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. Continue reading →