$900,000,000 is FIFA’s development budget for the cycle 2015 – 2018. $800,000,000 was the development budget for the cycle 2011 – 2014, 56 times more than the amount invested in 1995-1998. STILL the women’s World Cup 2015 winning team got a meagre $2 million award from the sports’ world governing body (it got $1 million the previous time). FIFA’s secretary general justified underpaying the women players saying the men’s tournament brings in more money and the women’s tournament is hardly watched. In supporting the soccer inequality he forgot to share these important facts:
- Yes, the men’s World Cup brings in more money, but FIFA also invests more money in promoting the men’s World Cup. Of the $900 million that FIFA invests in soccer annually, only approximately 15% of that sum goes anywhere near women’s soccer.
- The 2015 women’s World Cup final was the most-watched US soccer game ever — including men’s. More Americans watched their country winning the Cup the third time than the 2015 NBA Finals (13.9 million) or the Stanley Cup finals (7.6 million).
While FIFA has ignored, undersold and underpaid its women players, it shamelessly invested huge money in ridiculous things that don’t matter to the sport:
1. $30 million ‘invested’ on an epic flop
FIFA spent $30 million on its self-congratulatory propaganda movie United Passions. The Hollywood Reporter just named the disaster as the lowest-grossing film in US box office history. It grossed just $918 in the US during the June 6 weekend. “This movie, like FIFA itself, looks terrible. Who makes a sports film where the heroes are the executives?” said comedian John Oliver.
2. World Cup 2014 losers ‘awarded’ $128 million
$128 million were given away to 16 teams that did not make it to the second round in last year’s men’s World Cup. Each team that lost in the first round got paid four times (at $8 million) more than the women champions (at $2 million) this year.
3. $18 million ‘invested’ in providing fans space to party
Brazil’s 12 cities, apart from hosting the World Cup matches, organized FIFA Fan Fests and “offered free admission to secure, family-friendly locations where both local and international fans watched FIFA World Cup matches in a unique FIFA World Cup environment”.
4. FIFA’s windfall at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa
Sepp Blatter approved a secret 100% pay raise for 25 of FIFA’s top executives, who also received free flights and rooms in five-star hotels, and also rewarded the executives with $4.4 million in bonuses.
5. Cost of Blatter’s undemocratic re-election
FIFA spent $2.2 million since 2002 to build a new headquarters and to fund two planned fields in the Cayman Islands. The country is ranked 191st among the world’s 209 national soccer teams, has never played in a World Cup, and with a population of about 58,000, cannot even fill the world’s biggest soccer stadiums. Jeffrey Webb, the FIFA official based in the Cayman Islands, after his arrest in Zurich in May, is reported to be expected in a federal court in New York.
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