Who runs the show?

Monday, January 23, 2012

Dear Editor,

Big international sports organisations such as the World Cup, the Formula One Racing Series and the Olympic Games are quickly losing their appeal to me. As they have got bigger, they are slowly losing the reason for their being. They began as sports events, organised to please both the participants and the spectators. They have evolved into mega businesses designed more to maximise income than to represent the sports involved. Sports have become costly spectacles.

The present brouhaha between FIFA, the international sports association governing the World Cup and the country of Brazil, the next organisers of the matches, is a good case in point. FIFA sets minimum standards for playing conditions such as the number of stadia as well as logistics of general transportation and security of the participants. But over the years FIFA has developed a cosy relationship with its sponsors and opted to maximise income rather than focus on the sport in the games. It accepts vast amounts of money from its sponsors and licenses what it considers authentic and exclusive material such as souvenirs and T-shirts representing the sport.

Now FIFA has gone even farther. It is now dictating to the Brazilian government that it must change its laws and sell beer at World Cup matches and eliminate the discounts conventionally given to students and the elderly. Brazil banned the selling of alcohol in 2003 as a measure to control violence at football matches. It worked. Matches are far less violent than before 2003. Brazil is a country that believes in social justice and therefore offers ticket discounts to members of its indigenous communities, its youth and its older patrons at public events. Obviously, FIFA finds these concessions to be harmful to profit maximisation. FIFA also gets a lot of money from the Budweiser Brewing Company. So Brazil and FIFA find themselves at an impasse.

My view is that no international sports organisation has the right to intervene in the legal affairs of a country. Brazil has every right to tell FIFA that it will not change its laws to serve FIFA and Budweiser. Sports must recognise the sovereignty of the Brazilian people. And that should be non-negotiable.

David Matthews

Tampa, Florida

USA