PARIS (AFP) – Fifa on Monday (Dec 20) claimed staging the World Cup each two years would provide monumental monetary advantages for its member federations as president Gianni Infantino expressed hope that the extremely controversial plans won’t be derailed by opposition from Europe and South America.
Infantino was talking after Fifa held a digital international summit with federations to debate the challenge, though there was no vote on the topic on Monday and he refused to substantiate if there can be one on the subsequent Fifa Congress on March 31.
Soccer’s international physique printed findings from two separate feasibility research which it claimed confirmed there can be “a robust upturn in soccer’s financial scenario” if the World Cup was held as a biennial event slightly than the present four-year cycle for the boys’s and ladies’s competitions.
One research, by market researchers Nielsen, estimated that roughly US$4.4 billion (3.9 billion euros) of further revenues can be generated over 4 years, with revenue from gate receipts, media rights and sponsorship rising from seven billion {dollars} to US$11.4 billion.
To assist persuade its 211 member federations – 207 of whom participated in Monday’s summit – Fifa vowed at hand over an additional US$19 million each 4 years to every one, with the quantity the identical for main federations comparable to Brazil and France as it might be for Andorra or Guam.
Every member would get “round US$16 million” allotted from a “Solidarity Fund” of some US$3.5 billion within the first 4 years of the reformed calendar, in addition to a rise in funding through its Fifa Ahead programme from the present six million {dollars} to 9 million.
Nonetheless, Fifa didn’t reveal the methodology used for the research, at a time when the need of broadcasters to maintain paying extra for rights has been questioned by specialists in soccer finance, and it supplied no particulars as to the potential repercussions for home leagues or continental tournaments.
Transatlantic entrance
In distinction to its personal research, a report commissioned by European soccer’s governing physique Uefa just lately estimated a shortfall of between 2.5 and three billion euros (US$2.8 to three.4 billion) over 4 years for European federations if Fifa adopts its plan.
“We’ve simply completed a feasibility research of over 700 pages. It is vitally thorough, so perhaps some will change their minds,” Infantino mentioned concerning the opposition to the challenge from Doha, the place he gave a press convention alongside Arsene Wenger, Fifa’s head of world improvement who has championed the biennial proposal.
“There’s quite a lot of opposition and there’s as effectively quite a lot of voices in favour and Fifa is a world organising physique, so we have to actually attempt to mix all these completely different factors of view.”
Solely eight nations have ever gained the boys’s World Cup because it was first held in 1930, and there has by no means been a winner from outdoors Europe or South America.
These confederations will present greater than half the groups for subsequent yr’s World Cup in Qatar, which is because of be the final with 32 groups earlier than the competitors is expanded to characteristic 48 nations from 2026.
