FIFA, the body that oversees world football (soccer), has a long history of corruption well-documented on this blog, particularly during the tenure of former president Sepp Blatter (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). A series of groundbreaking indictments of numerous FIFA officials for wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering by United States prosecutors, starting from 2015, led to multiple convictions, and revealed the widespread bribery involved in the awarding of 2010 World Cup hosting rights to South Africa. This scandal led to Blatter’s resignation in June 2015. (Blatter was later fined millions of dollars and banned from any involvement in FIFA activities for more than ten years by the organization’s Ethics Committee.) There have also been frequent allegations that Russian and Qatari officials allegedly bribed some FIFA executives and voters to win hosting rights to the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups, though United States Attorneys probing FIFA have not elected to bring charges in relation to those allegations.

After Blatter’s resignation, FIFA pledged to clean up its act. In early 2016, Gianni Infantino was elected FIFA President. Infantino had campaigned on promises to crack down on corruption in the organization, and he pledged greater transparency in his first post-victory remarks. Shortly after assuming office, Infantino took steps to hire a chief compliance officer, publicly disclose the compensation of executive management, and bring FIFA’s accounting and auditing in line with industry best practices. But how has Infantino fared in increasing transparency when it comes to picking the host of the World Cup? 

Not very well. True, FIFA and Infantino widely touted the rigor of the process used to pick the United States, Canada, and Mexico as joint hosts for the 2026 Cup: an extensive consultation process introduced new standards for bidders, bids were subject to a years-long review window, new “technical requirements” for sustainable event management and environmental protection were created, and voting rights were expanded to FIFA’s entire 211-member body in place of being vested solely in FIFA’s executive committee. But the rather bizarre series of events this past October—culminating in FIFA picking the hosts of the 2030 and 2034 World Cups in a span of less than a month, with the winning bidder uncontested in both cases—demonstrates that the organization’s leadership has engineered rather ingenious methods of subverting nearly all of these reforms.

Here’s what happened in October: On October 4, FIFA announced that the joint bid of Morocco, Spain, and Portugal had emerged victorious in the contest for 2030 FIFA World Cup hosting rights. “Contest” is perhaps not the right word, however: while in past cycles the competition for hosting rights had been hotly contested, the Morocco-Spain-Portugal joint bid was the sole remaining application after the withdrawal of the combined proposal from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Greece a few months earlier. Even more bewilderingly, FIFA announced that the first three games of the 2030 competition would be played in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay––half the world way. And in a final eyebrow-raising move, FIFA set a deadline of October 31, 2023 for the submission of bids to host the tournament’s 2034 edition, leaving interested parties scrambling to meet a 27-day deadline. (The 2030 bidding process, meanwhile, had been in the works for almost four years by the time Morocco, Spain, and Portugal were awarded hosting rights.) At least most parties were left scrambling: Saudi Arabia, ultimately the winning—and only—bidder for 2034 hosting rights, submitted its application barely an hour after FIFA announced the opening of the bidding process. (In addition to the tight deadline, Saudi Arabia’s bid was substantially aided by FIFA’s informal rule of “continental rotation”—the principle that once a country hosts a World Cup, no country from that continent should host another World Cup over the next eight years. With the US, Canada, and Mexico hosting the 2026 Cup and Morocco, Portugal, and Spain hosting the 2030 Cup, the continental rotation principle excluded countries from North America, Europe, and Africa from hosting in 2034. By announcing that three 2030 games would be played in South America, FIFA effectively excluded that continent as well, leaving only Asia and Oceania eligible for the 2034 Cup.) And Infantino took further steps to ensure that Saudi Arabia had no competition, dissuading Indonesia and Australia from pursuing rival bids and encouraging all Asian countries to be “united for the 2034 World Cup.”

It is hard to escape the conclusion that this dizzying series of decisions was engineered to ensure that Saudi Arabia won the rights to host the 2034 World Cup. To be clear, there is no evidence that Saudi Arabia bribed officials or otherwise provided a quid pro quo to FIFA for bringing this about. But more importantly, the farcical process just described points to the failure of FIFA’s post-Blatter reforms. Despite promises to bring more transparency to FIFA—and especially to the process for selecting the World Cup host—the new administration has created a regime still shrouded in secrecy and susceptible to exploitation. Infantino and the rest of the FIFA Council, with their ability to manipulate deadlines and change technical requirement reviews, can make the process slow and stringent for deciding on the host of one edition and extremely expedited for another. Moreover, the combination of carefully engineered continental rotations, manipulable deadlines, and behind-the-scenes negotiations means that FIFA executives can whittle down realistic candidate pools to just one country. In such a scenario, while a vote does eventually go to the wider 211-member body due to the earlier “democratizing reforms,” it is no more than a formality––indeed, there is only one box to tick. 

Just eight years after collusion allegations sunk the presidency of Infantino’s predecessor, it feels like FIFA already has amnesia about the consequences of such secretive host selection processes. Anticorruption reforms? Infantino’s changes are more reminiscent of a well-played offside trap, leaving transparency far behind.