By David Owen
February 22 – In matters of revenue, Sepp Blatter’s FIFA tended to under-promise and over-deliver.
Gianni Infantino seems to have few such hang-ups. From the moment some seven years ago when the current FIFA President burst into prominence with a glossy manifesto claiming that “as a benchmark, and after all necessary adjustments, I believe that FIFA should easily be able to ear-mark at least 50% of its income for direct distribution to its Member Associations for football development projects”, he has appeared more than ready to make Big Statements. By way of context, I calculated at the time that under the then current budget, only 18% of FIFA’s projected 2015-2018 income had been thus designated.
So, it could be argued that last week’s eye-catching $11 billion revenue projection for the present World Cup cycle until 2026 fits a pattern. This, after all, would amount to a 45% advance from the $7.57 billion actually generated in the last cycle, which culminated memorably just before Christmas in Qatar with Lionel Messi finally winning a World Cup and crowning his extraordinary career.
The big question then is whether such an impressive rate of growth, at a time when plenty of other sports bodies are struggling to generate very much income growth at all, is in any way shape or form achievable.
It will be a tough target, that is for sure, with one figure in particular jumping out at the reader; but there are a number of reasons why, on reflection, it does not strike me as unattainable.
For one thing, Infantino’s former employer UEFA, the European football body, with its greater exposure to the elite club game, has for some time been growing at this sort of rate. By my calculations, UEFA’s top-line growth for 2013-2017, when set against 2009-2013, attained 55%; growth for 2017-2021 compared with 2013-2017 reached 37%.
In light of such figures, it is no surprise at all that Infantino should have been battling for some time to secure a greater piece of the elite-club-football pie for FIFA. The present plan is for a significantly expanded Club World Cup to debut in 2025. If that duly comes to fruition, the new-look tournament would make a much bigger contribution to FIFA revenues than previous Club World Cups.
Now let’s break down that $11 billion budget into some of its constituent pieces.
Television would, as usual, be expected to make the largest contribution, at $4.26 billion. That is some 24% up on TV revenues recorded for the 2019-2022 cycle.
But the 2026 World Cup is expanding into a 48-team leviathan. More teams means more games. Viewed in terms of revenue per match that $4.26 billion budget requires merely that TV rights money treads water. You could be forgiven for regarding this as a not especially demanding proposition.
Turning to marketing, or sponsorship, the $2.69 billion budget for 2023-2026 would require cycle-on-cycle growth of 50% if it is to be realised. It is a long, long time since FIFA, burdened by image problems, generated growth of anything like this magnitude from this particular revenue stream. The $1.795 billion earned in 2019-2022 was up just 8% on 2015-2018, which in turn was less than 2% higher than the 2011-2014 figure.
You could certainly draw on this recent history and conclude that a sudden leap to 50% growth seems improbable. Yet equally you might reason that other prominent sports bodies – the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for example – have been doing well out of sponsorship lately, that the worm will turn at some point and that if you are going to target 50% growth, then the North American sponsorship market is probably as good a place as any to do so.
On balance, this marketing budget looks tougher to fulfil than the figure pencilled in from TV, but I certainly would not see it as unattainable.
That brings us to the figure in the new budget which cannot help but jump out at you: $3.1 billion from hospitality rights and ticket sales, more than triple the $949.1 million generated by the same revenue stream in 2019-2022.
That scale of increase is tantamount to a paradigm shift; if FIFA falls seriously short of the $11 billion for which it is now budgeting, you sense that much of the shortfall is likely to accrue here.
Once again though, there are factors that will work in FIFA’s favour.
The 2026 World Cup will involve not only more matches than any previous World Cup, but also, if the last North American-staged tournament – 1994 – is any guide, big crowds. That 1994 World Cup, held in the United States, still boasts the highest total attendance of the 22 such competitions staged since 1930, at over 3.5 million
The 2026 tournament will, moreover, be the first to feature three Host Nations – USA, Mexico and Canada – each helping to ginger up interest in the event.
It is worth pointing out too that two of these – USA and Mexico – were in the top five nations for purchase of lucrative hospitality packages at Qatar 2022.
There is also a changed business model, with FIFA moving away from the rights-fee model under which hospitality was outsourced. It looks like while the amount of revenue passing through FIFA’s books may rise as a direct consequence of this, so could related expenses.
The newly-published investment budget for the 2026 World Cup includes a hefty $638 million for hospitality expenses. A similar investment budget for Qatar 2022, dating from 2020, allowed just $27 million for these expenses.
Even so, it is hard to see how FIFA could get anywhere close to its $3.1 billion budget without pushing through some fairly steep price increases in this area. If they can do it, that would reverse a pronounced financial trend in top-level football over the past couple of decades: the trend that has seen revenue from stadium ticket sales progressively diminish as a proportion of overall revenue. This has been caused primarily by the soaring value of media rights and helps to explain why kick-off times often seem to be scheduled with the convenience of broadcasters rather than travelling fans in mind.
In the space of one cycle, FIFA is aiming to move from a situation where ticketing/hospitality generates around 12.5% of its revenues, as over the four years culminating with Qatar 2022, to one where it is responsible for more than 28% of the total.
One final thought occurs if anyone is tempted to write this off as unrealistic: while it would reverse the trend in elite football, it would be more in line with the impact of the digital age on music. While accessing recorded songs has become incredibly cheap for a child of the vinyl era like me, the cost of attending live performances has soared. Where music has led, will international football follow? We may have a better idea in four years’ time.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938. Contact him at moc.l1734846006labto1734846006ofdlr1734846006owedi1734846006sni@n1734846006ewo.d1734846006ivad1734846006