By David Owen
December 3 – The crisis engulfing FIFA looks to be taking its toll on the football governing body’s finances, with reports emanating from Zurich on Wednesday night to the effect that the 2015 deficit will be worse than budgeted.
A forecast given to the organisation’s ruling Executive Committee, gathered in the Swiss city for a key two-day meeting, was said to have indicated a loss of about $100 million.
This would be more than three times the budgeted deficit of $30 million after depreciation and taxes.
FIFA would not confirm the figure, while cautioning that currency fluctuations and other factors might yet have an impact on the final outcome.
Nonetheless, a deterioration from original projections would hardly be surprising, given the disastrous year that the body has endured.
It seems a safe bet, for example, that marketing rights will be falling below expectations.
FIFA had projected income of $2.3 billion (£1.4 billion/€1.7 billion) from this source, including ticketing and hospitality, for the entire 2015-18 cycle, culminating with the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
On the cost side, it would be surprising if legal and administrative costs were not significantly higher than initially budgeted.
The first year after a World Cup is generally the tightest in FIFA’s four-year cycle.
The body had managed, nevertheless, to generate a surplus in the first year of each of its last three quadrennia; these totalled CHF141 million in 2003, $49 million in 2007 and $36 million in 2011.
In spite of its difficulties, FIFA is still in relatively solid shape financially, assuming that its sole quadrennial cash cow – the FIFA World Cup – continues to deliver the goods.
Reserves built up over recent years stood at more than $1.5 billion at the end of 2014.
The body had made clear, indeed, that the era of deliberate reserve-building was over and that it was calling therefore for a balanced budget over the 2015 to 2018 period.
Detailed figures for 2015 are not expected until next March or April, by which time the organisation should be under new leadership following its scheduled Presidential election in February.
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