by B. R. GOWANI
More than $5m was paid to senior football officials to create support for Qatar’s 2022 bid PHOTO/Getty/The Sunday Times
FIFA and big money
The Sunday Times of 1 June 2014 reported that Qatar’s Mohamed bin Hammam, top football official, succeeded in winning the bid to host the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar through illegal payments of more than $5 million.
But the former Qatari ruler, Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmad Al Thani, defended the bribe in these words:
“I accept that we spent more money campaigning than other bids, but … from the day we launched our bid to the day our country’s name was pulled from the envelope in Zurich, we played strictly by the rules.”
Nothing new – either in the giving of the bribe or in the offering of the defense by the former Emir. Football, or any other sports, or for that matter, almost any other thing, has been taken over by the corporate world and has thus lost that simple fun which people used to have in watching sports when it was corporate-free.
The naked display of that corporate control can be observed at the ongoing 2014 World Cup in Brazil. In 2003, Brazilian Congress imposed a ban on alcoholic drinks at sports venues for a reason: to avoid rival groups of fans from indulging in savage violence, which was a very common thing then. But FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) didn’t like this ban and forced Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff to overturn the ban despite opposition by Brazil’s Health Minister Alexandre Padilha and other Congress members. The FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke provided an interesting explanation:
“Alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup, so we’re going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that’s something we won’t negotiate.”
What has alcohol to do with football? Well, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of such brands as Corona and Budweiser, along with Coca Cola and McDonalds, is one of the major sponsors.
Sarah Hawkes and Kent Buse points out
“Sponsorship by companies like Budweiser, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and the convenience food giant Moy Park brings millions of dollars to the game. But what message does it send to the global audience? Promoting alcohol, sugary drinks, and fast food may mean massive profits for corporations. But it also means worse health for individuals and a costly burden on countries’ health-care systems.”
Qatar 2022
What is FIFA going to do in in 2022 in Qatar, a Muslim country where alcohol is banned, when alcoholic beverages are part of its world cups?
Is it hoping that by then Qatar’s ban on alcohol would have been lifted; or
it will find a sponsor selling some halal food; or
it will extract the equivalent amount of money (which it received from Anheuser-Busch InBev) from the Qatari government; or
it will find a sponsor selling some junk food or drinks.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com