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Comment by jotajota24 | Hacker News Reader

Why is it bad to sell 20% of the biggest tournament in the world to a private company lead by people involved with the most corrupt administration in the history of the US? The model has been working fine for decades, why does it matter that it makes less than american sports?

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Ha! Model has been working for American s.. more and more we are seeing signs of a falling empire. Not reading the room - I mean global - temperature is nothing new to the US foreign policy office. They’ve done it for decades, but these days the confidence in leadership has fully eroded trust. Before there may have been closed door jokes made US leaderships expense, now it’s out and in public.

Market Strategists are going to study this one. It’s a potential inflection point. Cant think of any other event or entity as globally galvanizing that football.

The most beloved, most watched sport in the world making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure. Non profits are generally inefficient at running businesses. With the right guardrails a private arm that knows how to run a business could help FIFA make a ton of money. And yes a lot of rich guys will become even richer too, so what?

guardrails, yea pedotrump pissed all over existing guardrails in this wc. and you want to sell him a piece of fifa :D

> help FIFA make a ton of money

It's a non-profit. So who cares? Why is more money automatically good?

> making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure

They aren't alike. The NHL doesn't happen once every 4 years.

The point of Fifa is not to make money. The point of it is to further the interests of the sport.

Besides, your tally of sports incomes is wrong since you didn't include UEFA revenue, which is also football money, in the count.

FIFA controls the largest event, so it should be the driving force for revenue but it’s not. But even if you add UEFA the whole thing still less profitable than an American professional and barely surpasses hockey. By the way, UEFA crying about this while they are the owners, regulators and revenue distributors is pretty crazy. It seems to me they are more concerned about not being able to hop on the FIFA deal themselves.

FFS this is getting fucking tiresome.

Do you not understand that FIFA and UEFA are a small component of the actual revenue of football? They are not all of football. This is not complicated.

And his claim is fundamentally incorrect. The latest edition of the WC made more money than the NBA, leave alone the NHL.

> a commercial failure

Not everything has to have the teeth of capitalism continually biting down harder and harder. Plateaus are ok (and this is nowhere near a plateau)

Good thing it's a sport and not a commercial operation then!

But FIFA is the governing body of a sport, not a business.

Hearing you say this is like hearing someone say that the United Nations is a commercial failure.

Its purpose is to regulate and administer international football on behalf of its member associations, enforce compliance with its regulations, organise international competitions to relieve the member associations of the hassle, administer anti-doping programmes and related integrity measures (lol), and, through its membership of IFAB, help determine and promote the consistent application of the Laws of the Game worldwide. Its revenues only exist to support those functions.

Is there a need for it to have profit motive? Would the world be better if it decided it should have one? I don't see how the answer could be yes to either question.

The mention of guardrails is a little Onion-esque given the organisation and people in question

The UN is a poor analogy. The UN does not operate a large commercial business like FIFA which exploits the World Cup, Libertadores and other events. The only strong similarity they have is their non profit status. You should have used the IOC as analogy.

> The most beloved, most watched sport in the world making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure.

Fortunately the English top division alone makes a similar amount to NHL (from a quarter of the matches) and the English second tier makes a similar amount to the Super Bowl[1], which is why football's governing body doesn't particularly need lessons on how to commercialize stuff from people in the United States who probably also don't understand football's financial centre of gravity, but will happily buy commercialization rights for a quadrennial tournament if sold to them in a backroom deal at a sufficiently low price...

[1]yes, I know the Super Bowl is only the one game. But if you can compare a 1400 game annual league to a 104 game quadrennial tournament, then I can compare an entire season to a single big game :D)...

> The most beloved, most watched sport in the world making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure.

Soccer leagues make a total of about 5-6x as much as the NHL. The Premier League alone makes 25% more than the NHL.

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