licensing brings in Fifa around three-quarters of a billion dollars for each World Cup.
Now all this seems enormous – and it is, and we haven’t even got to ticket sales – which are controlled totally by and owned utterly by Fifa. Spend £100 on a ticket for a match and £25 goes to Fifa. And believe me, £100 for a match ticket would be very cheap.
So can Fifa be restrained, or is it just rolling on getting bigger and more powerful than governments? Does it care about us football supporters? Does it matter that it is setting up its own football academies? Does it matter that it is getting bigger each year even though it is already bigger than many countries?
We know that some executives involved in the bidding processes in 2015 were arrested on charges of corruption. We know that people in Fifa stay in post for years and years, which makes them hard to investigate (although of course I have no evidence that anyone is doing anything wrong. I’m just worried that they might be, and there’s not much democratic control over them).
And here’s a thought: it is a monopoly with an income getting on for $8 billion a year, and generally monopolies tend toward abusing their position. Especially rich ones. And remember, with the world cup Fifa doesn’t give the host country money to run the show.
So could anything stop Fifa? Well, yes, the countries that agree to take part in the World Cup, could take it over. Except they all make money out of the show, so they don’t really seem interested in doing anything that might “rock the boat”.
