Can soccer survive the World Cup?

June 26, 2002
Issue 

It's a shadowy, unaccountable transnational organisation, dispensing bribes to the Third World and riddled with corruption. No, not the IMF, but FIFA — the international football federation that runs soccer's World Cup. Picture

On May 29, just days before the World Cup kicked off, FIFA held its annual meeting and re-elected Sepp Blatter from Switzerland as its president, a man who had been charged with corruption by his own subordinates.

He won on the back of votes from some of the poorest countries in world soccer. The fact that his main innovation has been a program that dispenses millions of dollars to the soccer officials of these countries surely had nothing to do with it.

Once reinstalled, Blatter's critics resigned and dropped the corruption charges against him. With the world's attention now focused on the game, not the dodgy deals surrounding it, will that be the end of the matter?

Don't count on it. FIFA is sitting on a potential financial disaster that could bring the whole world game crumbling down once the World Cup finals have ended.

The corruption allegations raised by Blatter's right-hand man, FIFA secretary-general Michel Zen-Ruffinen, go back years. It was the collapse of FIFA's marketing partner, Swiss-based ISM, that triggered the crisis. FIFA's official losses are put in the millions of dollars. Zen-Ruffinen says it could be billions. We will only know the truth when Blatter's ability to go on covering up the state of FIFA's finances falters.

But the sheer scale of the money being talked about tells us something about the way international capitalism is leeching off soccer.

There are two big sources of profit from soccer: advertising sponsorship and television broadcast rights. Since the advertising on players' shirts and boots would not mean much if they weren't on TV, it's no surprise that the lion's share is generated by TV rights.

Or was generated. As well as the collapse of ISM, which was in charge of marketing the World Cup, Kirch Media — the German firm that owns the TV rights to this year's and the 2006 tournament — is bankrupt.

The soccer's still being televised, because Kirch is being allowed to run itself while bankrupt — a nifty capitalist trick. But after the event it is likely that the whole structure of international soccer, TV rights and sponsorship will come apart.

Soccer associations in the developed world — especially UEFA in Europe — are even talking about setting up an alternative world body to FIFA.

If all this chicanery were something you had to put up with in order for the sport to grow and improve, and had no impact on the game itself, you might decide you could live with it.

But what it means for soccer was shown in the 1998 World Cup final. Brazilian wonder-boy Ronaldo had a seizure before the big game and was left off the team sheet. But he was allowed to play. His performance was dismal.

Giant sports shoe manufacturer Nike had a US$200 million sponsorship deal with the Brazilian team and Ronaldo was getting US$1 million a year. A Brazilian Congressional Committee hearing two years ago did not manage to shed any light on the sequence of decisions that led to Ronaldo going on the pitch.

Was it because Nike pressured the player, the coach or the team's management? We may never know but the incident is widely seen as an example of how the commercialisation of sport can kill real competition.

Another example is what is happening to the English Football League in light of the ITV Digital collapse. Up to 30 out of 72 soccer clubs could go bankrupt. The TV money made them as dependent as junkies on the commercial handouts. They've spent most of the money up front on players' wages. These in turn end up in the pockets of sports car dealers and nightclub owners. Because capitalism couldn't make a profit out of making us pay to watch football on TV, football itself has to pay the price.

The World Cup will no doubt be full of drama and excitement. But with people like Blatter in charge, fans will be keeping their fingers crossed that it's only sporting drama — and not financial collapse or Ronaldo-style personal tragedy.

[From Workers Power Global, visit <http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/globalisation-WorldCup.html>.]

From Green Left Weekly, June 26, 2002.
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