In 2015, FIFA was in free fall. FIFA's longtime president, Sepp Ladder, had just stepped down in disgrace. More than a dozen officials had been indicted. Some pleaded guilty. Others were convicted at trial. A few served prison time in the US. We tell that story in episode one, which came out last Sunday. So FIFA needed to move forward. And the nonprofit that oversees the world's most watched sporting event was looking for a new president. How do you run for FIFA president? What's the process like for choosing a president of FIFA? FIFA operates like any sort of democratic institution. So it's one country, one vote, and whoever gets the most votes becomes president. And I think there were five in the running to replace Ladder. The man who ended up winning the job was Johnny Infantino. He'd been in charge of UEFA, the European soccer body. And he promised big changes at FIFA. My colleagues, Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson, told me the story. His platform was basically... Make FIFA great again? Essentially, yes. It was like radical transparency. Change we can believe in. Exactly. And he was going to get FIFA back to its roots, loving football. This organization that has operated for too long in the shadows and has now been found to have allowed all this corruption to run rampant will be brought up to sort of modern standards. There will be a much greater focus on ethical behavior and all the bad stuff that happened in the set, Ladder, will no longer happen. That was back in 2016. Infantino has now been president of FIFA for a decade. And over that time, Josh and John say that Infantino's big promises to the fans haven't come through. I think the World Cup certainly as far as FIFA and Infantino are concerned has ceased to be a tournament about the fans. And that's, again, something that we're witnessing now in the 2026 World Cup when the considerations of fans seem to be the last thing on FIFA's mind. From the Journal, this is our two-part Sunday special on the World Cup. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's June 14th. Coming up, part two. How far can Johnny Infantino take the World Cup? Yeah! Johnny Infantino became FIFA president in 2016. He's part Swiss, Italian, and Lebanese. He's bald, has thick eyebrows, and often wears a dark suit in white sneakers. Early on, he tried to differentiate himself from the corruption scandals that happened under his predecessor, Seth Ladder. One of the worst corner kicks I've ever seen anyone who's kicked a ball take. So he plays, but not maybe super well, but... Not especially well. So he also surrounded himself with, like, FIFA legends. He loves the FIFA legend. Great players of days of yore. He would spend a lot of time palling around with those to sort of emphasize his relationship with the players and the fans. Because I think that one of the other things about the Ladder era is that FIFA had come to feel very distant from the players who play in the World Cup and the fans who fund the whole thing. He also, early on, made headlines because he was going to control FIFA's costs, and so he started flying on EasyJet around the Europe. A low-budget European airline. Exactly. Infantino was sort of promised to bring the game back to the fans and have them be a much more powerful constituency in how the organizational party is going forward. Every day should be about joy, about fun, about passion, and we have to take ourselves a little bit less serious. Fans didn't feel taken care of. They're upset about FIFA's decision to hold the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It wasn't just the countries bidding to host the tournament who were dismayed by the decision to award it to Qatar. It was also the fans who, you know, had to go to, you know, the middle of a desert in the height of summer who also felt that their interests weren't being, you know, looked after by FIFA. But Infantino decided not to revisit that decision. And that becomes very clear from the moment he's elected, that that decision will not be questioned. This is the lot that he's been handed, and he's going to execute these World Cups as best he can. If one thing becomes clear very early on, it's that the only thing Gianni Infantino loves as much as he loves soccer is proximity to power. There's one image of Infantino that Josh says was a symbol of where his presidency at FIFA was headed. It comes from the opening match at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The opening game pitted Russia against Saudi Arabia. And there is Gianni sitting between Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Vladimir Putin. And as Russia absolutely dismantles Saudi Arabia, Infantino is looking over to MBS and making these sheepish faces. Sorry. It's awkward, awkward shrugs. The 2018 World Cup in Russia went smoothly. France won again. Josh was happy. France is France. Allez les Bleus. That was sort of this big full circle emotional moment for me personally, but that's very boring to talk about. No, this is why sports are the best. After that, it was Qatar's turn to host. In the lead up to the 2022 World Cup, there was consistent criticism over human rights issues there. Homosexuality is illegal, and media outlets were reporting on poor working conditions and deaths of migrant workers. There are just days to go before the start of the World Cup in Qatar, but the build up to the event has been blighted by safety concerns. Now, a BBC investigation has uncovered evidence that migrants working on infrastructure projects in the final months before the tournament have died or suffered abuse. This was the main topic of the build up. This was a topic that came up every time Infantino appeared in public. How did he answer those questions? Well, he did it very merrily. Yes, he did. First of all, his general approach was to say, we take the World Cup into these countries to shine a light in places and look at what a great job Qatar has done, actually updating its systems and changing the way it behaves and the way it handles migrant labor. But then before the kickoff of the actual tournament, sitting in the press conference room in Doha, he gave the single most memorable press conference I've ever been at. Today I feel gay. And this was Infantino addressing all of the disenfranchised constituencies. Today I feel disabled. Ah, Qatar, and saying he was with them. Today I feel a migrant worker. And that Qatar had done a great job in franchising them. What did you make of that? Like, what did that say about Infantino's leadership and his, what he was doing as president? I think it sort of reinforced the idea that this was a guy who was sort of a little bit out of touch with, you know, how most football fans were thinking, most soccer fans were thinking. And was there like evidence that Qatar had actually done better on these fronts that it had made an effort to... I think there's absolutely no question that they have, yes, that the conditions for migrant workers did improve, you know, partly as a result of the kind of spotlight that was shown on Qatar after winning the World Cup. It's not clear exactly how many migrant workers died in Qatar. Some human rights groups put the figure in the hundreds. The government of Qatar said at the time that the number is 37. In addition to speaking out publicly in support of Qatar, FIFA made some big concessions in order to make the World Cup in Qatar possible. Like, they came up with a novel solution to the problem of hosting a soccer tournament during a sweltering Qatari summer. They solved that problem too, not just by air conditioning the stadiums, but also by moving the entire tournament out of summer for the first time ever, which was just a crazy, unprecedented thing that no one ever thought was possible because the World Cup is synonymous with summer. The 2022 World Cup took place in November and December. It really is like a completely crazy thing that they did that. You know, sort of the equivalent of moving the Super Bowl to the middle of, like, October. Because it was like during the middle of the season for Iron Leaf, right? Yeah, exactly. The sort of professional soccer calendar runs from September until June. And so to move the most important tournament in soccer right into the middle of that, it would be like asking the NFL to shut down on Thanksgiving for a month. It's just ludicrous. To move the World Cup to the winter, FIFA had to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars to the professional sports leagues who employ those players during the season. And the players' union was mad about how this would affect athletes' upcoming offseason. It was also a major disruption for sports broadcasters. It usually affected the European broadcasters, who were now suddenly finding that they had tournaments put on in the lead up to Christmas. We were supposed to be airing Home Alone 2 right now. Exactly. Die Hard reruns are supposed to be on the run up. Greatest Christmas movie of all time. And instead we have England's Senegal. So, like I say, an earth-shattering decision to move the Summer World Cup to the winter. Then, 48 hours before the tournament started, Qatar was spraying a surprise on soccer fans in town for the games. Football fans will no longer be allowed to buy alcohol around World Cup stadiums. This very late decision comes ahead of the opening game in Qatar on Sunday. I remember that. That was wild. Yep. That was almost the shockiest decision to award Qatar the World Cup in the first place. I mean, a World Cup without beer is like... A World Cup without a ball. Exactly. Do you feel like this typified in some ways the way FIFA was changing the things that you were seeing with what happened with Qatar? I mean, I think it's certainly... So, the beer thing, the decision on beer, was another example of how FIFA has sort of ceded so much power to the countries that are hosting the World Cup, that they were essentially, you know, being held hostage by Qatar, who had the World Cup and were then able to sort of act as they wanted. You know, FIFA charges Budweiser, you know, millions of dollars to be its primary alcohol sponsor. And the idea that they would be prohibitive from selling anything other than Bud Zero at the tournament was a huge black eye for them and a huge problem for their marketing arm going forward. At the time, FIFA said it appreciated the support of Budweiser's parent company, AB Inbev, to quote, cater to everyone at the 2022 World Cup. I think what it really shows is that at this stage, Infanzino was presiding over a FIFA that didn't so much organize the World Cup or own the World Cup, but was in the business of renting it to various countries. Why was FIFA willing to do all of this? I mean, it feels... It seems like FIFA was really bending over backwards just to make this happen in Qatar. Well, I think FIFA needs to sort of expand its horizons. And I think, you know, early on, like probably before anyone else really, FIFA recognized that the Gulf in the Middle East was going to be this huge source of income for them. There's all these big funds, these sovereign wealth funds, all this money that are trying to invest in a lot of sport. Exactly. It's not a huge fan base necessarily. It's not a lot of big pop, I mean, Qatar and doesn't have a huge population. Qatar, the UAE, yes, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia now, you know, again, yes, not huge soccer loving public even, but yes, deep pocketed sovereign wealth funds who had sort of discovered that the sport of soccer was a very effective tool with which to advertise their countries to the rest of the world. After Qatar, Infanzino had another big money opportunity for FIFA on the horizon. The 2026 World Cup in the U.S., the biggest, most lucrative sports market in the world. To capitalize on this important opportunity, Infanzino developed a close relationship with President Donald Trump. He knows that he also has a job to do as FIFA president, which is he is also responsible for sort of shining the halo of the World Cup on whichever world leader happens to be hosting the next tournament. And he knows that it's the legitimacy of soccer and the World Cup that those people are looking for when they decide to host the tournament. And I think we're seeing that more clearly than ever now in his repeated visits to the host of the next World Cup, Donald Trump. Can you introduce us to the Trump-Infantino relationship? How well do these two men know each other and what do we know about their relationship? At this point, they know each other very well, mostly because Johnny Infantino has spent most of the last 18 months following Trump around the world to all manner of media availabilities and diplomatic missions. He was standing by Trump's side at the Gaza Peace Summit. He has been a regular visitor to the Oval Office. He was at Trump's inauguration. Trump even gave him a shout-out at an inauguration celebration. So, Johnny, thank you for the World Cup and everybody, thank you for the Olympics. Infantino has travelled the globe, sometimes with very short turnarounds, to make sure that he is on hand whenever Trump I need. Infantino loves being close to power. He loves being made to feel important. And in Trump, he kind of found a kindred spirit. It's no exaggeration to say that Infantino considers himself a global leader, you know, in the same sphere as Trump and Putin. He considers himself a sort of world-changing humanitarian. A White House official said that President Trump and Infantino share a genuine friendship built on a common vision. This friendship was on full display at the World Cup draw held last December. The draw is when the match schedule and the lineup for the World Cup games are set. It was a snazzy event, held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with sports stars and soccer officials in the audience. It was snowing outside, everyone had been made to queue for hours outside in the snow. But the draw wasn't the only highlight of the evening. Infantino was presenting a new award, the FIFA Peace Prize. We pile into the auditorium and Infantino makes a special presentation of the FIFA Peace Prize, which is a trophy and a medal. There's, you know, everything had been created specifically for this moment. On stage, Infantino stood next to President Trump and gave him that award. Mr. President, this is your prize. This is your peace prize. Infantino showered praise on Trump. He hailed the wars that Trump had taken credit for stopping or preventing. A beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go. I'm gonna wear it right now. Okay, let me hold. Fantastic. Excellent. It's no secret that Donald Trump would love to win an Nobel Peace Prize. He's talked about this. That doesn't seem to be on the cards at the moment. But Janine Fantino, gracious guest that he is, figured, hang on, we can do the next best thing, the FIFA Peace Prize. You know, the entire thing was actually presented to an audience of one. It was literally, the whole show was made for Trump. There were, you know, USA, USA Chance. There was the Village People played. There was the Peace Prize. And I think you're gonna have an event the likes of which maybe the world has never seen based on the enthusiasm that I've seen. I have never seen anything like it. I still don't get it. Like, why would Infantino do this? Why create this award for Trump? I mean, what does he get out of it? What does it do for FIFA? I think there's an understanding at FIFA that Trump is an unpredictable character, an unpredictable host for this tournament. And FIFA hates that. FIFA wants absolute guarantees. FIFA wants a free hand, knowing that everything is gonna run very smoothly. And so I think in Fantino's thinking is that the more he can placate Trump, he can feel that this tournament is worth having and actually going to benefit him, then the freer hand FIFA will have. Because Trump is somebody who might say, you've upset me. If they, you know, I'm gonna make this, make life difficult for you. There were legitimate fears that they would pull games from Mexico. It hasn't happened and doesn't look like it's gonna happen in the time before the tournament. But there were legitimate fears that at some point, citing immigration concerns, Trump would say, actually those three state venues in Mexico, just have them in the US. FIFA has said that soccer unites the world and that the Peace Prize recognizes those helping to unite people. How was it viewed in the soccer world that these fans that tuned in to see, you know, the draw are now watching Trump receive a Peace Prize, the first ever, from a soccer organization? I mean, I think it was viewed as completely ludicrous, completely ridiculous by soccer lovers around the world who could see, you know, through what was a very transparent attempt to placate the US president. What the hell did FIFA just do? President Trump just became the first ever winner of FIFA's new Peace Prize. Yeah, you heard that right. FIFA now gives out Peace Prizes. As this year's World Cup approached, fans weren't only complaining about infantino-occurring favor with Trump. There are already grumblings about how much it's gonna cost people to go to these games. That's next. FIFA World Cup 2026. Coca-Cola has also partnered with Panini to bring fans closer to the tournament. Selected Coca-Cola bottles will feature exclusive Panini FIFA World Cup 2026 stickers under labels. Collect 12 exclusive stickers for the dedicated Coca-Cola double-page spread. Pick up a Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and start collecting. Peel, sip, collect. If you're enjoying our deep dive into the World Cup, you might like some of our other coverage about the business of sports. Essentially, these are a group of hustlers for lack of a better word, people that are in the sports gambling space. At its most elite levels, there is a very ugly side to it that basically turns the best high school players into commodities that could just be sold around like their assets. Follow or subscribe to the Journal, our daily podcast about money, business, and power. Episodes are out every weekday afternoon. Now, let's get back to soccer. A lot of things are different about this year's World Cup. For one, it's going to be hosted in three different countries, the US, Mexico, and Canada. The other thing is that there are 48 teams in this year's tournament. That's a big jump from the 32 teams it used to be. Since there will be more games in this World Cup than ever before, FIFA will sell more tickets and there will be more hours of sport to broadcast and more room to sell ads, which means more revenue for FIFA. And that's another reason why the fact that the World Cup has ended up here again was not a huge surprise when the US was named as one of the hosts for 2026, is because by then it had become clear that Gianni Infantino saw his role as FIFA president as essentially the man to fill FIFA's coffers with as much money as humanly possible. He had already started tossing around proposals to make the World Cup an every two-year tournament rather than an every four-year tournament. Got it, which of course that would have made even more money for FIFA. Exactly. Well, FIFA expects the originally cited figure was going to be around $11 billion. They've revised that and now think they'll probably net $15 billion. They'll make, like, they'll earn $15 billion, is what they're expecting. They're expecting revenues of $15 billion. How does it compare to prior World Cups? It blows all of them out of the water. And FIFA is using very American language to market this tournament. Here's Infantino. Well, it will be a fantastic event. There will be 104 Super Bowls in one month. The world will stand still and observe the biggest global event that humanity has ever seen. Well, Gianni has been to the Super Bowl many times. He loves to show up there. And 104 Super Bowls is the shorthand that he came up with and was so pleased by that he started trumpeting it everywhere. I got my attention. And I think the idea to him is that every one of those games can rival the people who tune in for the Super Bowl because to every country participating in the World Cup, every time they see that national team is a Super Bowl. Globally, it's got that kind of level of world attention. FIFA doesn't really hide the fact that it expects this to be an incredibly lucrative tournament. And that's one of the sort of advantages of holding the game here. It is clearly in the business of making as much money as possible from these tournaments. But as the start of the World Cup came closer, FIFA encountered an unexpected problem. I love soccer. But the more I hear about this World Cup, the more I'm like, who exactly is this s*** for? This has to be the worst one. 11 and a half million dollars for one ticket. And look at the seats, you get row 22. But I wish that the FIFA Commission and the United States had made some form of protection from price gouging and scalping of tickets. 5,000 pounds for an England vs Croatia. I love you England. I f***ing love you, but no. I mean, the most notorious example which we've written about is the US opener against Paraguay. That's probably the most consequential US men's national team game in a generation. They are hosts at home, expected to, you know, at least go some distance in the tournament. And, you know, they're playing in an incredible venue. They're at SoFi Stadium, which is the home of the LA Rams. And that is a five billion dollar venue. But about six weeks before the game, thousands of tickets were still available. And most tickets were over a thousand dollars each. It tells us that US fans, you know, as excited as they are about this team, know better than to go spend their life savings to see them play against Paraguay and maybe draw. So when did it start to become clear that maybe there was some weakness, let's say, in the fan appetite for this World Cup? It all comes down to two words that FIFA loves, and that's dynamic pricing. And that from the very first rounds of ticket balloting, that became clear. It was a problem because what dynamic pricing means is that they never post an absolute list of ticket prices and it allows them to constantly tweak the price based on demand. The demand goes up, the prices go up as well. Fans were especially mad about the ticket application process or you had to enter your credit card information before knowing how much the ticket would even cost. You could be on the hook for like sort of thousands of dollars coming out of your account without really knowing whether you were going to get tickets in the first place. Every bit of ticketing for this tournament has been a fiasco from the prices, from fans feeling like they were miss-sold what they were buying. And, you know, the lack of communication on actually how do you get tickets to this tournament, which I think is the question John and I have been asked most often for the past year and a half. We don't really have a good answer. The outcry over the price of tickets was very swift and very loud. And even FIFA heard it because shortly after the draw was made and the tickets went on sale, they realized that they had, you know, screwed up and introduced a small number of tickets that were available for much cheaper price so that they could say that it is theoretically possible for people to go see their team progress through this World Cup and not pay significantly more than they had done in previous tournaments. But it was a very small fraction of tickets, like much less than sort of 10% of the stadium. It was in the hundreds. Yeah. In Fantino, it said that FIFA was simply pricing the World Cup tickets according to what the market would bear. And then it was better for FIFA to capture the revenue than to divert it to ticket resellers. He added that FIFA said it sold 90% of tickets for this year's games. Ticket sales, we've talked about are really expensive, but there's also like empty hotel rooms, train prices are really expensive. Can you talk about just like this sort of summer of price gouging that we've been hearing about? Yeah. I mean, and some of this is like, is on FIFA and some of it is on the sort of like local authorities and the cities that are putting on these games. But yeah, there is just an overwhelming sense that the prices for this summer's World Cup are really out of control. But it's not just the tickets. It's the whole matchday experience. It's the hotels. It's the transit to get there. It's the price of concessions. Everything about it is just degrees higher than people were used to paying in the past. And so you've seen huge banks of hotel rooms suddenly become available, which FIFA had reserved in anticipation of fans or delegates coming out to those games. And now they are all like hitting the market days before the tournaments do to begin. So are prices coming down a bit? I think prices for some of the sort of low key games are starting to come back to earth. And it is possible to sort of now in the very last days before the tournament begins, it is possible to sort of get tickets that aren't much more than face value. Did FIFA maybe bank too much on this tournament in the United States in a country that maybe doesn't quite have as much stock rapidite? Yeah, I think FIFA was definitely sort of more focused on the disposable income of American sports fans rather than their actual deep passion for soccer. But FIFA was aware that Russia and Qatar were two tournaments that probably wouldn't pull in as many fans actually attending the games as previous tournaments that they had in Germany or France or even South Africa. And so the US and Canada and Mexico were very attractive places to host the tournament because they expected lots of tourists to come. And I think they've just miscalculated. How important is it for FIFA to conquer the US market or at least even like seize the opportunity to make as much money as possible? The list of territories for soccer to conquer is shorter all the time. But the biggest market left out there where there is that sacred combination of media access and disposable income is the US. And we've seen it with other sports too where every other major league based outside the US covets that market. And we saw it happen with Formula One where they pointed the entire sport at the United States in the drive to survive era. The cricket World Cup was held here. You may not remember because no one watched, but it was held here. That one, that sports got a bit further to go than soccer. But John and Josh say that for soccer fans, there could be some downsides to the USification of sports. I think like one of the sort of great things about the World Cup is that as it goes to a new host every time, the World Cup feels a little bit different. And you get to see how each new host experiences soccer and how the soccer culture works in that country. And I guess like one of the sort of concerns about hosting the World Cup here in the US, you know, it just might not feel very different to the sort of sports that we consume all the time. And part of that is, you know, North American sports, the way that North American sports are broadcast and shown has sort of taken over the whole world. Every sports league across the world wants to be more like the NFL. And as every sports league becomes the NFL, they all start to look the same. We've got a halftime show in the final for the first time. There's going to be a halftime show. There are going to be drinks breaks where commercials are shown. You know, these are things that are sort of like the staples of like American sports broadcasting, but are not staples of the World Cup. I think we know how it's going to come out. We know that what the discourse is going to sound like from the British press, from everyone else, it's going to be like, we can't quite put our fingers on it, but this is just too American. I mean, a halftime show, it really does feel like it's just, they're trying to monetize every element of it. And soccer fans are really like purists. Exactly, like more than any other sport because of its roots as community started out as like, you know, riots between different villages. And like, you know, there is a sort of purity, snobbery, whatever you want to call it about how soccer fans sort of view the sport. And so they are very sensitive to those sorts of things. In Fantinos, at a halftime show at the World Cup final, we're quote, touch the hearts of the people. I feel like the World Cup is sort of reaching this point that a lot of sports leagues are right now. I'm thinking about the NBA in particular where it's like, they've been so successful, made so much money. And suddenly there's a little bit of a moment of crisis of like, are we doing too much? Are there too many games? Is it too much saturation? The NFL has been milking as much as it possibly can. Now there's used to be Sundays and Monday night football. And now it's almost every night of the week. There's a game and like, how are we reaching this point where we are kind of at the beginning of not the end, but the beginning of a downturn? Yeah, have we reached peak sports? You mean? Yeah, exactly. And there's so much more competition from all kinds of entertainment from TikTok, from video games, from Twitch, you know, watching new stuff. The NFL told us that most of their extra games take place on holidays and the fans consistently say they enjoy watching them. I think if we've learned anything writing about how all of these leagues operate over the years, it's that they all have the same favorite lever, which is better get us given more. So just keep pulling that more lever until people beg for mercy and say, actually, you know, the ratings are dipping now, but we haven't seen that happen anywhere. And in fact, you know, as we know, broadcasters are just more and more desperate to get stuff that because live sports is still the only thing that really can regularly draw, you know, the audience that it wants. And this is the more of more World Cups. Exactly. The maximum more. So it's like the maximum World Cup they're going all in. So do you think FIFA is maybe now too big to fail? Yes, I do. Yeah. When we were talking about, you know, how, what FIFA did to bend over backwards for guitar, if you can move the World Cup from the summer to the winter, if you can stage the tournament with no alcohol sales, you know, I think that you probably feel like you can do anything, that the World Cup can be anything that you want it to be. When Sep Blatter assumed the role of FIFA president 30 years ago, the World Cup was a 24 team tournament that took place in June and July, and it is now mushroomed into a 48 team tournament and maybe we'll do the World Cup every two years. And now the World Cup is hosted in three countries instead of just one. You know, the World Cup is a much more sort of malleable thing than it was before. Who do you think is going to win? You, best of all. Contractually obliged to say that I think England has a good chance, but I think France has the best. Oh, Josh, woo. You feeling good? I mean, I can't jinx it, but I feel good about them. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Pierre Singy with help from Tatiana Zemice. It was edited by Piaget Kari. I'm Ryan Knudsen. Special thanks to Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Catherine Brewer and Sarah Platt. Fact-checking by Nicole Posolka. Mixing by Griffin Tanner with help from Sam Baer. Our theme music is by So Wily and remixed by Peter Leonard and Griffin Tanner. Additional music in this episode by Bobby Lord, Griffin Tanner and BluDOT Sessions. We'll be back tomorrow with a regular episode. Thanks for listening. See you then. .
