The Club World Cup, PIF, and the End of Football

Matthew explains how PIF are up to their necks in FIFA's latest farce.

And so all eyes were turned across the pond on Saturday to the realisation of the long-held vanity project of a megalomaniac president. An overblown, eye-wateringly expensive show of power, as empty at its heart as the man himself who watched on, all perma-tan and smiles, issuing his usual propaganda soundbites. Oh, and on the same day as Gianni Infantino oversaw the opening ceremony of the Club World Cup, Trump also held a military parade.

I know. An all too easy opening joke that I'm sure every broadsheet columnist has already made. But sometimes an open goal is so inviting that even Kevin Dillon might have managed to notch. To pass it up would have been a dereliction of duty.

But there's also a serious point here. It's not just that dictator chic has suddenly become fashionable again, from Moscow to what used to laughingly be referred to as the “land of the free”. It's also that the ludicrous Club World Cup is part of a much more troubling power play involving not only Trump and Infantino, but also a UK-based Russian oligarch and the North East’s favourite unelected authoritarian Crown Prince, who occasionally finds enough loose change in his back pocket to buy promising young full-backs for one of his country's less high-profile soft-power sporting projects.

We'll come to that in due course, but first let's pick off some of the low hanging fruit in the farcical shitshow currently masquerading in the US as a global “football tournament”.

In an already congested fixture list that's seeing more and more players either crocked or just mentally exhausted by the never-ending grind, clearly what a blank summer of (men's) tournament football needed was the expansion of a pointless, hitherto completely ignored competition from seven teams to 32 and no fewer than 63 matches. Cue understandable legal complaints lodged by players’ organisations and the body representing the European leagues.

Add in broadcast rights that attracted precisely zero interest from any of the established players, terrible ticket sales, threats of anti-immigration crackdowns, an extra transfer window just to accommodate the tournament, qualification criteria so obtuse that Harvard PhDs have struggled to understand them, and a magically appearing $1bn prize pot, and you've got the symbolic equivalent of genial Gianni squatting and taking a giant golden dump in full public view just because he can, before wiping his arse on the tattered remnants of “legacy football” (my autocorrect changed that to “genital Gianni” which might be nearer the mark).

Happily that golden turd has even been given physical form in the new CWC trophy that Infantino desperately paraded for approval in front of uncle Donald in the Oval Office. Nothing amuses a dictator more than a shiny kitsch golden trinket. It's got its own website and everything, positively drowning in elite-level FIFA bullshit.*

At any other time, this might have been something to mock, just like the fact that clubs such as Liverpool and Barcelona failed to qualify, as did the fake internet content vehicles (sorry, “football teams”) currently keeping Messi’s and Ronaldo’s income streams on life support in the US and Saudi Arabia (funny how those two countries keep cropping up here). But as the tortuous and torturous contortions to somehow shoehorn them into the event demonstrate, this is not a tournament that has anything to do with football as we understand it and its quaint notions of clubs, history, belonging, community, and on-field merit.

All of which brings us back to PIF and their role in this. As recent pieces in the Guardian and BBC Sport make clear, the Club World Cup is being bankrolled by the Saudi state in a barely concealed deal that exchanges vast quantities of money for a new model of football, not to mention yet more generous subsidies to our rivals.

It goes like this. The unknown unwatched sport streaming service DAZN, owned by Soviet multi-billionaire and erstwhile knight of the British realm Sir Leonard Valentinovich Blavatnik, pays a mind boggling $1bn for the broadcast rights to the event, rights that no-one else wanted. It then goes on to make coverage available free of charge. And this despite making losses of more than £1bn in each of the last two years. What kind of business model is this?

Shortly afterwards it's announced that PIF have bought a 10% share in DAZN. And guess what, they've paid $1bn for that share. Ah, that kind of business model. That level of moolah buys a lot of reserve goalkeepers is all I'm saying.

By a remarkable coincidence FIFA announces a $1bn prize fund/ bribe for all the participating clubs to ensure they participate and pick their star players. Meanwhile, shortly after the DAZN deal, FIFA awards the 2034 World Cup to… you're ahead of me... Saudi Arabia. And without anything as inconvenient as a vote, but then dictators never did like to bother themselves with the annoyances of the democratic process.

Of course, none of this seems surprising. In fact, I'm sure most of us are pretty much immune to the corrupt, venal, self-aggrandising actions of just about anyone involved at the top levels of football administration, and it would be easy to dismiss this as more of the usual nonsense. Nothing that impinges on the only thing that matters to us which is the current state of NUFC. But we are very much entwined in all of this.

First, that's because this is the most serious threat yet to tear down the long-standing structures of football - long-term supporter loyalty, recognisable open competitions, at least the pretence of a fair rule-based system, promotion and relegation, the centrality of physical attendance, and the importance of local place.

The ESL, the new Champions League, and the Club World Cup all pick that apart. Clubs are invited to take part; “leagues” no longer involve everyone playing everyone else home and away; consumption is based on one-off matches or even moments in matches; disembodied content made for social media is the new king. Clubs become entirely interchangeable, empty vessels to be filled by the star power of individual players.

Second, it's because our owners are at the heart of all of this, the self-styled disruptors of traditional sport, using their infinite wealth to gain control of a form of culture that has the capacity to reach billions of people. And that reach means power, influence, and even more wealth when this becomes the dominant model of football.

And that, in turn, means that our club will eventually become a pawn in this, first in line for a superleague or whatever else it is that’s round the corner. For some, that will be seen as a good thing, I suppose. Finally a seat at the top table, in the new cartel not excluded from it. But the price will be the erosion and, ultimately, the destruction of what we call football.

This isn't scaremongering. Despite being complete rubbish by any normal standards, the Club World Cup is the most successful expression yet of what is a very deliberate process that's going on in plain sight. Not successful in terms that you or I would understand - attendances, footballing prestige, viewing figures among traditional fans, anyone actually giving a shit - because those are legacy measures of success. Keep up!

Success in this parallel world is global online market activations, the creation of an infrastructure outside the existing structures of football, the birth of a new form of football consumption. The DAZN deal, as baffling as it seems to us, is at the heart of that strategy. And PIF are the architects of that deal. Just follow the money.

Matthew Philpotts

---

*In case you were wondering about the design of the trophy, let me enlighten you: “Inspired by pioneering journeys, the periodic table, astronomy and space travel’s historic Voyager Golden Records, every glint of gold reflects the relentless pursuit of greatness.” Well, obviously.

---

---