Corruption in Football Essay

FIFA Corruption and How to Fix It
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Abstract
              This present review is an insight into the management of the global football governing body, FIFA, and how it has fared when it comes to leadership and transparency of its dealings. World football governing body, FIFA has in recent years, hit the news waves for several negative reasons. Since the year 2010, there have been dozens of corruption cases revolving around FIFA top-level officials accused of bribery. Several top officials of the international football body were arrested on various charges of unethical conduct such as fraud, corruption, as well as money laundering. From CONCACAF’s former president, Jack Warner, to Mohammed bin Hammam, former Asian representative at FIFA, to former FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, all have either been barred from involving in football matters or have pending cases on alleged corruption at FIFA. The whole thing greatly damaged the image of the world football governing body, tainting it to be a symbol of rot in society. It led to a raft of changes in the top echelons of leadership in FIFA and also some dramatic measures to handle the culprits. Involvement of top-level officials in FIFA corruption has been associated with lots of powers provided for the few executive members. With all that, however, the biggest elephant in the room is not what was done to the perpetrators, but what should be done to prevent a repeat of the same today and also in the future. Therefore, to minimize FIFA corruption, there needs to be a delegation of some duties such as marketing, discipline, and organizing FIFA events to independent bodies that cannot be easily influenced by bribes.
               
Introduction
When there is a problem in one portion that constitutes a bigger body, then there is a very high chance that some other portions of the body also have problems. This is the case with FIFA, the world’s football governing body, whose corruption allegations begun from a very small part of its officials way back in the decade. It, however, only meant one thing; that the rot had begun from all the way up. Corruption in FIFA has become the norm in recent years, peaking during Sepp Blatter’s reign. Key among the corruption cases that rose during Blatter’s rule at the helm of FIFA were bribery allegations connected with the award of World Cup hosting rights to South Africa in 2010 and later Qatar in 2022. The two cases are just a tip of the icebergs of the several corrupt behaviors behind the FIFA scenes. Studies have shown that it is not only at the helm of the world football governing body that corruption is rooted, but the vice has trickled down to Football Associations in several countries. This paper shall suggest some of the measures that, if implemented immediately, shall help minimize or completely eradicate corruption in FIFA.
Establishing Independent Marketing Corporation 
             Match attendance generates quite a substantial amount of income for FIFA. However, it is like a drop in the ocean compared to the big earner for the football body.  Without a doubt, the primary source of revenues for any football governing body in the world is obtained from the sale of TV rights and sponsors. FIFA is not an exception in this as it is believed that the body receives enormous sums of money from selling its rights, especially for FIFA world cup events. According to FIFA’s financial report of 2018, $3.1 billion of the total $5.4 billion earned from the 2018 World Cup event came from the sale of TV rights (FIFA, 2018).
It forms quite a lucrative source of income for the football governing body, one that can easily be misused if it falls into the wrong hands. Therefore, such a massive amount of money makes the marketing department of FIFA become prey for many FIFA officials as many kickbacks are involved during the award of these rights. A practical example of such is the collapse of ISL, a marketing company that used to partner with FIFA. Reports suggest that the company collapsed after being indebted after paying huge sums of money to FIFA officials to secure some lucrative contracts (Yuan et al., 2011). This is, in itself, a huge weakness in how such contracts are managed, as it leaves the door open for manipulation and any other unscrupulous activities from both the inside and outside.
               Establishing an independent marketing corporation is likely to minimize FIFA’s marketing department’s corruption if it is laid down correctly. This can be achieved by tasking the independent marketing entity to organize and sell the rights of FIFA events through corporation with formidable stock exchange institutions such as the New York Stock Exchange or the London Stock Exchange. In return, the stock exchange institution keeps a small share of proceeds while the rest is channeled to FIFA for distribution among members. With such a structure, corruption involving sales of TV rights at FIFA is likely to be eradicated since no Executive member of FIFA shall be involved with awarding contracts.
It eliminates the conflict of interests within the setup since such a thing can easily compromise...