The Business of FIFA

The Business of FIFA

You may have already guessed this, but there is big money in the sport of football. Just ask FIFA, who turned over nearly $1 billion in 2009.

June 14, 2010 5:44 by kippreport

Yes, FIFA does good, but the organization has also gained an unfortunate reputation for occasionally making the press for all the wrong reasons.

Media was quick to break scandalous reports in the case of Jack Warner, FIFA VP for Trinidad and Tobago, for instance. He took a slap on the wrist when financial auditors reported that Warner purchased World Cup tickets, and then re-sold them for up to triple their face value, the UK Independent reported in 2006. Warner’s son Daryan was implicated in the scandal.

And in 2002, FIFA weathered “a corruption scandal [that] threatened to plunge the sport into chaos,” when FIFA president, Sepp Blatter , denied allegations that he “got his post in 1998 after $100,000 bribes were offered to FIFA delegates to vote for him rather than European football chief Lennart Johansson,” the UK Guardian reported.

Blatter “insisted he had nothing to hide from an investigation into allegations that up to £200m of television money went missing during his four years in charge of the sport.”

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