ABSTRACT
Since the turn of the century, FIFA has undergone a period of intense scrutiny with accusations of bribery and corruption, accentuated by the decision to award the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively. This ultimately resulted in 14 FIFA members being arrested and President Sepp Blatter being banned from football. Following this, FIFA underwent a number of reforms, resulting in a new era: FIFA 2.0. However, this reform is not without issues, most notably confusion regarding the message that FIFA is transmitting. This has caused further problems. Over 75 per cent of FIFA’s income comes from the hosting of the World Cup. With the 2018 and 2022 World Cups being hosted in Russia and Qatar, external organisations are seemingly less willing to work with FIFA. A number of sponsors did not renew their contracts following the 2014 World Cup, and FIFA has struggled to replace them. Indeed, FIFA’s income has halved in the past six years. This fall in revenue causes problems for FIFA’s new vision, which includes the promise to ‘bring the game to all’. A large part of FIFA’s expenses are football development, including the newly developed FIFA Forward programme, which aims to support football in every nation across the world. The present chapter offers a critical account of all these recent issues associated with football’s governing body.
