FIFA on Monday said that staging the FIFA World Cup every two years would offer enormous financial benefits for its member federations as president Gianni Infantino expressed hope that the highly controversial plans would not be derailed by opposition from Europe and South America.
Infantino was speaking after FIFA held a virtual global summit with federations to discuss the project, although there was no vote on the subject on Monday, and he refused to confirm if there would be one at the next FIFA Congress on March 31.
Soccer’s global body published findings from two separate feasibility studies, which it said showed there would be “a strong upturn in football’s economic situation” if the World Cup was held as a biennial tournament rather than the current four-year cycle for the men’s and women’s competitions.
Photo: Reuters
One study, by market researchers Nielsen, estimated that approximately US$4.4 billion of additional revenue would be generated over four years, with income from gate receipts, media rights and sponsorship increasing from US$7 billion to US$11.4 billion.
To help convince its 211 member federations — 207 of whom participated in Monday’s summit — FIFA vowed to hand over an extra US$19 million every four years to each one of them, with the amount being the same for major federations such as Brazil and France as it would be for Andorra or Guam.
Each member would get “around US$16 million” allocated from a “solidarity fund” of about US$3.5 billion in the first four years of the reformed calendar, as well as an increase in funding via its FIFA Forward program from US$6 million dollars to US$9 million.
However, FIFA did not reveal the methodology used for the study, at a time when the desire of broadcasters to keep paying more for rights has been questioned by experts in soccer finance, and it offered no details as to the potential repercussions for domestic leagues or continental tournaments.
In contrast to its own studies, a report commissioned by European soccer’s governing body UEFA recently estimated a shortfall of between 2.5 billion euros and 3 billion euros (US$2.82 billion and US$3.39 billion) over four years for European federations if FIFA adopts its plan.
“We have just finished a feasibility study of over 700 pages. It is very thorough, so maybe some will change their minds,” Infantino said about the opposition to the project from Doha, where he gave a news conference alongside Arsene Wenger, FIFA’s head of global development, who has championed the biennial proposal.
“There is a lot of opposition and there is as well a lot of voices in favor, and FIFA is a global organizing body, so we need to really try to combine all these different points of view,” Infantino said.
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