During the 19th century, Britain was going through its Industrial Revolution. Every citizen of the country was immensely involved in the revolution and this resulted in less time and space for the working class to do what they desired. Football was introduced, and although history traces it back to China, it was England that first recognized the sport and officially set out its rules for people to play. It is now the most popular sport in the world and according to FIFA, more than 240 million people around the world play the game regularly.
Professional football has become a popular business where shareholders can invest in a team and earn skyrocketing amounts of profit. As it rose to fame, the need to oversee the sport became evident around the 20th century. Thus, The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was formed in France, in 1904. This organization runs world football and is in charge of hosting football tournaments all over the world – the most popular being the World Cup which is held every four years in a different nation. They recognize themselves for protecting and developing the sport for all its fans around the world. Moreover, the organization has created a brand identity for itself by creating its own flag and national anthem which was composed by the German composer and organist, Franz Lambert. In the later years, Rob May and Simon Hill re-arranged and produced the song and it is now recognized as the official national anthem and it is played at the beginning of the official sanctioned matches and tournaments.
The company is governed according to Swiss law, which is where its headquarters are and 211 national football associations are involved in the company. In 2018, its revenues were worth $4.6 billion alongside a cash reserve worth over $2.7 billion. It follows a resource structure, and the World Cup, that it hosts once every four years, is what makes the International non-governmental organization stand out. The headquarters in Zurich have a firm administrative grasp on the organization. Moreover, people benefit from FIFA’s development and programmes and this allows the corporation to profit from Swiss laws which allows them to escape taxation. The transactive structure of the organization exposes it to sponsorships and it partners up with famous and well recognized brands like Adidas, Coca-Cola, and VISA. FIFA then joins them for co-branding, and the commercials and broadcasting partners are their media for advertisement. This marketing strategy allows high profits that FIFA and the company they partnered up with, enjoy.
Like many other well recognized firms or organizations, FIFA has been a part of a scandal as well. In May 2006, a British sports reporter, Andrew Jennings wrote a book called, “Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote rigging, and ticket scandals.” The book discussed a controversial topic which exposed the alleged ‘cash-for-contracts’ scandal when the FIFA marketing partner, International Sports and Leisure collapsed. The book also claimed that the presidency votes were rigged so that Sepp Balter could remain as a position of authority as president of the organization. Jennings soon partnered up with a BBC producer, Roger Corke and, on 11th June 2006, aired publicly that Balter was being investigated by the police for a secret deal to repay bribes worth 1 million pounds. This spiraled into the 2015 FIFA corruption case where 14 people were arrested, including nine FIFA officials. These officials were charged by the United States Department of Justice with wire fraud, money laundering, and racketeering. They released an official statement, “Swiss authorities say they have also opened a separate criminal investigation into FIFA’s operations pertaining to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.”
According to some leaked documents reported by The Sunday Times, a television channel based in Qatar, Al-Jazeera, offered $400 million for broadcasting rights, 21 days before FIFA announced that the 2022 world cup will be held in Qatar. Additionally, the contract deal stated that Al-Jazeera would pay an additional amount of $100 million to FIFA if Qatar would win the World Cup ballot in 2010. Three years after the initial offer, Qatar agreed to pay an additional $480 million, which brings the total to $880 million in order for the World Cup to be held in Qatar. FIFA refused to comment on these bribery allegations and filed a criminal complaint with the Office of the Attorney General in Switzerland. This case is still pending and all Al-Jazeera transactions have been frozen for the time being.
Improvements have been made on this front by the organization and in 2018, they released a revised version of their code of ethics to remove the corruptions that took place over the years. It recognized bribery, misappropriation of funds, and manipulation of competitions as offences while setting out a statute of limitation (law passed by an authoritative law figure that sets out a maximum time after an event during which legal proceedings may be initiated.) The limitation states that the offences could not be traced after them after a ten-year period, which is beneficial for them because it won’t affect the organization legally after the ten-year period. It is, officially, an offence to make a public statement against the nature of FIFA.
The organization will continue its mission to, “Develop the game, Touch the World, Build a Better Future.” It is the largest football organization that has developed the sport immensely and it will continue to do so as it is a powerful corporation and because of its place in the community that it has earned through the World Cup which is enjoyed and celebrated by all the football fans all over the world.
