But his latest plan, Uefa has warned<\/a>, \u201ccrosses a line that football\u2019s governing institutions should never cross\u201d. Fifa wants to package the World Cup\u2019s commercial rights<\/a> into a new US$20 billion (\u00a315 billion) company, then sell private investors a stake \u2013 potentially around 20% \u2013 in the broadcasting, sponsorship, licensing and ticketing revenues it generates.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n This would represent a seismic change to the governance of football\u2019s greatest competition and appears to have been devised without meaningful consultation, prompting Uefa to accuse Fifa of acting with \u201czero transparency\u201d.<\/p>\n The details should trouble anyone who cares about how football is governed. Fifa has presented the proposal as part of the \u201cdemocratisation of football worldwide\u201d. Uefa sees things rather differently<\/a>: \u201cNone of us are the owners of football. It is not Fifa\u2019s to sell,\u201d Uefa said.<\/p>\n The UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, said pretty much the same thing, adding: \u201cFootball belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.\u201d<\/p>\n There are also serious questions about the relationships surrounding the proposal. Joshua Kushner\u2019s Thrive Capital has been linked to the plan<\/a>. Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law. This comes after a World Cup during which Infantino\u2019s proximity to the US president became increasingly conspicuous \u2013 to the point where Trump publicly acknowledged asking him to review refereeing decisions. <\/p>\n \n Infantino has now also been called to appear<\/a> before the US Congress amid questions over Fifa\u2019s relationship with Trump.<\/p>\n None of this establishes wrongdoing. But an organisation governing the world\u2019s most popular sport should understand that such relationships require extraordinary transparency. Instead, Infantino presides over a Fifa in which power has become dangerously concentrated. <\/p>\n Infantino\u2019s power is not simply personal but structural<\/a>. Fifa\u2019s patronage system turns development money into political loyalty<\/a>, political loyalty into presidential power, and presidential power into an institution increasingly resistant to meaningful scrutiny<\/a>. <\/p>\n Decisions of extraordinary consequence are now seemingly made with vanishingly little consultation or accountability: not good governance so much as rule by presidential fiat<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a lifelong football supporter and a researcher of football heritage, this bothers me. Football\u2019s long transformation<\/a> from a community culture into global entertainment product is well documented. We have watched clubs become investment vehicles, supporters become consumers, stadiums become entertainment complexes and communal traditions become commodified intellectual property. <\/p>\n Now comes the logical endpoint: the World Cup itself as an investment proposition. But there is a fundamental problem. Fifa did not create the thing from which it proposes to extract this extraordinary value.<\/p>\n The World Cup is what scholars call \u201cliving heritage\u201d<\/a>: a cultural tradition inherited between generations, but continually recreated by those who participate in it. Its extraordinary value lies in the stories passed from parents to children, the iconic moments endlessly watched and retold; the rivalries, heroes, heartbreaks and binding mythologies accumulated across almost a century. Every tournament adds another layer to a collective inheritance that Fifa administers, but supporters around the world create, carry and bequeath.<\/p>\n Private capital didn\u2019t create that value. But it is being invited to extract from it. There\u2019s a fundamental problem with this. Football shouldn\u2019t be Infantino\u2019s \u2013 or Fifa\u2019s \u2013 to sell. Fifa administers the World Cup. It does not own the accumulated human culture which makes it valuable. That distinction matters because living heritage is not indestructible. It survives only for as long as communities retain the ability to practise and transmit it.<\/p>\n Price supporters out? Turn matches into media entertainment experiences? Expand competitions relentlessly until they become meaningless? Transform traditions into branding exercises? Eventually, the culture from which all this commercial value is extracted withers.<\/p>\n But against all this bleakness, there is one reason for hope. We have been here before.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth remembering that one of the banks associated with Fifa\u2019s plan, J.P. Morgan, was also involved in the ill-fated European Super League<\/a>, which made essentially the same mistake in 2021. The people behind this project seemed to believe that because they legally owned football clubs, they possessed an unlimited right to reshape institutions which generations of supporters had invested with cultural meaning. Supporters reminded them otherwise.<\/p>\n Fans took to the streets and revolted. Politicians responded. Pressure rapidly became irresistible, clubs fled one by one, and within 48 hours a project presented as the inevitable future of European football had spectacularly imploded, although it took until February this year for the last rites to be read<\/a>.<\/p>\n That crisis helped awaken the very protectionist consciousness around football heritage I have subsequently spent years researching. It demonstrated that somewhere beyond the billions, broadcasters and investment funds remained a boundary beyond which football could not be pushed without resistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Infantino and Fifa may just have found it again. The World Cup was never theirs. And it certainly does not belong to whichever billionaires and investors can afford a piece of it. It belongs to the people who have spent almost a century giving it meaning.<\/p>\n Josh Bland receives funding from the ESRC. He is also Director of Research for football-focussed think tank Fair Game.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s clear from the generally horrified reaction to Gianni Infantino\u2019s plan to turn the World Cup into an investment vehicle that the Fifa boss has gone too far. For years Infantino has been the target of criticism. What is seen as his inapprioriate close relations with world leaders including Vladimir Putin of Russia, Mohammed bin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n World Cup\u2019s credibility in question after Fifa volte face following call from Donald Trump<\/a>
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\nFootball\u2019s capitalist endgame<\/h2>\n
People power<\/h2>\n
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