The World Cup being held in Qatar has raised many questions about the roles that ethics, integrity and money play in professional sport.  Forbes reported that David Beckham has been paid $277m by Qatar for a ten-year contract to be a tourism ambassador.  You wouldn’t have thought that Beckham needed to take on the contract due to the cost-of-living crisis but everything has a price it seems, including FIFA’s executive committee.  So, is this just something we have to accept or can we be more hopeful that ethics, integrity and responsibility will have a better balance with pure greed?

This year the EU adopted the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), which materially increases the disclosure of responsible and sustainable practices for investment management.  The UK and US are in the process of developing similar legislation.  Whilst this is a positive step forward, it isn’t perfect as the reliability of the data in the reports is questionable, it is still largely opinion based and whether it improves anything is still up for debate.  There are some sectors, such as tobacco, which has seen a rise in the cost of capital because of the (ir)responsible nature of their products, however it is still at the margins.  We are doubtful on the impact that the SFDR regime will have, just because most consumers and investors have other priorities and most of the reports won’t get read or integrated into decision making.

That is evident in sport too.  FIFA’s own ‘Guide to the bidding process’ document for the World Cup says, ‘This evaluation process will generate reports, which will serve the basis for a valuation by the FIFA council.’  The only problem to this, highlighted in Netflix’s excellent ‘FIFA Uncovered’ documentary is that the reports didn’t get read for the choosing of the 2018/22 World Cups.  The Guide also says that host must commit to ‘respecting international human rights and labour standards’.  Again, as highlighted in the documentary, it is evident that human rights and labour standards were never considered.  What was considered for the bidding were high-level deals and bribes. Qatar were very active in investing in European countries that had FIFA Executive Committee members, such as their sponsorship of Barcelona (Spain voted for Qatar) and purchase of PSG (France voted for Qatar). 

It is not just Russia and Qatar who have been accused of bribes and underhand deals – England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup allegedly included a bribe to Jack Warner (obviously not enough as he didn’t vote for England), Spain/Portugal’s bid included an illegal voting agreement with Qatar and South Africa’s 2010 World Cup included bribes found by the US Justice Department. Nearly all of the FIFA Executive members who voted for the 2018/22 World Cups have since been found guilty of corruption.  In 2016, FIFA announced a new set of statues would come into force and the Executive Committee would be disbanded in favour of a larger FIFA Council. 

Football isn’t the first sport to be caught up in scandals.  The 2002 Winter Olympics awarded to Salt Lake City resulted in ten International Olympic Committee members being expelled and ten others sanctioned.  Although nothing that happened was strictly illegal, the gifting was morally dubious and there was a ‘culture of corruption’.  Sound familiar?  So is there any hope?

In our welcome pack, there is a phrase “Behaviour creates standards.  Standards create a culture.  Culture drives behaviour.”  It’s not a coincidence that the report into the Olympics scandal referred to culture.  SFDR and the new FIFA Council won’t change anything unless there is a change in behaviour.  I saw one reporter saying that the only way that future World Cups can be corruption free is if they are held in Finland, Denmark or New Zealand; countries that are consistently top of the corruption-free league tables.  Without a change in culture at FIFA, Finland, Denmark or New Zealand will never host the tournament. 

There are clearly other issues with Qatar hosting the World Cup apart from the corruption itself.  If countries want to host the World Cup or other global events, they have to accept people coming from all over the world with different beliefs, religions, cultures and attitudes.  If you don’t want people coming to your country that think and behave differently to the local culture, don’t host a global event where ‘everyone is welcome’. Qatar’s reputation has worsened because of the World Cup, at a time when they wanted to showcase the positives of the country.  It made me think of Matt Hancock’s reason for entering the I’m A Celebrity TV show, saying he wanted the public to see the real him – on the presumption he thought it would be positive. 

The 2026 World Cup has already been decided upon, being in North America.  However, the 2030 World Cup is up for grabs and there are some slightly odd groups of countries that have confirmed bids – such as Egypt (in Africa), Saudi Arabia (in Asia) and Greece (in Europe).  Another group is Spain, Portugal and Ukraine, which aren’t exactly all next door to each other.  At present, there isn’t a clear favourite (despite UEFA’s head saying that Spain and Portugal have already effectively won it), which makes the prospect of bribery even higher. 

FIFA’s new Council has to show integrity, transparency and evidence a new culture.  Football needs to clean up its act as its governance is far behind other industries, but this starts with effective leadership. The Infantino leadership of FIFA has to change (he claimed £8,795 in expenses for a new mattress for his home) and from what we’ve seen so far from FIFA in this World Cup, I’m not hopeful that any behavioural traits have improved (the strange rant from Infantino at the start of the tournament is evidence of this). 

Despite the negativity in this post in respect of FIFA, the future is bright for the England national team and IT’S COMING HOME, so don’t worry! Thanks reading and don’t forget to…