THE BUSINESS OF SOCCER
It is difficult to exaggerate about the scope of soccer as a social and economic phenomenon. FIFA, the sport’s Zurich-based international federation, has more than 200 member associations and estimates that there are some 200 million registered players worldwide.
From modest roots, a major industry.
(Photo: David Mangurian - IDB)
In Latin America soccer is the overwhelmingly dominant sport in all but a few countries. Even small countries have dozens of stadiums, established professional leagues, enormous club and amateur leagues, and innumerable school-, church- and neighborhood-based soccer associations.
By all accounts, soccer is a big business as well. Billions of dollars are earned by professional teams through sponsorships, ticket sales, television broadcasting rights and—most notoriously—the sale of talented players.
Yet hard figures are almost impossible to come by. For the reasons described in the article on these pages, soccer club finances are rarely disclosed outside the tight-knit world of soccer dealmakers. Even team fans, known for loyalty that can border on violent obsession, are often left in the dark. Inevitably, this leads to the scandals, player strikes, and fan insurgencies that fill newspaper sports pages throughout Latin America.
The region’s problems have a distinguished heritage, however. In Leicester, England, some 100 years ago, one of that country’s earliest “football clubs” ran into financial difficulties because it had overpaid its players and overestimated ticket sales. Ardent fans of the club, now known as Leicester City, formed a support organization and mounted fundraisers to bail out the management. But once the problem was solved, the managers rejected the fans’ efforts to influence decisions, leading to a nasty and protracted squabble that was gleefully reported in the local press.