By Paul Nicholson
February 15 – FIFA has reported record‑breaking revenue $7.6 billion for the 2019‑2022 cycle and is forecasting a massive revenue increase of $4.560 million to a total of $11,000 million for the 2023-2026 cycle which culminates in the expanded 48 team World Cup hosted in the US, Canada and Mexico.
FIFA is reliant on its men’s World Cup to underpin its activities for the full four year cycle and the Qatar 2022 World Cup year delivered $5.769 billion, a record for FIFA that exceeded the 2018 amount by 24%.
Of that record revenue figure in 2022, a total of $3.404 billion was paid out, of which 59% went to organising and staging the Qatar 2022 World Cup other FIFA events.
“The net result for 2022 came to $2.368 million, which offset the structurally negative results in the first three years of the cycle, leading to a net result of $1.187 billion for the full 2019-2022 cycle, which was more than 11 times higher than the budgeted net result,” said FIFA in its Annual Report 2022.
FIFA said its total assets were $6.796 million at the end of 2022, 85% of which were in the form of cash and cash equivalents and financial assets. FIFA’s reserves hit a new high of $3.971 million, 45% higher than the level at the end of the 2015-2018 cycle.
In a somewhat peculiar explanation of the economic success of the cycle, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said: “FIFA’s unprecedented investment in football is the result of our solid financial transparency and stands as a concrete example of how we are aiming to make football truly global.”
What was more logical was his assertion that “the resounding success of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar has been key to the organisation’s ability to fulfil its mission in relation to our member associations and the world of football, despite the multiple challenges we faced during the past cycle, not least the COVID-19 pandemic.”
God Bless America
The big win for FIFA in the 2023-26 budget comes via a massive predicted increase in 2026 hospitality and ticket sales to a record budget level of $3.097 billion as the co-hosted World Cup 2026 visits 16 host cities and big capacity, state-of-the-art stadia. This is a huge $2.59 billion increase on the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Those with longer memories will remember that in the bidding Qatar beat the US to the 2022 hosting. Qatar broke records, but by how much further would those records have been broken if FIFA had stuck to its principle of rotation around the federations and awarded the 2022 World Cup to the bidding Concacaf nation.
FIFA has brought ticketing and hospitality sales in-house and dropped its previous rights fee model where FIFA’s hospitality services were outsourced.
FIFA is also predicting a more modest increase in revenue from TV broadcasting rights to $4.264 billion (up by $964 million) with 43% of the television rights sales already contracted.
Marketing rights sales (big sponsorships) is forecast to rise to $2.693 million, a jump of $`927 million as FIFA transitions to a geography that is more sponsor friendly and doesn’t come with baggage of multiple human rights issues which are a very cold shower for global sponsors and their brand image. FIFA said 21% had already been contracted as at 31 December 2022.
FIFA said it is budgeting $3.839 billion to deliver the 2026 World Cup. It is spending $435 million on the 2023 Women’s World Cup that is being co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
In 2024 FIFA will launch its 32-team Club World Cup. No revenue or expense budgets were provided for the new 4-year event.
That new event was not the only omission from the new cycle’s financial modelling. “The creation of a new FIFA Women’s Club World Cup, a new FIFA Futsal Women’s World Cup and the expansion of the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament from 12 to 16 teams are not considered in the current version of the budget,” said FIFA.
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