The business of football
Power, governance and FIFA's accounts.
The leak about the case has revived calls to erase the club's trophy haul. It is the sanction that makes the most noise and repairs the least, because the offence is accounting and the victory was sporting.
Read · 5 min read →
American institutional capital bought the football representation market as if it were a music catalogue. The 2015 deregulation opened the cage and the serious predators came in to redraw the board.
Read · 6 min read →
FIFA tried to hand 20% of its commercial business to a private equity fund for 4.2 billion dollars. It had zero debt, record liquid reserves and an intact monopoly. The plan lasted less than a long weekend.
Read · 6 min read →
FIFA wants private equity inside its commercial rights. UEFA objects out of self-interest, not purity. And underneath both of them, the player picks up the tab.
Read · 6 min read →
Forty thousand dollars erased a straight red card at the 2026 World Cup. Argentina pays 30,000 francs for a banner; the United States makes it disappear with three phone calls.
Read · 6 min read →
At the 2026 World Cup, a presidential phone call rewrote the rulebook mid-tournament. FIFA has not stopped being a political instrument: it has simply changed hands and methods.
Read · 7 min read →
Thirty years of campaigns, banners and taking the knee, with no aggregate figure and no independent impact evaluation. The only hard result was delivered by a judge, not a slogan.
Corruption in football has not disappeared: it has changed shape. Once it was envelopes of cash in Caribbean hotels; now it is presidential phone calls that bend rulebooks in real time.
Bribing a referee looks like the shortest route to the Champions League. The numbers say otherwise: low probability of success, high entry cost, and devastating punishment if you get caught.
Fifa does not organise a tournament. It resells the right to watch one, at pharmaceutical margins and with zero competition. The 2026 World Cup with 104 matches is the next bet, and the only real risk is one Fifa is manufacturing itself.
