Now that La Roja, as Spain’s football team is called, has walked away with the coveted trophy of the 2026 World Cup, the grand spectacle is over. What’s left, alas, will evoke far less interest: the counting of profits by the hugely-profitable Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa), which held the tournament.
Though registered as a charity in Switzerland, Fifa is among the world’s richest sports associations. For the latest World Cup, where 48 teams took part in a record 104 matches in 16 cities, it projected revenues of over $8.7 billion, its highest ever and a lot more than what it drew four years ago in Qatar.
Yet, such is its clout that it gets away without paying taxes on its bounty.
What started as a tiny voluntary organization in 1904, when seven European football associations got into a huddle to expand the game’s global reach, is now a global behemoth. Fifa has 211 nations as members, more than the United Nations count of 193, and is eminently able to demand sweeteners like full tax exemption from countries keen to host the World Cup.
Ticket prices this time caught attention for how high they were, but the event thrives even more on broadcast rights, sponsorships, merchandise deals and other forms of monetized fanfare. Like any profit-chasing business.
At the latest World Cup, video-assisted referee calls might have grabbed the spotlight for controversy, but Fifa’s decision to introduce a ‘hydration break’ in each half of a match was a talking point even before kick-off. Heat levels in some stadiums were high, no doubt, but the classic format now had two extra advertising breaks, each serving as a sort of ‘free kick’ pre-awarded to the revenue side.
Ahead of it all, Fifa had invited bids from hosts ready to waive all taxes, be it income tax, customs tariffs or sales levies on tickets. Co-hosts Mexico and Canada fell in line; the US largely so, though not evenly across all states. Three of them, namely Missouri, Georgia and Florida, even passed legislation to give World Cup tickets a tax-off. In Illinois, Chicago refused to host 2026 matches after officials concluded it would leave the city in debt.
A non-partisan tax-policy think-tank, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that Georgia stands to forgo as much as $25 million in revenue, Florida some $7.4 million and Missouri roughly $1.9 million for each of the six games at Kansas City.
It will be a while before we learn how much Fifa earned from this year’s World Cup. Some of its funds go into developing the game in places that need such support; Fifa can claim some credit for the performance of Cape Verde, for example, which held Spain to a draw.
But that pales in comparison with its access to much sports infrastructure built with public funds. Host cities do benefit commercially, granted, but public expenses on security, amenities, etc, are far from trivial. This makes it a broad example of socialized costs and privatized benefits.
By one estimate, the Cup cost its 2010 host South Africa as much as $4.9 billion, thanks partly to a ‘tax-free bubble’ it was urged by Fifa to create.
Clearly, the time has come for countries to huddle together and ask whether private sports bodies like Fifa—or for that matter the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which has reportedly argued for a tax-off on money ploughed into the game’s development—should be given tax exemptions. Only then will our beautiful games be beautiful for all, not just bountiful for a few.