(Mis)Governing World Football?Agency and (Non)Accountability in FIFA

{Authors’ Original Version}

EA Brett (London School of Economics) and Alan Tomlinson (University of Brighton)

May 2024

This article has been accepted for publication in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, published by Oxford University Press

The version to be published in the journal is an expanded form of the Authors’ Original Version (AOV) and has in part a revised structure, so providing further evidence to support the analysis and argument.

Introduction: Opportunism and Impunity in International Sporting Organizations (ISOs)

In May 2015 the FBI and Swiss police arrested seven FIFA-based officials on the eve of its Annual Congress in Zurich; seven further individuals were identified in the US Department of Justice (FBI/IRS-CID) indictment of, overall, 14 FIFA-connected personnel. Many of them were then charged and sentenced in New York with fraud, money laundering, interstate and foreign travel in-aid-of-racketeering, obstruction of justice, bribes, and kickbacks. Their indictment effectively defined FIFA as a criminal enterprise rather than a global charity: ‘Over a period of approximately 25 years, the defendants and their co-conspirators rose to positions of power and influence in the world of organized soccer … The corruption of the enterprise arose and flourished in this context’.[1] These criminal activities had already been exposed by the work of investigative journalists and critical academics,[2] and could have continued indefinitely but for the US intervention, because they were concealed from, or ignored by FIFA’s officials, members, the regulatory authorities, and its auditors, and contractors.

This case raises critical questions about the adequacy of what Stephen Weatherill refers to as the ‘external’ and ‘internal sports law’ ethical standards and juridical procedures that govern the behaviour of all ISOs,[3] many of which have been involved in similar scandals.[4] It is widely recognised that ‘the law treats certain kinds of organisation – voluntary, charitable, often educational and sporting, generally the “not-for-profit” sector … differently to true firms’; and states/governments, as Allison and Tomlinson point out,[5] and the incentive and accountability mechanisms that regulate their dealings with their stakeholders also differ in fundamental, and, given the levels of opportunism and malfeasance that have characterised their histories, very problematic ways.

FIFA has always asserted its right to operate as a democratic but non-political and non-profit organization, with a virtually unconditional right to control its own internal structures and the terms on which it relates to its stakeholders – the national and regional football associations, clubs, players, and its commercial partners. In 2014 FIFA president Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter, acknowledged earlier scandals, but claimed that FIFA had introduced an internal governance reform programme between 2011 and 2013 that would enforce ‘the highest standards’ in sport, ‘changes in the field of ethics and integrity …. [that] have placed the organisation at the forefront of governance standards in sport.…’.[6] In 2017 Gianni Infantino, his successor, claimed that the internal reforms it had introduced in response to the 2015 crisis had produced ‘a transformational restructuring’ that ‘generated resources that will be invested back into the game’ and would enable FIFA to meet ‘the demands contemporary society places on international institutions when it comes to accountability, transparency, and inclusivity’.[7]

The new supervisory bodies set up by these reforms may have – in banning individuals from involvement in the game for instance – reduced the level of corrupt behaviour that existed before, but FIFA’s staff still receive the highest salaries in Switzerland,[8] its elected officials and committee members still receive very generous gratuities, and allegations of corruption and misgovernment continue in continental Confederations and national football associations (NFAs). The 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar further sullied the governing body’s reputation as it was surrounded by controversies over human and labour rights, and Infantino’s role in promoting the agenda of an authoritarian regime, followed by his manoeuvring of the World Cup bidding process to leave Saudi Arabia unopposed in its procession towards confirmation, in late 2024, of its hosting role for the 2034 men’s World Cup. Much of the public debate generated by these events, and other scandals in ISOs, has focussed on the misdemeanours of leaders, but these crises have also exposed the continuing weaknesses of the legal systems and accountability mechanisms that govern their relationships with their stakeholders, despite extensive debate, official commissions of enquiry, and investigative research and reporting by academics and the press.

No single disciplinary framework can provide an adequately full explanation of persisting flaws in FIFA’s governance of world football. We will therefore combine sources from political science, sociology and cultural history with insights from legal studies to a) account for the evolution and scale of FIFA’s organizational culpability, and b) consider possible developments and interventions that might ensure that FIFA conducts its global governance of the game in more transparent and accountable fashion. In section 2 we identify key theoretical and conceptual approaches from legal studies, political science and organizational sociology. Section 3 shows, from an historical perspective, how weaknesses in the FIFA system have enabled privileged insiders to exploit the organization, before being eventually exposed. In section 4, we review the strengths and weaknesses of the post-crisis reforms. Section 5 provides a discussion of possible reforms of the FIFA model and the difficulties underpinning their implementation.

2. Theoretical Framework

A. The Legal Regulatory Framework

According to Weatherill, ISOs are governed by both internal and external kinds of ‘sports law’, the former being ‘the rules and practices according to which governing bodies structure their activities’, the latter being ‘the laws of the jurisdiction in which the sport is played’. The governing bodies typically claim that they ‘deserve autonomy from legal regulation … to protect the integrity of their sport, … and that those rules should apply globally, free of fragmentation caused by compliance with the idiosyncrasies of local law’. However, he also points out that they are ‘not typically allowed absolute autonomy … [but] typically allowed conditional autonomy.’ Hence ‘laws are applied to sport with sensitivity to its special features which distinguish it from ordinary economic activity’, but ‘frictions arise in particular where the regulatory power enjoyed by governing bodies overlaps with their commercial incentives’.[9]

Properly applied, these rules would enable FIFA and its associations to protect themselves from inappropriate political interference from corrupt governments, while simultaneously enabling good governments to punish the football authorities that engage in corrupt or opportunistic behaviour. However, their efficacy depends on two variables – first, the quality of the formal internal and external rules and procedures themselves, and second, the effectiveness of the actual organizations and institutions that must exist to ensure that both the football authorities and the external regulatory authorities have the will and capacity to monitor and sanction opportunistic and criminal behaviour.

FIFA’s ability to use the principle of autonomy – whether in relation to human rights issues or outright criminality – has, though, allowed it to shield its leaders from external juridical processes especially during Sepp Blatter’s leadership,[10] and still facilitates very problematic behaviour at every level of the game. The scandals that continue to discredit its reputation and those of its member associations have nevertheless generated an important body of legal scholarship.

Thus Duval and Heerdt have used the FIFA case as a way to address the many governance crises within ISOs given ‘the mounting recognition’ that their ‘wide and administrative legislative powers … must be checked by stricter human rights responsibilities’.[11] They also recognise that FIFA, as a ‘transnational private organization’ remains for the most part beyond the reach of external legal bodies’.[12] Lewandowski suggests that reformers should focus upon the rights of individual sportspeople and athletes, supported by EU law, to establish boundaries curtailing the regulatory reach and autonomy of federations,[13] but fails to show how this could be applied to agencies or individuals beyond the European Union.

The criticisms generated by labour and human rights abuses in the Qatar 2022 World Cup have also raised complex questions about FIFA’s willingness and ability to enforce the formal commitment to human rights included in its post-2016 statutes. Bützler and Schöddert recognised that their inclusion ‘exemplifies how transnational sports law (lex sportiva) … can be analyzed as a process of emergent constitutionalization’ that marks a decisive evolutionary step in the way sport-related disputes are settled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)’.[14] They also identify a complex and impressive list of the variables that are very likely to limit ‘the enforceability of FIFA’s self-evolving constitution’, notably the potential tensions generated when FIFA’s internal rules ‘collide with (local) legal interests of sovereign states’ since ‘no uniform global legislator [exists] to enact such rules [while] states are typically in competition with one another to attract powerful private transnational actors’. They therefore emphasise the role of ‘societal forces such as the CAS, NGOs and other non-state actors over and above state actors [that] are less consumed by the territorial logic that governs public actors’.[15]

Further, the decisive intervention of the US authorities in 2015 has produced significant changes in the legal and juridical processes generated by the relationships between all private transnational organizations and national states. Thus Struebing identifies the ‘important questions of extraterritorial jurisdiction and substantive law’ raised by the US prosecutions of FIFA-related individuals.[16] Also, Niko Krisch notes that the case has become a watermark moment in consideration of the jurisdictional reach of the legal apparatus of a single state and the role of extraterritorial regulation in global governance.[17]

The work of these legal scholars therefore raises critical questions about the nature of the challenges that confront stakeholders attempting to influence the behaviour of ISOs like FIFA. They not only recognise that this depends on the existence of internal and external formal rules and practices that conform to global best practice, but also on the efficacy of the incentive and accountability mechanisms that govern the agency relationships between them at international, regional, and national levels, and on the ability of stakeholders to create the organizational systems needed to hold agencies to account.[18]

B. Managing Effective Organizational Systems

Everyone depends on large-scale political, economic, and civic organizations (or ‘agencies’) whose rules should give their leaders and staff the authority and resources they need to control and finance their activities, but enable their stakeholders (or ‘principals’) to sanction them if they fail. These systems create ‘agency relationships’ between stakeholders and agents that ‘may be reciprocal’ but are likely to be threatened when ‘the principal cannot perfectly and costlessly monitor the agent’s action and information’,[19] and the agent is incompetent or ‘given to opportunism’,[20] or malfeasance, as has clearly been the case in FIFA.

Institutional theorists identify the qualitatively different types of processes that govern these relationships in the spheres of modern political, economic, and civic organizations, as well as the conflicts of interest that threaten their stability, and the dynamic processes that continuously transform them.[21] Political scientists and economists focus on the democratic processes and market mechanisms that govern state agencies and for-profit firms, while organizational sociologists focus on the more diverse processes that govern ‘civic’ or ‘not-for profit’ organizations like ISOs, as well as their ‘interorganisational relationships’ with states and firms.[22] The commitment of such liberal institutions to national sovereignty, individual freedom and equality, open competition, and arms-length contracting now creates the normative and legal frameworks that should govern behaviour across related spheres.

We now take these rules and practices for granted, but they only exist because subordinated classes created the organizations and conducted the revolutionary campaigns that eventually forced the authoritarian elites that controlled pre-modern societies to recognise their rights. Further, while these systems do give stakeholders the right to monitor and sanction the agencies that they depend on, the ability of stakeholders/principals to identify and eliminate corruption and inefficiency can never be guaranteed. Corrupt or incompetent organizations attempt to maximise their interests at the expense of their stakeholders in even the best-managed liberal democracies; stakeholders can only safeguard their own interests by creating permanent civic organizations – political parties and interest groups – that monitor and evaluate their behaviour and ensure that their states/governments are willing and able to monitor their behaviour and enforce the law. The dramatic changes induced by economic growth, technological change and political contestation in the modern era have constantly modified the balance of power between agencies and stakeholders, so we can only ‘determine whether our existing institutions further the goals by which they are usually justified… [by understanding how the way in which] institutions evolve influences our ability to reform them’.[23]

We will therefore next identify the nature of the formal rules and practices that govern the activities of ISOs, as opposed to states and firms, and consider the strengths and weaknesses of the incentive and accountability mechanisms that link ISOs to their stakeholders; the section concludes with a discussion of the interorganizational relationships that currently prevail in world football.

C. Agency Relationships in Civic Organizations

Hirschman (1970) and Paul’s (1992) seminal works on ‘exit’ and ‘voice’ help us to identify the weaknesses of the agency relationships that enabled FIFA’s elites to emerge and flourish in the corrupt side of the global football business for so long.[24] They recognise that stakeholders and agencies depend on each other but also have conflicting interests, because the former wish to pay as little as possible for what they receive, while the latter would prefer them to pay more. Thus, agencies cannot be expected to produce cost-effective services unless their stakeholders can ‘exit’ to another supplier or influence their behaviour by using ‘voice’ in formal representative institutions and/or ‘through some form of participation or articulation of protest [or] feedback’.[25] Their ability to do this then depends on the type of service that they are receiving and the institutional arrangements that prevail in particular societies. Agents dominate stakeholders in authoritarian societies and command economies; liberal societies try to balance their interests by using competitive markets to force agencies to adopt least-cost solutions, and representative institutions to negotiate mutually beneficial agreements.

Hirschman claims that using exit as opposed to voice reflects a ‘fundamental schism … between economics and politics. Exit belongs to the former realm, voice to the latter’;[26] but firms, states and civic organizations all use both exit and voice, though in different ways. Firms depend on self-interested competition for products, customers, or jobs, that forces them to deliver cost-effective services and discipline their labour force,[27] but also need to listen to their shareholders, staff and consumers. Rulers can be ‘exited’ in regular elections, but then depend on open debate or ‘voice’ to negotiate settlements between conflicting interests. Most non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have to compete with each other for donations or volunteers, and lose them when they fail, but the big ISOs like FIFA and the IOC operate under very different constraints.

They should be motivated by mutual interest and rely on voice rather than exit to negotiate decisions, but, unlike most civics, they are membership organizations whose members cannot ‘exit’, although with the right to elect leaders and negotiate policy decisions using ‘voice’. They also have the sole right to organise highly lucrative international competitions that guarantee them immense incomes. This dramatically reduces the ability of their stakeholders to sanction them and places a very heavy responsibility on their delegates to ensure that they deliver cost-effective services. The stability of each sector and the international system then depends on the existence of a pluralistic global order that enables agencies to supply each other with essential services, respect each other’s autonomy, and respond to their shareholders, staff, and consumers. These processes must operate at local, national, and global levels and depend on:

… an over-arching ethical order in which each agency ‘has rights in so far as [it] has duties, and duties in so far as [it] has rights’;[28] and a division of labour based on incentive and accountability systems that provide each agency with resources while obliging it to supply the rest with its own products in exchange.[29]

And, we might add, on the institutionalisation of a system of interorganizational coordination based on enforceable collective rules that enable stakeholders to impose ‘credible commitments on each other’.[30]

D. Agency Relationships in World Football

Football emerged in Europe in the 19^th century, based on concepts of universal access, ‘fair play’ and sportsmanship. It was quickly globalised and regulated by universal rules established by FIFA, along with six Continental Federations by the mid-20^th century, and NFAs that manage international, regional, and national tournaments and local amateur and professional leagues and clubs. This global system with standardised rules enables millions of players to enjoy the game across the world, but different kinds of leagues and tournaments depend on very different management systems, resources, and accountability mechanisms.

Amateur clubs and leagues are managed by volunteers; their players and supporters are motivated by ‘a love of the game’ not money. Owners usually select their managers and can replace them or exit them if they are dissatisfied. Professional leagues and clubs employ permanent staff and players and depend on income from sales, owners, and/or sponsors to cover their costs. They are characterised by large differences in wealth and organizational structure. The leading clubs buy the best players and dominate their leagues and provide a tiny minority of players with million-dollar incomes, although 45% of players in Europe’s lower leagues earn less than US$ 1,000 per month,[31] while most players earn far less in poorer countries.

The NFAs regulate, monitor and sanction the behaviour of leagues, clubs, and players at each level, and also manage international tournaments and national leagues and teams. The Blatter-led model of FIFA in the year before his departure from the presidency in disgrace sought to unify the whole system: its 2014 Statutes allowed it to oblige the Confederations (Article 20.3a) and NFAs (10.4a) to comply with its rules and decisions. FIFA’s leadership – the President, the Executive Committee (or ExCo, now the Council) – is elected by delegates from the Confederations and the NFAs but then exercises almost unlimited control over policy, the appointment of its professional staff, and its finances. The Statutes ensure that all international matches and competitions depend on its ‘prior permission’ (Article 82.1); enable it to blacklist FAs and clubs, and adjudicate disputes between clubs and players, who are denied access or ‘recourse to ordinary courts of law’ (Article 68.2). FIFA itself selects countries for global competitions, and controls all of the associated financial rights and income (Article 78.1); and bans third-party interference, such as government involvement or influence, in the affairs of the NFAs (Article 13.1.i). Its decisions, unchallengeable in any ‘ordinary’ courts of law, are only subject to appeals to the independent Council for Arbitration in Sport (CAS), (Article 66.1).[32] Although CAS is purported to operate as a wholly independent institution, and has its own Code of Sports-related Arbitration to apply to proceedings – ‘article 56 of the FIFA statutes recognises the independent Court of Arbitration for Sport’[33] – it also ‘shall primarily apply the various regulations of FIFA and, additionally, Swiss law’. FIFA’s claim that, in the words of Stephen Weatherill, ‘external sports law should respect the autonomy of internal sports law’,[34] raises important theoretical and policy issues that we will discuss in section 4.

FIFA’s rules, authority and resources have enabled it to turn football into perhaps the most successful sporting enterprise in the world, the game having developed dramatically since FIFA’s foundation in 1904. We can only understand the implications of these changes, and evaluate their consequences, by first reviewing the processes that turned a small voluntary group into a ‘criminal conspiracy’, then evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the more recent reforms.

Revisiting the Crisis: The History, 1904-2022

A. From Voluntary Club to Global Corporation 1904-1974

Seven European nations set up FIFA in Paris in May 1904 to create a representative body to unify and manage the game across the world. The articles in its first Statutes gave the new body the sole right to organize an international championship (Article 9), and agreed (Article Premier) that as members of FIFA they would be the only associations with the right to organize football in their respective countries.[35] Armed with this built-in monopoly from its organizational birth, FIFA could then incorporate associations from every country across the world and turn football into a major social and commercial success.[36]

For its first half century FIFA was run by a tiny staff with limited resources, and by committee members who claimed expenses but drew no salaries. It revised and rewrote its statutes after World War II and had established and reorganised the regional Confederations by the 1960s. It was led by Englishman Sir Stanley Rous from 1961 to 1974 who lived on his pension from the Football Association and FIFA expenses but travelled the world promoting the game.[37] He turned the FIFA presidency into a globally significant role and transcended the parochial Eurocentrism of his French predecessor Jules Rimet. Rous expedited FIFA’s modernisation and international expansion but had no interest in its commercial potential because of his own voluntarist principles.

B. Snouts in the Trough – Elite Capture and Impunity 1974-2010

In 1974 Dr João Havelange defeated Rous in the FIFA presidential election. He was Chairman of Brazil’s Sports Federation and had been a member of the IOC from 1963, and an ally of its future President Juan-Antonio Samaranch who was responsible for the IOC’s later corruption scandals.[38] He had campaigned for the presidency since the 1966 World Cup by challenging the European domination of the game, promising the NFAs more tournaments, more World Cup places, and more money, and presenting himself as the face of the future.

Havelange then revolutionised global sport governance by building lucrative partnerships with commercial sponsors and selling broadcasting rights for FIFA-owned events, supported by Horst Dassler, the boss of Adidas. Their deals secured major international sponsors like Coca-Cola, which, according to Patrick Nally who had worked with Dassler, ‘became the blueprint for everyone who wanted to try and bring money into international federations through this source’.[39] These initiatives led to the creation of International Sport and Leisure (ISL), the firm that dominated FIFA’s deals until its bankruptcy in May 2001, after which FIFA brought in-house the commercial deal-making with broadcasters and sponsors.

This flow of money enabled Havelange and Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, then Secretary General, to siphon off resources with no apparent fear of punishment. Havelange and his son-in-law, Ricardo Texeira, president of Brazil’s football confederation, received illicit payments amounting to more than $22million in secret deals with ISL according to the Swiss prosecutor; while Nicolás Leoz, the president of CONMEBOL, also accepted large handouts from ISL until it was bankrupted. They were protected from prosecution at the time because Swiss Law treated such payments as legitimate ‘commissions’, but they were conducted in secrecy and encouraged FIFA-connected officials to exploit leadership positions as ‘viable financial opportunities.’[40]

Blatter became president in 1998 and confronted a financial and organizational crisis after the ISL bankruptcy. Eleven members of the Executive Committee (ExCo) and Michel Zen-Ruffinen, the Secretary General, activated a Criminal Complaint against him in May 2002, ‘concerning Suspicion of Breach of Trust and Dishonest Management’. These charges constituted ‘crimes and not mere offences’ under Swiss law and could have led to imprisonment. Zen-Ruffinen sent a paper to the ExCo that accused ‘the President’ of unifying ‘the management and administration of FIFA’ and ‘working with a few persons of his trust’ to ‘manipulate the whole network … ‘to the benefit of third persons and his personal interests. FIFA today is run like a dictatorship’.[41] The document listed examples of secret payments to individuals around the globe and exposed the worthlessness of KPMG’s audit of its finances and was lodged less than a month before the 2002 election for the FIFA presidency.[42] However, Blatter had won the presidency in 1998 after confirming, just 17 days before the presidential vote, allocations of a million dollars to each NFA, directly appealing to the ‘less privileged’ associations with ‘tailor-made solutions’ for ‘those who need our support’.[43] Four years on, he more than doubled his majority, helped again by generous allocations to vote-holding NFA representatives, and went on to consolidate his control over FIFA by replacing Zen-Ruffinen and most of his opponents on the ExCo. Blatter’s response to the persisting crises also introduced Audit and Ethics Committees in 2003/4 run by a succession of supposedly independent, but generally ineffective chairs,[44] powerless in practice and allowing Blatter to preside over an embedded system of collusion and corruption that produced FIFA’s most dramatic crisis in 2015.

C. Exposure, Crisis, and Retribution 2011-15

The choice of Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, after ‘the most corrupt World Cup bidding contest in history’[45] was brokered by Mohamed Bin Hammam, a billionaire Qatari businessman, who had been a long-standing member of the FIFA and Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Executive Committees (ExCos), and AFC president from 2002. He had funded Blatter’s successful 1998 presidential campaign and in 2008 was thanked by the Swiss for his ‘tireless work’ on his behalf,[46] though had been alienated by Blatter when the latter failed to support his own claim for the presidency in 2007. Nevertheless, Bin Hammam was able to influence the successful World Cup bid for his country, by paying off corruptible FIFA ExCo members, clearly exposing ‘the ugly venality of the men who control the beautiful game’.[47]

Bin Hammam used Jack Warner, president of CONCACAF, the confederation comprising North and Central American and Caribbean NFAs, to persuade the Caribbean Football Union’s (CFU) officials to support his bid for the presidency in 2011 by handing envelopes containing US$40,000 to each of its national representatives in a hotel room at a CFU conference in Port of Spain. They were told, on Bin Hammam’s behalf, that the CFU officials had distributed the money so that no one should feel that ‘anybody has any obligation for your vote because of what gift you have given them’. Bin Hammam had sent Warner a third of a million US dollars via a bank account in New York city to fund the bribes, and then a further $1,211,90 via a Citibank account shortly ‘after the scheme had been uncovered’ and Warner had resigned.[48]

Chuck Blazer, the CONCACAF general secretary, alerted Blatter to the plot, so Bin Hammam withdrew his candidacy, was suspended by FIFA, and resigned from the AFC. Blatter was re-elected yet again in June 2011 and even once more in 2015 after the FBI/IRS(CID) intervention in Zurich, by using FIFA’s resources to buy the support of the NFAs, and turning a blind eye to local corruption, but exposing it when it threatened his own position. He also claimed that corrupt practices in the Confederations were not FIFA’s responsibility, and sought to shift the spotlight onto four CONCACAF presidents who had been banned by FIFA’s disciplinary and ethical committees he had set up, and/or indicted by the US DoJ.

The reputations of Blatter and FIFA continued to decline as one scandal after another was exposed by investigative journalists and then by the FBI/IRS(CID). In 2012, following Andrew Jennings’s earlier revelations,[49] the FBI/IRS(CID) proposed to Blazer that he wear a wire in the committee rooms and hotel lobbies of FIFA representatives at the London 2012 Summer Olympics, while the FBI/IRS(CID), working with the DoJ, amassed the evidence that precipitated the 2015 crisis.[50] Havelange had to resign his honorary presidency in 2013 after a FIFA Adjudicatory Committee report damned him, his son-in-law, and top CONMEBOL official Nicolás Leoz, for receiving their huge bribes from ISL between 1992 and 2000. Blatter had been general secretary up to 1998 and was president thereafter, but could not be directly implicated, and his conduct was described by the FIFA Ethics Committee as merely ‘clumsy’.[51] However, the 2015 indictments did expose the embedded malpractices of a corrupt generation of FIFA personnel, initiating reforms that enabled FIFA to use its own procedures to expose and punish members of this discredited generation.

D. Institutional Reforms pre-2015 and beyond

The Audit and Ethics Committee set up in 2003/4 after the ISL bankruptcy scandal was superseded in 2011 by an Ethics Committee framed by an Independent Governance Committee (IGC) appointed to approve and legitimize the reform programme, in response to multiple allegations of scandal and corruption.

The IGC, convened by Mark Peith (Basel University) and including legal and compliance experts, and ‘stakeholders’ representing associations, clubs, players, and commercial partners, produced its final report in 2014.[52] It attributed FIFA’s failures to its dual role as a financial and regulatory institution that generated conflicts of interest between it and its member associations that produced ‘serious independence issues … [and] principal-agent problems’; a lack of adequate ethical guidelines within FIFA; personal dishonesty and ‘woefully insufficient systems and controls’. Peith added that these weaknesses were compounded by the lax rules and regulations and ‘lack of legal jurisdiction’ applied to sporting organizations under Swiss law, and the fact that Congress left decisions ‘to the discretion’ of the leadership.[53] Its first report claimed that the ‘structure and processes’ of the existing Ethics and Audit Committees needed to be upgraded through ‘the establishment of independent and professionally competent judicial bodies led by internationally renowned experts in their field’;[54] its final report reaffirmed the need for resources to enforce a new Code of Ethics based on best practice models of ‘corporate and regulatory governance principles’.[55]

These recommendations were then used to guide the subsequent post-2015 reforms. The 24-man ExCo was replaced by the Council of 37 members in 2016, including 10 additional NFA representatives, and was supplemented by a ‘Bureau of the Council’ made up of the President and seven Confederation delegates to take day-to-day decisions. The Ethics and Audit Committees were given additional responsibilities, supported by supervisory and investigative bodies and were appointed by and answered to Congress rather than the ExCo’s successor the Council. The World Cup selection process was transferred from the ExCo to Congress, and a Development Committee set up to supervise the use of grants by the NFAs. The number of Standing Committees had increased to 26 by 2014 but this was subsequently reduced to seven during the 2016 reforms, purportedly to cut administrative costs.

Comparing the statutes of 2001 and 2021, it is clear that these reforms tightened the institutional grip of the organization’s inner circle(s): The FIFA Council, not Standing Committees, was now to decide on issues of commercial rights; the General Secretary’s position was weakened as the president became more powerful; Congress would now meet annually not biannually, though with zero increased influence; the disciplinary committee had been replaced by the Ethics Committee; and the NFAs were allocated responsibility for the legal and company structure of clubs, though with very vague criteria as to the latter’s conduct.[56] Infantino’s ‘landmark reforms’ and ‘transformational restructuring’,[57] may indeed have created the formal rules and procedures needed for real change, but as the IGC had earlier warned, such reforms still left ‘… unanswered questions … [as to] whether in the short term, culture can change in order to allow for self-governance and can public confidence in the integrity of FIFA be assured without continuing external and internal oversight’.[58]

4. Evaluating the Post-2015 Reform Programme

FIFA’s post-2015 statutes and procedures purport to conform to international best practice, and the need to avoid the reputational damage caused by its earlier scandals has probably eliminated much of the most egregious behaviour that characterised the Blatter era. However, the reforms have not eliminated the authoritarian leadership, excessive salaries and benefits, sweetheart deals, and misuse of development funds by Confederations and NFAs.[59] Thus, we need to acknowledge the significance of the changes to the internal rules and structures that set the standards against which its activities can be judged, but also reinforce Weatherill’s claim that they will only work effectively when they are complemented by an effective system of ‘external sports law’ that creates an equitable stakeholder-agency relationship between FIFA and the football community.

Here, we consider whether the post-2015 reforms have continued to allow the FIFA leadership to:

‘capture’ the democratic processes that should enable leagues, clubs, players and fans to hold it to account;
control the market mechanisms that enable them to maximise their returns from owners, sponsors and the media;
and evade their legal and ethical obligations that should be enforced by nation states.

Democratic Failures and Political Capture

Elected rulers in democracies have the right to enforce their own policies between elections, but their ability to do so should be constrained by the rule of law, standing Parliaments, directly elected representatives, political parties, interest groups and an independent media. These complex structures and processes then enable citizens to hold them to account by subjecting them to constant surveillance and allowing opposition movements to promote leadership and policy alternatives. FIFA’s leaders may be subject to periodic elections, but its democratic structures and procedures do not grant its stakeholders the ability to promote alternatives.

We saw in section 2C that NFA delegates to Congress have the formal right to guide, monitor, criticise, and even ‘exit’ their leaders, while its complex and costly committee structure is supposed to enable them to use ‘voice’ and play an active and independent role in decision-making, governance, and dispute resolution. However, we also saw that these formal rights are seriously constrained by their dependence on the NFA delegates who represent them who depend on the leadership for information and resources, many of whom are elected by weak or corrupt NFAs, not clubs or players.

Congress elects the President, authorises major policy decisions, and now also chooses World Cup venues and appoints the Independent and Judicial Committees, but the President still chairs its meetings, sets the agenda, provides its policy briefings, and makes the keynote address. Congress only meets annually for a few days and, by 2023 (in Rwanda) and 2024 (in Thailand) delegates numbered approximately 2,000 and 3,000 respectively, with the 211 member associations/NFAs each having just a single vote on Congress matters/decisions, however many delegates actually attend. It is more showcase than democracy, so cumbersome a system that its members cannot monitor FIFA’s staff or executive committees. The reforms may have increased the remit of the elected delegates to its Executive, Standing, Independent and Judicial committees, the FIFA Council normally meeting twice a year, though in 2023 five times, twice face-to-face in Rwanda and Saudi Arabia and three times by videoconference.[60] The Council also delegates day-to-day authority to the Bureau of the Council, dominated by leaders of the Confederations.

These reforms have given elected delegates better opportunities to influence policy, while the inclusion of external experts on the Independent and Judicial Committees, elected by Congress, not the Council, could give them the autonomy they need to hold the leadership to account. They have, though, failed to address two critical weaknesses – the ability of opportunistic elites and governments to control the Confederations and NFAs, and the fact that the delegates from the NFAs receive generous retainers and allowances and most of their associations depend directly on FIFA’s largesse.

The IGC reforms had assumed that genuinely independent and expert governance, audit and judicial committees, would be able to expose and punish even its most senior leaders. FIFA nevertheless fell short when compared to the ‘government systems of modern [business] enterprises [that] address such principal-agent problems by including independent directors on the Board’.[61] Leadership at every level has continued to evade scrutiny and abuse trust, a consequence of the weaknesses of FIFA’s democratic processes that should enable stakeholders to monitor and sanction to organization. Alexandra Wrage, an expert on corruption issues who resigned from the IGC very early, has amplified this core flaw in FIFA governance: ‘At least with corporations, the shareholders can ultimately organize and declare that they’ve had enough. In the world of soccer governance, there are no shareholders. The fans, players and even the clubs have no voice’.[62] Wrage points out too how Infantino, like Blatter before him, attracted delegates’ votes in 2016 by promising NFAs large grants, ensuring that the NFAs ‘voted him in as President’. And it became clear months before the 2023 Rwanda Congress that Infantino would be re-elected unopposed as President despite the widespread criticisms generated by his handling of the Qatar World Cup. Increasing representation on FIFA’s executive body, the Council has not enhanced its democratic profile.

FIFA’s Special Congress in February 2016 did introduce rules that were designed to protect the independence of the supervisory committees. However, they then challenged Infantino’s salary and expenses claims, and his interventions in Africa and Russia, so they were ‘defanged’ by its Annual Congress just months later, Infantino returning hiring and firing powers to the 37-member FIFA Council that was heavily under his control.[63] The Congress also ousted the chairmen of several Committees, so some of their members, including Scala, head of the Audit Committee, Maduro, head of the Governance Committee and two of its members, resigned in 2016 because they ‘concluded that FIFA cannot reform from within’ because, as ‘a political cartel’, Infantino’s ‘… leadership … does not answer to the court of public opinion’, its leaders depending ‘for their survival on those whom they ought to reform’.[64]

This damning dismissal of the ‘reforming’ FIFA confirmed that public confidence in FIFA’s integrity cannot be assured without further reforms that expose it to effective external oversight.

Market Failures and Soft Budgets

FIFA’s role as a non-profit regulatory authority with monopolistic controls over lucrative commercial contracts, and an obligation to finance the game rather than shareholders, shelters it from the competitive pressures imposed on private firms. Infantino has stated, as we have seen, that the generation of resources back into the game, and a reformed approach to accountability, transparency and inclusivity are at the core of the FIFA vision.[65] His claim that FIFA’s financial monopolies would enable it to manage the world’s most popular game, rather than deliver profits to shareholders, is certainly valid; his second, that its post-crisis regulatory and judicial structures do actually oblige it to prioritise the interests of its stakeholders rather than its own staff, is far less credible.

The IGC reforms did recognise that FIFA was both a civic and a commercial organization, and did introduce transparent financial and auditing systems that do meet international standards. Its external Auditors now report to Congress, not the Council, it publishes its accounts and staff salaries and bonuses, and has set up Governance, Audit and Compliance, Review, and Compensation Committees that are elected by and report to Congress, that review its activities, conduct investigations and set salaries at all levels.

The proportion and amount of its resources going to support local associations has also almost doubled since 2014, confirming the immense increases in its revenues in recent World Cup cycles. ‘Football support’ increased from US$ 855 million in 2018, and 24% of its total budget, to $2.5 billion and 39.5% of its 2019-22 estimated expenditure, and a decline in spending on Congress and Committees from US$139 million in 2011-14 to US$90 million in 2019-22. FIFA has celebrated these shifts as a major transformation of its mission, but the increased support for world football has also been accompanied in this period by an even larger increase in ‘Personnel’ expenditure from US$156 million to US$708 million, so FIFA’s salaries, bonuses and expenses have also increased dramatically, while Infantino was paid US$3.19 million in 2021/2022, increased in early 2024 to US$4.67 million, a 33% pay-rise. Further, FIFA allocated a third of its income to ‘Event Expenditure’, notably for the World Cup, which it treated as a ‘contribution to the game’. This expenditure is used to fund many other important loss-making tournaments, but much of it also goes to the extravagant expenses, allowances, and travel cost of its staff and delegates.[66]

These financial trends suggest that FIFA’s internal structural reforms, and the threat of public exposure, have to a limited degree reduced the opportunities for leaders and staff to extract its resources that existed in the past, but do not oblige the leadership to make decisions that maximise their contribution to their stakeholders that are comparable to those confronted by private firms that are subject to market competition and the separation of ownership from control.[67] Instead, its monopolistic control over media and advertising rights continues to guarantee it a billion dollar income, it pays virtually no taxes, while host countries and its commercial partners carry the major costs of funding and managing actual events. This produces a soft budget constraint that allows its leaders to maximise their own salaries, expenses, bonuses, and kickbacks rather than assuring their own efficiency and their contribution to the actual game, especially in the poorest countries.[68]

FIFA’s commercial partners do have a vested interest in the quality of its tournaments and in avoiding the reputational damage caused by the exposure of past scandals and elements of mismanagement such as manifested during the Qatar World Cup. Some sponsors have attempted to use their ability to withdraw support from FIFA and other ISOs in the past. Thus, Mason et al. noted that in 2006 Johnson & Johnson withdrew its sponsorship for the IOC because it believed that the exposure of the bribery scandals over the Salt Lake City Olympic Games damaged its reputation.[69] Some – Hyundai, Coca Cola, and T Visa – did speak out ‘strongly’, after the 2015 charges and indictments with Visa calling for ‘swift and immediate steps to address these issues’ or ‘we will reassess our sponsorship’.[70]

The financial benefits that sponsors gained from FIFA’s tournaments effectively persuaded them to collude with its leadership right up until the FIFA misdemeanours were exposed by the FBI/IRS-CID swoops;[71] and the immense benefits they gain from the increasing popularity of the major tournaments, now including the Women’s World Cup, has increased the competition between providers for sponsorship and television rights. Most of its former critics also sponsored the Qatar 2022 World Cup, as did new sponsors from China, India, Singapore, and Qatar itself, so FIFA’s income has continued to grow dramatically. It exceeded its expectations and earned $7.5 billion in the 2019-22 commercial cycle and confidently predicted an increase to $11 billion in the next.[72] Thus the complaints of sponsors may have increased FIFA’s willingness to reform its financial systems, but they have not reduced their financial support, showing no interest in monitoring the way in which FIFA allocates its spending.

Political Autonomy and Criminal Impunity

All sporting associations should be able to protect themselves from ‘inappropriate’ political interference, but punished when they break the law. Reconciling these competing goals has both formal and substantive requirements – first, the existence of internal and external rules and procedures that conform to ‘institutional best practice’; and second, the existence of organizational structures in both states and NFAs with the commitment and capacity to identify, judge and sanction inappropriate behaviour. FIFA claims that its rules and procedures do meet these standards; we need to decide whether this is actually so in a world where bad governments may well outnumber good ones, and many of its leaders and officials have easy access to ever-increasing budgets. We will do this by first identifying the causes and consequences of the processes leading up to the crisis, and then assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the subsequent reforms that have involved the strengthening of both Switzerland’s regulatory regime and FIFA’s internal investigative and juridical committees.

First, we know that weak regulatory regimes, combined with compromised democratic procedures and soft budgets enabled the leadership to exploit their stakeholders with something close to impunity until the 2015 crisis; that Switzerland’s ‘lax’ legal code and criminal justice system failed to punish their collusive contracting and abuses of authority, despite extensive press and academic evidence of wrongdoing;[73] that the Confederations and NFAs were registered in national jurisdictions with very unequal levels of competence and integrity,[74] and incomes;[75] and that many leaders and officials were colluding with corrupt politicians in authoritarian and/or corrupt states that have suppressed both press and academic freedom.[76]

FIFA’s growing international status and visibility under Havelange and Blatter exposed it to the attention of critical academics and journalists whose revelations led to the internal reforms outlined above, and, more critically, to the intervention of the US juridical authorities who were becoming far more willing to prosecute ‘private commercial bribery by foreign nationals in connection with foreign organizations.’[77] This development has had very significant consequences. The US courts have forced FIFA to pay Mastercard more than $90 million in damages for breach of contract in 2006;[78] convicted 25 Concacaf and Conmebol officials for racketeering and bribery;[79] and forced two banks, the Swiss Bank Julius Baer and the Israeli Bank Hapoalim and its subsidiary Hapoalim (Switzerland), to pay more than $109 million in penalties in 2020 for permitting money laundering involving FIFA and other regional associations.[80] However, the courts also accepted that FIFA itself was not complicit in the process; indeed, FIFA was legally considered a victim and awarded more than $200 million in restitution.[81]

These cases have had significant consequences for the role of international law in managing globalised transactions since they demonstrate that the US (and presumably other court systems) can prosecute agencies and individuals, even when their crimes have not ‘violated any laws in the countries where the majority of the conduct took place, but have violated fiduciary duties owed to [foreign] soccer associations’, even where ‘the relevant ties to the U.S. [only] consisted of wire transfers through U.S. bank accounts’.[82] This change arguably represents the most significant ‘external’ threat to FIFA’s immunity from real sanctions since its inception, while the US authorities have claimed that their ability to bring FIFA ‘to account’, has also created important precedents for the US criminal justice system itself.[83] However, we should not over-estimate their reach and significance. The US authorities have the resources and commitment to perform this role, but they do not control offences committed in other less accountable jurisdictions, can only deal with criminal rather than legal but opportunistic behaviour, and are dealing with highly sophisticated criminals who can conceal their crimes.

Second, Switzerland has shown a growing willingness to act by initiating its own investigations and trials though they have involved interminable delays and ambiguous outcomes. Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s former Secretary General, and two co-conspirators, only brought to trial in 2020, were accused and acquitted of ‘aggravated mismanagement, and possible bribery, but only found guilty of repeated forgery of documents’. Valcke was only fined CFH 24,000 but asked to pay FIFA more than EUR 1.65 million to compensate it for the damages he caused them. The Swiss prosecutors also filed a case against their own Attorney General ‘on suspicion of breach of official secrecy’ involving informal communications with Infantino in 2022. A Discontinuation Order was issued the following year, clearing Infantino of his status as Accused, charged with criminal offences, listed as: ‘Incitement to breach official secrecy, abuse of office and favouritism’.[84]

Further, the primary focus of FIFA’s own reform process was to strengthen the autonomy, investigative capacities and reach of its own internal supervisory committees which continue to play the primary role in not only monitoring the activities of FIFA itself, but also retain the legal, and they believe, exclusive right, to act as the primary regulatory authority with the right to resolve conflicts and punish misdemeanours at all levels of the game. Thus, the effectiveness of the reform programme depends on the autonomy and resources of the supervisory committees in FIFA and its Confederations and NFAs. They manifestly failed before the crisis, but were given significantly greater resources and powers in 2016 and have been able to identify and punish many high-profile individuals, including Blatter himself.

In December 2015 FIFA’s Ethics Committee found Blatter and UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) President Michel Platini guilty of misappropriating CHF 2million paid to Platini for work he did for Blatter between 1998 and 2002, without any formal authorisation from the FIFA authorities. They were banned from football for eight years, and fined CHF 50,000 (Platini) and CHF 80,000 (Blatter) respectively. The Swiss court tried the pair for fraud, in 2022, but the Swiss judge acquitted them, arguing that they may well have had a verbal agreement, and that ‘it was reasonable for the Frenchman to see his market value at CHF 1m a year given his status in the game – far more than his annual salary of CHF300,000 as a consultant at FIFA between 1998 and 2002.’[85] However, the saga continued since Swiss prosecutors then appealed the non-guilty verdict.[86]

Within the regional confederations, embedded forms of corruption have been exposed. In 2015, for example, the Asian Football Confederation General Secretary Alex Soosay was accused of tampering with documents during a PWC audit in 2012, was suspended by the AFC and resigned, but then re-appointed the following year.[87] In 2017 the AFC and then FIFA suspended Richard Lai, president of the Guam Football Association and a member of the AFC ExCo and FIFA’s audit and compliance committee. Guam, a US territory, was within the reach of the US legal system and the DOJ, and Lai had pled guilty, like many of the other defendants, to large-scale corruption in a case of criminal conduct that has extended beyond the Americas.[88]

The Ethics Committee’s Adjudicatory Chamber adjudicated, in December 2020, on a case in which Blatter, Jerome Valcke, the Secretary General, Marcus Kattner, the Deputy SG, and Julio Grondona, the Chair of the Finance Committee conspired to allocate to each other ‘approximately CHF 69 million’ (para 106 p 18) in the form of bonuses, concluding that Blatter should serve a further ban from ‘any kind of football-related activity … for six years and eight months’ (para III.2 p 25), pay a fine of CHF 1,000,000 (para III.3), and be made to bear the procedural costs of the investigation and the proceedings.[89] There is then no doubt that post-2015 high-profile FIFA reforms have stimulated investigations and actions across the football world, and increasing numbers of offences have come to light and are punished, as in the decision, in 2018, to dissolve the Ghanaian football association ‘because of the depth of the corruption’.[90]

FIFA’s top leadership is not slow to use such cases to demonstrate the effectiveness of its reforms, but the organization still retains the ability to control the membership of the supervisory committees and protect its own activities from independent scrutiny. We should not underestimate or overestimate the impact of the reforms; it is arguable though that the dismissal, humiliation and punishment of numerous all-powerful individuals from the Blatter era may have eroded the culture of impunity that prevailed in the past, especially in lower-ranking NFAs in weak or corrupt states, where officials, clubs and players that were previously able to act with impunity are now directly subject to scrutiny and punishment by FIFA’s supervisory committees.

We acknowledge, therefore, the importance of these reforms, but also emphasise their limitations. Dorsey’s review of the ability of the authoritarian oil-rich Middle Eastern potentates to use their wealth to control football in the region, and to further their international reputations still enables FIFA’s critics to challenge its ethical claims, as we saw at Qatar.[91] FIFA’s inability to rescue the African Football Confederation from bankruptcy caused by criminal mismanagement has exposed the difficulties it confronts in ending bribery, illegal payments and sexual abuse in its own affiliated regional organizations.[92] And while existing external and internal judicial processes probably do limit its leaders’ ability to evade the law, these do not stop them from paying themselves inflated salaries, bonuses and expense accounts.

5. Conclusions

The analytical, interdisciplinary framework developed in this article has shown that the world governing body of football organisation is the embodiment of a flawed model of global football governance. FIFA is an organization:

that is not remotely structured to facilitate honesty, decency or integrity in pursuit of its sporting purpose;
whose officers would for the most part not meet even the most light-of-touch fitness and propriety tests;
whose stakeholders in practice exercise little or no authority over the executive;
whose committee structures are geared to support the executive and are wholly ineffective in monitoring or controlling it;
whose hostility to domestic court oversight in relation to private international law rights is well-established and can be continuously mobilised through the CAS regime;
and whose benchmarks for what we might expect from the post-Blatter management are the morally corrupt Qatar World Cup of 2022 and the unopposed Saudi Arabian bid for the (men’s) World Cup of 2034.

We have reviewed the weaknesses of the agency relationships, and substantive historical processes that enabled senior football officials to abuse their authority and extract immense resources from the game after FIFA became a wealthy global corporation. We attributed these failures to an accountability deficit caused by the limitations of the legal and juridical procedures, democratic processes, market mechanisms and regulatory regimes that existed before the 2015 crisis that:

enabled the leadership to capture the democratic processes that should have enabled their members to hold them to account;
failed to limit FIFA’s ability to exploit the monopolies that shelter it from the competitive pressures that force private firms to provide least-cost services;
and allowed the Swiss authorities to ignore these failures, but did enable the US authorities to punish football-related crimes that used US facilities.

Further changes/reforms that FIFA’s stakeholders could campaign for require:

strengthening FIFA’s internal democratic processes by giving the organizations representing players and clubs a far stronger role in electing and supervising the elites that manage their own NFAs and their delegates to FIFA and the Confederations;
enabling its commercial partners to play a formal role in supervising the way in which it manages financial arrangements and uses resources in sustaining and developing the game;
and strengthening the legal rules and juridical procedures that enable the regulatory authorities to identify and punish misdemeanours, ensuring too that FIFA is willing to implement them.

However, FIFA has continued to use its non-political and not-for-profit status to focus on strengthening its own formal rules, procedures and committees, blocking any changes that would have compromised its political and economic independence. Critics have provided detailed recommendations that could have strengthened FIFA’s accountability to its stakeholders; the Council of Europe’s report/resolution on Good Football Governance (2018) argued that football governance ‘must be based on the values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law’, ensuring that all involved in the governance of the game ‘must be above suspicion and their conduct … beyond reproach’;[93] but such ‘voices’ and potential interventions have been unable to oblige FIFA to comply. Thus the greatest challenge to analysts and critics is not legal and technical, but political – the need to find ways to oblige the likes of FIFA to adopt reforms that would make them prioritise the needs of the football community rather than their own.

This raises two questions: first, to find ways to strengthen the ability of commercial partners, players, and clubs to monitor and sanction the leadership; second, to strengthen the oversight and authority exercised by the regulatory authorities. First, we have seen that FIFA’s commercial partners have occasionally publicly criticised its behaviour but without coherent or sustained action in managing their relationship more systematically. However, such partners cannot afford to give up the lucrative contracts that FIFA offers them, and find it hard to act together, given their competition for the most favourable treatment. Second, delegates from progressive NFAs have used the existing democratic structures to censure or change the leadership but have been marginalised by the latter’s ability to buy the support of delegates from countries where they can also collude with corrupt politicians to exploit the game. Clubs and professional players, notably in the developed world, do have representative associations with the expertise and organizational capacity to hold their leaders to account, but only have a consultative role at present, and lack the capacity to coordinate their activities at the global level.

Overall, the inability of sponsors, clubs and players to make their voices heard transfers the primary responsibility for reform to the state agencies who do have the power and resources needed to oblige the football authorities to reform the system, as the US intervention showed. They therefore need to strengthen their ability to punish football-related crimes, and, as Weatherill points out, the key question is how to strengthen the capacity of sports law to become ‘more proactive’. It could, for instance, impose ‘legislative pre-conditions’ on ‘representation, on equality, on accountability, on governance generally, on compliance with human rights’, so moving beyond its ‘traditional focus on competition (antitrust law)’ and becoming ‘more actively regulatory in character’.[94] Doing this would almost certainly transform the situation, but FIFA’s status as a pseudo-autonomous global association essentially unaccountable to sovereign states means that it would require a cross-border political campaign that persuaded enough governments—many of which are tied to the FIFA project—to take the necessary, essentially political, action; but the weak agency of numerous states has in practice enabled FIFA to perpetuate its limited model of accountability. Further, as Weatherill and his colleagues also point out, FIFA has the right to exclude any country that threatened to take action on its own. However, they do then suggest that these reforms could be imposed on European NFAs and UEFA by the EU, and would have to be accepted by FIFA since it could not afford to exclude all the EU teams from its competitions.[95] The European authorities have devoted a lot of attention to the problem, from the EU itself to the Council of Europe,[96] but the prioritisation of sport and the improvement of sport governance are, in the view of Weatherill, unlikely at a time when the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, climate change concerns, and refugee issues, as well as the ‘flouting’ of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland, can claim greater priority: “sport gets squeezed off the agenda”, Weatherill notes.[97] Therefore the EU is unlikely to take effective action, given the immense costs of its policy-making procedures, and the scale of the economic and political crises that confront it. For example, the European Court of Justice, one of the EU’s institutions, in its Judgment of the Court in December 2023 ruled that the position of FIFA, and the European confederation UEFA, in claiming control over any new football competitions, was essentially a form of monopoly, one that ‘constitutes abuse of a dominant position’ (Article 102 TFEU).[98] But however clear a statement this is – and the Court’s press release emphasised that FIFA and UEFA rules that make ‘any new interclub football project subject to their prior approval, such as the Super League, … are unlawful’[99] – as to the inadequacy of FIFA’s rules that are ‘contrary to EU law’, the precision of the legal judgment does not provide any platform for political solutions, collective actions or state interventions; internal sports law all too predictably simply carries on, rendering FIFA vulnerable to forms of collusion, corruption and criminality. Steven Berryman, key figure in the US case against FIFA, notes that despite ‘sports governing rules and reforms’, potentially corrupt officials will continue to ‘exploit opportunities presented by their position … and go against the ethics and integrity mandates’, requiring investigators to uncover such activities[100], so exposing the malfeasance that continues to undermine many sport-based governing bodies.

In his position as president Infantino has continued tightening his grip on his FIFA power-base. At FIFA’s 74^th Congress in Bangkok on 17 March 2024 a revision of Statutes was presented to the Congress re-introducing committees and ‘expert’ panels, numbering 35 (Article 39); downgrading the status of the Secretary General – no longer a CEO, but directly answerable to the President (Article 37); and confirming the everyday influence of the Bureau of the Council – comprising the President and the six Confederation presidents – within the FIFA decision-making process (Article 38).[101] Infantino, then a UEFA official, had sat on FIFA’s 13-man 2016 Reform Committee which reduced the number of Standing Committees from 26 to 9, and championed transparency as ‘the first line of defence against corruption’.[102] The reformer Infantino was now undermining the reforms that he had purported to support as he manoeuvred his way towards the FIFA presidency. Finally, therefore, we can conclude by suggesting that the benefits of the reforms generated at FIFA by the international criticism and state-led legal and criminal procedures initiated by the 2015 crisis should not be underestimated, but its stakeholders will only be able to limit the ability of FIFA and its leadership to both prioritise its own interests over theirs, and to collude with repressive regimes like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, by pursuing radical changes to the persistently dominant model of internal sport governance

[1] Office of Public Affairs/U.S. Department of Justice, United States District Court Eastern District of New York (2015) ‘Webb et al. Indictment 15 CR 0252 (RJD) (RML)’ May 20 2015, para 74 at 31. <https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/450211/> accessed 14 May 2024 : ‘Over time, the organizations formed to promote and organize soccer in regions and localities throughout the world, including the United States, became increasingly intertwined with one another and with the sports marketing companies that enabled them to generate unprecedented profits through the sale of media rights to soccer matches’. The investigation is hereafter referred to as the work of the FBI/IRS-CID.

[2] The key texts covering these events are reviewed in Sahiba Gill, Edouard Adelus and Francisco Miguel de Abreu Duarte, ‘Whose Game?: FIFA, Corruption and the Challenge of Global Governance’ (2019) 30 European Journal of International Law 1041. These problems are not new, as we demonstrate in our historical narrative of the organization’s trajectory.

[3] Stephen Weatherill, Clarendon Law Lecture Series 2022-23 (2022), Lecture 1, University of Oxford <https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/content/event/clarendon-law-lecture-series-2022-23> accessed 7 April 2024.

[4] See eg Daniel S. Mason, Lucie Thibault, and Laura Misener, ‘An Agency Theory Perspective on Corruption in Sport: The Case of the International Olympic Committee’ 2006 Journal of Sport Management 52.

Also see ‘The IOC’s True Ideals: Corruption and Greed’, (n.d.), <https://www.flotrack.org/articles/5053760-the-iocs-true-ideals-corruption-and-greed> accessed 14 May 2024; John Hoberman ‘Q&A: Outlining corruption, doping collusion at the IOC’, UCI, University of Texas, Velo News 4/1201; John Leicester and Jerome Pugmire, (2020) ‘Trial of Diacks exposes dark backdrop of track golden era’, 2020, Associated Press, <Trial of Diacks exposes dark backdrop of track golden era (local10.com)> accessed 14 May 2024.

[5] Lincoln Allison and Alan Tomlinson, Understanding International Sport Organisations: Principles, Power and Possibilities (Routledge 2017) 100.

[6] Blatter was addressing the 1^st World Summit on Ethics in Sport (WSES), organized by the World Forum for Ethics in Business which was hosted by FIFA and staged at its Zurich headquarters. See the WSES-Proceedings (at 6) < http://ethicsinsports.ch/bilder/Speaker_Book.pdf> accessed 22 April 2024. For a summary of the event see <https://wfeb.org/world-summit-on-ethics-in-sports-fifa-2014/> accessed 22 April 2024.

[7] FIFA, FIFA 2.0: The Vision for the Future (2017), <https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/154c905313d5fa69/original/drnd5smfl6dhhxgiyqmx-pdf.pdf>, accessed 6 January 2024.

[8] Tom Bergin, ‘FIFA Staff Are Among the Best Paid Employees in Switzerland’, Reuters, 5 June 2015. Average salaries were $242,000 in 2014 compared with $120,000 ‘for a dozen of the largest Swiss groups’ <https://www.businessinsider.com/fifa-staff-are-among-the-highest-paid-employees-in-switzerland-2015-6?r=US&IR=T> accessed 15 May 2024.

[9] Weatherill (n 3).

[10] J Gordon Hylton, ‘How FIFA Used the Principle of Autonomy of Sport to Shield Corruption in the Sepp Blatter Era’ (2017) 32 Maryland Journal of International Law 134, 136.

[11] Antoine Duval and Daniela Heerdt, ‘FIFA and Human Rights: a Research Agenda’ (2020) 25 Tilburg Law Review1, 1. They add: ‘… it seems that very few external judicial avenues are available for those that would like to challenge FIFA’s human rights policies and request compensation for the harm they may have suffered’.

[12] ibid 10.

[13] Wojciech Lewandowski, ‘The Implications of the Recent Jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union for the Protection of the Fundamental Rights of Athletes and the Regulatory Autonomy of Sporting Federations’ (2020) 25 Tilburg Law Review55.

[14] Bodo P Bützler and Lisa Schöddert, ‘Constitutionalizing FIFA: Promises and Challenges’ (2020) 25 Tilburg Law Review40, 40. In Qatar,the threat from FIFA to discipline players who wore OneLove armbands also exposed the contradictions and hypocrisy of its claimed commitment to human rights. The 2022 edition of its statutes states that ‘FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights and shall strive to promote the protections of these rights’. These 20 words, constituting FIFA’s full Statutes declaration on ‘Human rights’, can be seen in the context of Qatar 2022 as little more than tokenism, a weak and ineffectual declaration squeezed into its own section following an extended list of objectives including the promotion of the game globally ‘in the light of its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values’. See FIFA Statutes May 2022 edition, 10 and 11 <https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/3815fa68bd9f4ad8/original/FIFA_Statutes_2022-EN.pdf> accessed 4 January 2024.

[15] ibid 53; Bützler and Schöddert also argue that attempts by transnational societal forces, including arbitration courts such as the CAS, to enforce these rules, could ‘suffer less severely from this sovereignty limitation if [they] become increasingly recognized as part of a genuinely transnational ordre public’, but will also be threatened by ‘regime specific rationalities and interests, above all financial corruption and corruption of power’. Their view is confirmed by Rugueiro who writes: ‘… trying to hold states and private entities responsible for human rights abuses to which they have contributed jointly is exasperatingly difficult. The non-existence of binding international rules on private entities diverts the discussion towards state responsibility and highlights the limited possibilities to activate human rights enforcement mechanisms’. See Raquel Rugueiro, ‘Shared Responsibility and Human Rights Abuse: The 2022 World Cup in Qatar’ (2020) 25 Tilburg Law Review27, 38.

[16] Jake Elijah Struebing, ‘Federal Criminal Law and International Corruption: An Appraisal of the FIFA Prosecution’ (2018) 21 New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal1, 56.

[17] Niko Krisch, ‘Jurisdiction Unbound: (Extra)territorial Regulation as Global Governance’ (2022) 33(2) European Journal of International Law481, 490. Krisch observes too that ‘where transnational financial crime is concerned … US anti-corruption law has been a vanguard … and its broad jurisdictional approach has been vindicated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Anti-Bribery Convention’.

[18] E A Brett, ‘Representation and Exclusion in Partial Democracies: The Role of Civil Society

Organizations’ (2017) 53(10) Journal of Development Studies1539-1544.

[19] John W. Pratt and Richard J. Zeckhauser (eds), Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business (Harvard Business School Press, 1985) 2-3.

[20] Oliver E Williamson, ‘The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach’ (1981) 87 American Journal of Sociology548, 553.

[21] Jack Knight, Institutions and Social Conflict (Cambridge University Press 1992).

[22] These issues are summarized in E A Brett, Reconstructing Development Theory: International Inequality, Institutional Reform and Social Emancipation (Bloomsbury 2009); and E A Brett, ‘Understanding Organizations and Institutions’, in Dorcas Robinson, Tom Hewitt and J. Harriss (eds), Managing Development: Understanding Inter-Organizational Relationships (Sage 2000) 17.

[23] Knight (n 21) 2.

[24] Albert O Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Harvard University Press 1970); and Samuel Paul, ‘Accountability in Public Services: Exit, Voice and Control’ (1992) 20 World Development 1047-1060.

[25] Paul (n 24) 1049; also see Hirschman (n 24) 30-31.

[26] Hirschman (n 24) 15.

[27] Armen A Alchian and Harold Demsetz, ‘Production, Information Costs and Economic Organization’ (1972) 62 The American Economic Review 777-795.

[28] G W Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (1821/1967) 109.

[29] Brett, Reconstructing Development Theory (n 22) 84.

[30] Oliver E Williamson, ‘Transaction Cost Economics: The Comparative Contracting Perspective’ (1987) 8 Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 617-625.

[31] FIFPro (World Players’ Union), 2016 FIFPro Global Employment Report: Working Conditions in Professional Football (2016) 6 <https://fifpro.org/media/xdjhlwb0/working-conditions-in-professional-football.pdf> accessed 20 June 2020.

[32] FIFA Statutes, August 2014 edition, 17, 10, 57, 49, 54, 13, and 47, <https://dirittocalcistico.it/wp-content/uploads/files/fifastatuten2014.pdf> accessed 15 May 2024.

[33] FIFA, Court of Arbitration for Sport (FIFA 2024), <https://inside.fifa.com/legal/court-of-arbitration-for-sport> accessed 15 May 2024 ; and, for the actual Article 56, see FIFA, FIFA Statutes: Regulations Governing the Application of the Statutes; Standing Orders of the Congress, May 2022 edition, 58 < https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/3815fa68bd9f4ad8/original/FIFA_Statutes_2022-EN.pdf> accessed 15 May 2024.

[34] Weatherill (n 3) Lecture 1, ‘What is “Sports Law”? Do Governing Bodies in Sport Make Law or are they Merely Subject to it?’

[35] Pierre Lanfranchi, Christiane Eisenberg, Tony Mason and Alfred Wahl, 100 Years of Football: The FIFA Centennial Book (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 2004), at 59-61.

[36] However, its early years were far from smooth. It only staged its inaugural world championship in 1930 and had to deal with difficult disputes over the rules and organization of the game, but its membership continued to grow. It enabled national teams to participate at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games, a first step ‘along the road which would lead to the total control of the world football tournament’ (p 64); and 40 members attended the first post-war Congress in Geneva in 1923, when it had already become the world’s largest sporting federation (Lanfranchi et al, ibid 68), despite its origins as a privileged voluntary group with no headquarters. FIFA was able to establish a form of control over the development of the game, even though its ownership of the laws of the game or the emerging competition calendar remained dubious, because the NFAs accepted its authority and the permissive nature of Swiss law meant that its decisions were unlikely to be legally challenged once it moved to Zurich and was reconstituted under the Swiss Civil Code in 1932.

[37] Alan Tomlinson, Sir Stanley Rous and the Growth of World Football: An Englishman Abroad (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2020).

[38] Andrew Jennings, ‘A foul band reeking of corruption and manipulation’, GreenNet (26 January 2014) <https://www.greennet.org.uk/community/blogs/meet-ioc-foul-band-reeking-corruption-and-manipulation-andrew-jennings> accessed 10 November 2021.

[39] John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson, FIFA and the Contest for World Football; Who Rules the Peoples’ Game? (Polity Press 1998) 87.

[40] Ken Bensinger, Red Card: FIFA and the Fall of the Most Powerful Men in Sports (Profile

Books 2018) 34.

[41] Alan Tomlinson, FIFA: The Men, the Myths and the Money (Routledge 2014) 133.

[42] ibid 134.

[43] The text of the letter sent to the NFAs is published in John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson, Badfellas: FIFA Family at War (Mainstream Publishing 2003) 150.

[44] The task facing such chairs and committee members was, it should be recognized, a Herculean one in a period in which former ISL (International Sport and Leisure) executive and architect of UEFA’s Champions League, Jürgen Lenz, observed that: ‘FIFA’s now so corrupt that it no longer knows that it’s being corrupt’, in Tomlinson (n 41) 3.

[45] Heidi Blake and Jonathon Calvert, The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup (Simon & Schuster 2015) 3.

[46] Tomlinson (n 41) 136.

[47] Blake and Calvert (n 45) 3.

[48] Office of Public Affairs/U.S. Department of Justice (n 1) 89-94.

[49] Andrew Jennings, Foul: The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals (HarperSport 2006) narrates numerous stories and cases of corrupt networks in FIFA and across the confederations during the early years of Blatter’s presidency.

[50] Bensinger (n 40) ch 15 147-153.

[51] Tomlinson (n 41) 146.

[52] Independent Governance Committee (IGC), FIFA Governance Reform Project: Final Report by the Independent Governance Committee to the Executive Committee of FIFA (the“Peith” Report) (2014) <https://baselgovernance.org/sites/default/files/2019-01/final_report_by_igc_to_fifa_exco_en.pdf> accessed 10 December 2023.

[53] ibid 3 and 4.

[54] Independent Governance Committee (IGC), FIFA Governance Reform Project: First Report by the Independent Governance Committee to the Executive Committee of FIFA (2012), at 7, available at <https://baselgovernance.org/sites/default/files/2019-01/first_report_by_igc_to_fifa_exco.pdf> accessed 10 December 2023.

[55] IGC (n 52) 6.

[56] The comparison is based upon FIFA’s 2001 and 2021 Statutes: <https://vdocuments.mx/reader/full/fifa-statutes-2001> accessed 12 October 2023; <https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/7e791c0890282277/original/FIFA-Statutes-2021.pdf> accessed 12 October 2023.

[57] FIFA (n 7) 6-7.

[58] IGC (n 54) 7.

[59] For a comprehensive review of the limitations of the IGC-led reforms, see Roger Pielke, ‘How Can FIFA be Held Accountable?’ (2013) 16 Sport Management Review255, 260; and Roger Pielke, An Evaluation of the FIFA Governance Reform Process of 2011-2013 (2014) 197 <https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2015.11.pdf> accessed 15 May 2024. For a critical review of the reforms, we draw too on Alex Phillips, ‘A New Deal for European Football’, SportsBusiness, 25 May 2021; and Alex Phillips, ‘System Change: Reform of the International Sports System’, presented at Play the Game 2022 conference, 30 June 2022 <https://www.playthegame.org/media/xkndyjmw/evaluation-of-play-the-game-2022.pdf> accessed 15 May 2024 .

[60] See Governance: FIFA Council Meetings in 2023, available at <https://inside.fifa.com/about-fifa/official-documents/annual-report-2023/governance/fifa-council-meetings> accessed 24 April 2024.

[61] IGC (n 52) 3.

[62] Alexandra Wrage, in Emily Primeaux, ‘A passion for fighting corruption: an interview with Alexandra Wrage’, Fraud Magazine, July/August 2016 <https://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4294993642> accessed 8 January 2022.

[63] It is important to note that all members of the FIFA Council, bar the president, have continued since 2016 to receive an annual ‘compensation’ for their attendance at meetings: $US$ 250,000 for elected members, US$ 300,000 to the Senior Vice-President, and to the Vice-Presidents who are also confederation presidents. At an absolute minimum, then, annual compensation to the members of the FIFA Council is around $US 9,300,000, though FIFA’s Annual Report for 2023 reports, including appropriate daily expenses, total outgoings for the year of $US 12,883,274; adding pension contributions made to some eligible members, that total reaches $US 13,297,936. See the Governance/Compensation subsection of the Annual Report <https://inside.fifa.com/about-fifa/official-documents/annual-report-2023/governance/compensation> accessed 15 March 2024. Such levels of compensation have inevitably underpinned the longevity of Council members, and their satisfaction with the leadership.

[64] Miguel Poiares Maduro, Navi Pillay and Joseph Weiler, ‘Our Sin? We Appeared to Take our Task at FIFA too Seriously’, Guardian, 21 December 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/dec/21/our-sin-take-task-fifa-seriously> accessed 16 January 2019. Their critique of FIFA leadership added that ‘sport is … governed by transnational private organisations. They regulate access to sports markets, and define and enforce their rules. Yet this regulation is not open to public participation, nor to any effective form of public scrutiny and accountability’. The FIFA president has consistently taken on a pro-active role in policy development, dealing directly with confederations and NFAs on World Cup scheduling and planning, with little explicit evidence of consultative processes underlying policy decision-making and announcements. In this way Infantino bypasses FIFA’s own internal processes and is legitimated by the direct contact between himself and confederation presidents, helped along the way by, for instance, UEFA’s own Statutes which recognise that ‘the President shall represent UEFA’, and that the President himself is also ‘responsible for relations between UEFA and FIFA’, see UEFA Statutes 2021, at 14 (Article 1 and 1.4.a) <https://documents.uefa.com/v/u/OsXl2S7PUiUKy7gCop4Q5w> accessed 1 March 2024

[65] FIFA (n 7) 7.

[66] Infantino’s package was revealed in a FIFA Financial Report, announced by the three-man compensation subcommittee <https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2024/03/18/infantino-earns-33-pay-rise-4-66-million/> accessed 14 May 2024.

Figures cited in these comparisons are taken from financial reports of FIFA for 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2019-2022:

<https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/3f26ef44b339adce/original/kjichsqlvvjr43yyb1au-pdf.pdf>

<https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/337fab75839abc76/original/xzshsoe2ayttyquuxhq0-pdf.pdf>

<https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/3f26ef44b339adce/original/kjichsqlvvjr43yyb1au-pdf.pdf>

<https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/582baac31867f75c/original/f8brxvwdbs8npinqagg8-pdf.pdf> all accessed 15 May 2024.

[67] Alchian and Demsetz (n 27).

[68] On aspects of soft budget, see Rasmus K. Storm and Klaus Nielsen, ‘Soft Budget Constraints in US and European Leagues: Similarities and Differences’, in Wladimir Andreff (ed), Disequilibrium Sports Economics: Competitive Imbalance and Budget Constraints (Edward Elgar 2015) 151.

[69] Mason, Thibault and Misener (n 4) 57.

[70] David Owen, ‘Sponsors pile pressure on Blatter’s FIFA in wake of arrests’, insidethegames.biz (2015).

<Sponsors pile pressure on Blatter’s FIFA in wake of arrests (insidethegames.biz)> accessed 6 March 2019.

[71] Bensinger (n 42). See too David Conn, The Fall of the House of FIFA (Yellow Jersey Press 2017).

[72] Graham Dunbar, ‘FIFA targets $11 billion in revenue through 2026 World Cup’, AP News, 16 December 2022 <https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-sports-qatar-3551b3dacd7c35a4f7b50ecbb69abec5> accessed 9 January 2023. In its 2023-2026 budget cycle and its 2024 detailed budget, FIFA could confidently affirm a $US11 billion revenue stream for the cycle, see FIFA, A Look Ahead to 2023-2026, available at <https://publications.fifa.com/en/annual-report-2022/finances/2023-2026-cycle-budget-and-2024-detailed-budget/> accessed 13 May 2024.

Rory Jones, ‘FIFA set to exceed US$6.44bn revenue target for 2019 to 2022 cycle’ (28 February 2022), sportspromedia.com <https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/fifa-finances-2021-revenue/> accessed 10 July 2022.

[73] Lucien W Valloni and Eric P Neuenschwander, ‘The Role of Switzerland as Host: Moves to Hold Sports Organisations More Accountable, and Wider Implications’, in Gareth Sweeney (ed), Transparency International, Global Corruption Report: Sport (Routledge 2016) 321 <https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/2016_GCRSport_EN.pdf> accessed 8 September 2023.

[74] UEFA in Switzerland, Conmebol in Paraguay, AFC in Malaysia, CAF in Cairo, and Concacaf in the Bahamas (with its HQ in Miami, and administrative HQ in New York), and Oceania in New Zealand.

[75] In 2022 UEFA’s annual revenue totalled Euros 4.3billion, Conmebol’s US$441 million, AFC’s $US169.9 million, CAF’s US$125.2 million, Concacaf‘s $US62.2 million, and Oceania’s $US22.1 million. Just three years earlier CAF was bankrupt and under the direct administration of FIFA. Confederation revenues are drawn from the financial reports of the six bodies, all accessed 14 May 2024:

<https://editorial.uefa.com/resources/028a-1a2134203eb5-f59fe74100ae-1000/uefa_financial_report_2022-23_en.pdf> 5.

<https://cdn.conmebol.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/MEMORIA_2022_ING.pdf> 18.

<https://assets.the-afc.com/AFC_Congress/2023/AFC-Extraordinary-Congress-2023/AFC-Extraordinary-Congress-2023—Financial-Report-2022.pdf> at 10.

<https://www.statista.com/statistics/1418791/revenue-of-the-football-association-caf/#:~:text=The%20total%20revenue%20the%20Confédération,of%20soccer%20in%20Africa%20received>.

<https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/133605859>.

<https://issuu.com/ofcfootball/docs/financial_statements_and_audit_report_-_oceania_fo> 5.

[76] Jean-Loup Chappelet, (2016) ‘Autonomy and governance: Necessary Bedfellows in the Fight against Corruption in Sport’, in Sweeney (n 73) 16. See too, on the scale of corrupt administration across the world, the following chapters in Sweeney/Transparency International (n 73):Steve Menary, ‘For the Good of the Game? Governance On the Outskirts of International Football’, 65; James M Dorsey, ‘Political Interference, Power Struggles, Corruption and Greed: The Undermining of Football Governance in Asia’, 39; Chris Tsuma,‘Corruption in African Sport: A Summary’, 44; Juca Kfouri, ‘Impunity and Corruption in South American Football Governance’, 52.

[77] Sofie G Syed, Hyatt M Howard and Harry Sandick, ‘Circuit Upholds FIFA Convictions, Denying Extraterritoriality and Vagueness Challenges’, 1 July 2020, in Paterson Belknap: Trials and Evidentiary Rulings <https://www.pbwt.com/second-circuit-blog/circuit-upholds-fifa-convictions-denying-extraterritoriality-and-vagueness-challenges> accessed 12 December 2023.

[78] Tomlinson (n 41) 144.

[79] David Conn, ‘How the FBI Won ‘the World Cup of Fraud’ as Fifa Scandal Arrives in Court’, The Observer, 6 November 2017; GrahamDunbar, ‘FIFA Corruption Culture Exposed in Trials’, Chicago Tribune, 22 December 2017 <https://www.chicagotribune.com/90minutes/ct-90mins-fifa-corruption-culture-exposed-in-trials-20171222-story.html> accessed 12 February 2020.

[80] LexisNexis (2021) <https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/professional/b/trends/posts/us-federal-prosecutors-show-red-card-to-swiss-bank-julius-baer-over-fifa-money-laundering-scandal> accessed 14 October 2023.

Office of Public Affairs/U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), 30 April 2020 <https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bank-hapoalim-agrees-pay-more-30-million-its-role-fifa-money-laundering-conspiracy> accessed 15 May 2024.

[81] Chicago Tribune, 22 December 2021. Alex Phillips, former senior official at UEFA and an independent consultant, has the position of Administrator to the $201million World Football Remission Fund.

[82] Syed, Howard and Sandick (n 77).

[83] ibid.

[84] Pierre Bydzovsky, ‘Update on FIFA-related proceedings in Switzerland’, 15 June 2022, Lexology,Charles Russel Speechly <https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b0a03bb3-48fa-4ae2-a54f-353a31e44118> accessed 15 May 2024. The Discontinuation Order was issued on 19 October 2023 and is available in English translation via The Inquisitor
<https://www.the-inquisitor-magazine.com/read-the-dubious-dismissal-order-in-the-case-of-fifa-president-and-ioc-member-infantino/> In para 26.7 it is noted that Infantino’s share of the costs of proceedings would be borne by the federal treasury, and that the ‘… waiver by the accused Gianni INFANTINO of compensation and satisfaction is to be noted’.

[85] Sean Ingle, ‘Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini Acquitted of Fraud by Swiss Court’, The Guardian, 8 July 2022 <https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jul/08/sepp-blatter-and-michel-platini-acquitted-of-fraud-swiss-court> accessed 8 February 2023.

[86] Reuters, 20 October 2022, ‘Swiss prosecutors appeal against acquittals of Blatter, Platini’ <https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/swiss-prosecutors-appeal-against-acquittals-blatter-platini-nzz-2022-10-20/> accessed 8 July 2022.

[87] James M Dorsey, ‘AFC rehires former executive accused of seeking to destroy corruption-related documents’ (2016) <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/afc-rehires-former-execut_b_9573166> accessed 4 September 2014. On the Lai case see <https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/fifa-audit-and-compliance-committee-member-pleads-guilty-corruption-charges> accessed 15 May 2024.

[88] ibid.

[89] FIFA, Decision of the Adjudicatory Chamber of the Ethics Committee, Taken on 17 December 2020, Adj.ref.no. 7/2020 <https://www.sennferrero.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Blatter-1.pdf> accessed 18 June 2021.

[90] Ken Bensinger, The Buzzfeed Interview <‘He said in football there were 2 types of people – those who pay bribes and those who accept them’ (the42.ie), 2018> accessed 15 May 2024.

[91] Dorsey (n 86). In the Qatar case the anomalies of internal (lex sportive) and external sports law were also laid bare in the question of the availability of alcohol in the football stadium. The case exposed the fragility and vulnerability of any ‘contractual order’, as Ken Foster describes the assumption of ISOs that they wield authority, control jurisdictional limits and operate ‘explicitly independent of government by national legal systems’, see Ken Foster, ‘Is There a Global Sports Law?’ 2003 2 Entertainment and Sports Law Journal 1, 2. The weaknesses of this ‘contractual order’ were embodied in the floundering addresses of FIFA president Infantino when the Qatari authorities and its Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy imposed its own legal principles on the stadium ban on alcohol. Infantino sought to brush aside such an issue, framing it as mere trivia, but the power of the Qatari legal system effortlessly transcended the FIFA position on the matter.

[92] Georges Dougueli, (2022) Hayatou, Infantino, Motsepe … Investigating the Scandals of the Confederation of African Football’, The Africa Report 12 January 2022 <https://www.theafricareport.com/163988/hayatou-infantino-motsepe-investigating-the-scandals-of-the-confederation-of-african-football/> accessed 14 August 2022.

[93] Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) report, Good Football Governance: Resolution 2200, adopted 24 January 2018 <https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=24444&lang=en> accessed 15 May 2024.

[94] Weatherill (n 3) Lecture 3, Making Sport Better.

[95] Joseph Weiler, Miguel Poiares Maduro, Petros C. Mavrodis and Steve Weatherill, ‘Only the EU

Can Save Football from Itself’, Euronews, 12 November 2021.

[96] These include the report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Football Governance: Business and Values, Report/Doc. 15430, 10 January 2022 <https://pace.coe.int/en/files/29592/html>, accessed 15 May 2024; and a report by LTT Sports to the Sports Group Bureau of the European Parliament on The Club Football Landscape: Key Challenges for the Future of Football, presented on 28 June 2022 at the Sports Group Bureau Session of the European Parliament. See too Tomlinson (n 41) 176 and, on potential interventions by the EU, Stephen Weatherill: ‘The aim is not to deprive governing bodies in sport of their primary role as autonomous regulators of their sport. The aim is, however, to seek to improve the way in which they operate and reach their decisions and in particular to address the tension that has grown over recent years between regulatory and commercial functions. The EU can add value by making politically legitimate legislative choices that improve the quality and the predictability of governance in sport. The EU can usefully promote dialogue, the exchange of best practices, and institutional co-operation in the governance of sport, but also it can move beyond competition law to regulation, and adopt a policy of targeted legislative proactivity’, in ‘Saving Football from Itself: Why and How to Re-make EU Sports Law’, Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies, 2022, 20.

[97] Email from Stephen Weatherill to author (27 January 2023).

[98] European Court of Justice, Judgement of the Court (Grand Chamber) 21 December 2023 (Provisional text), para 258 <https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=280765&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=doc&dir=&occ=first&cid=5579085> accessed 15 May 2024.

[99] Court of Justice of the European Union, Judgment of the Court in Case C-333/21: European Superleague Company, Press Release No 203/23, Luxembourg, 21 December 2023 <https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2023-12/cp230203en.pdf> accessed 15 May 2024.

[100] Emails from Steven Berryman to author (2 April 2022 & 17 March 2023).

[101] For the proposed reforms see 9. Proposed Amendments to the FIFA Statutes pdf <https://cargo.fifa.org/7c46bc393c9dcf54e3ebdf7483753604d8ff91b81798d79441/download?download_token=BAhJIiljN2YwNGI2My1iZTA4LTRmMWQtYjkwYy05ZDk1MmJkYmZiZTcGOgZFRg%3D%3D–d24243f1d099fa8a46c1aff81a4efa35ac0ddf5e&file=9.+Proposed+amendments+to+the+FIFA+Statutes_Enclosure.pdf> accessed 17 May 2024.

[102] 2016 FIFA Reform Committee Report (December 2, 2015), 6 <https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/333cf8a055b70cf7/original/mzzxqw0dabgx8ljmhxwr-pdf.pdf> accessed 18 May 2024.

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