Fifa's neutrality has a price tag
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 →The business of football
Politics
Power, governance and FIFA's accounts.
The red card for Balogun that Trump unfroze with three phone calls
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 →
Nobody knows how much football has spent fighting racism, and that is precisely the problem
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.
Read · 7 min read →
FIFA again? From Trinidad envelopes to Trump's phone calls
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.
Read · 7 min read →
The math of bribery almost always comes up red
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.
Read · 6 min read →
Fifa discovered that making money is easier when you pay no taxes on decency
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.
Read · 5 min read →