The World Cup Is FIFA's Quadrennial Cash Cow

When FIFA announced this week that the 2030 FIFA World Cup would be played in six countries spread across three continents, the reaction was the typical mix of bewilderment and indignation as football’s global governing body had once again outdone itself in making a decision that seemingly ignores common sense.

While “celebrating the centenary of the FIFA World Cup” by playing the first three matches in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, the latter of which hosted the first FIFA World Cup in 1930, sounds like a nice idea on paper, South America is a roughly 12-hour flight away from Spain, Portugal and Morocco, where the rest of the World Cup will be played – not exactly ideal for athletes who will have to play in South American winter one day and in Europe’s/North Africa’s summer a couple of days later. Not to mention the ecological footprint of such a global footballing extravaganza.

It wouldn’t be FIFA if its latest decision would “only” entail some “logistical challenges”, however. Because once again, the organization notorious for corruption has found a creative way to “follow the money”, so to speak. Splitting the 2030 World Cup across three continents and three confederations allows FIFA to fast-track Saudi Arabia’s hosting ambitions without formally circumventing its own “principle of confederation rotation”. Thanks to the involvement of UEFA (Europe), CAF (Africa) and CONMEBOL (South America) in the 2030 World Cup, the 2034 tournament will go to Asia or Oceania, despite Qatar having hosted the tournament as recently as 2022. Coincidentally, the Saudi Arabian Football Federation promptly announced its intention to bid for the 2034 FIFA World Cup – a bid that may even go unchallenged because FIFA set the deadline for member associations to confirm their interest to bid for October 31.

As the following chart shows, the quadrennial FIFA World Cup is not only one of the biggest sporting events in the world, but also FIFA’s most important source of income. The sale of rights related to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar alone generated $6.3 billion in revenue for FIFA between 2019 and 2022, amounting to 83 percent of the organization’s total revenue during that period.