It's December 2nd, 2010, and the International Federation of Association Football, or FIFA, gathered in Switzerland to announce which country would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, and they had assembled a powerful audience. Here's former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who was there to back the U.S. bid. And here's Prince William working on behalf of England's bid behind him is the prime minister of the Netherlands and former prime minister of Belgium, who together submitted a joint bid. But even with all this political power in one room, the fate of their countries lay in the hands of these guys. The 22 FIFA officials with the power to pick the host. They were considered gods by the bidding nations. They were the masters of their destiny. But many of these men have been accused of abusing their power. And this was the moment they took it a step too far.
2018 FIFA World Cup, ladies and gentlemen, will be organized in Russia! The 2022 FIFA World Cup is ... Qatar! The decision is still one of the worst decisions made by a sporting organization. It was a catastrophe for FIFA. They've had their whole legacies called into question. The announcement set off a cascade of events that rocked the world of football and nearly broke FIFA. Rampant and deep rooted corruption. Corruption and bribery. Corruption in the international hearing and money laundering. How did FIFA go from organizing one of the most beloved sporting events in the world to corrupting it? In the early 20th century? Football was already super popular, mainly in Europe and South America, where national teams had begun playing each other.
So a group of officials in France formed FIFA in 1904 to oversee these competitions and promote the sport. In 1930, inspired by the Olympics, they decided to start their own tournament. The first question was who would host it? Out of FIFA's 44 member countries at the time, six place bids to host it. FIFA's Congress, made up of one representative from each country, was put in charge of voting for a winner. But really, this vote was a facade. So, there was no bid contest. It was effectively decided behind closed doors by a bunch of committee men. Eventually, FIFA awarded Uruguay the rights to host the first World Cup, and it was a fitting place to do it. Uruguay had just won the last two Olympic gold medals in football, but it also agreed to pay for a lot, including the travel expenses of other teams and share the profits with FIFA. In July 1930, 13 teams came together to play.
Uruguay beat Argentina in the finals. And FIFA made a solid profit, mostly from ticket sales. The World Cup was a success. Over the next couple of decades, FIFA decided to rotate the tournament between Europe and South America. The World Cup wasn't a grandiose thing back then. You know, there were some upgrades to the stadiums and to existing infrastructure and there might be some marketing going on. But the World Cup wasn't a truly global event. That all changed when it went on TV. I am very pleased that this country is acting as host for the final of the World Cup. Once the whole world could watch the tournament, the host nation became much more visible, leading many more countries to want to host.
In virtually every country, football has now such a following that no government can afford to ignore it. Through the sixties and seventies, FIFA's membership started exploding. By the eighties, it had close to 170 members, mostly divided into six confederations with their own qualifying tournaments. And the organization kept getting richer. Take a look at how FIFA's profits grew steadily with almost every tournament until, boom, the 1980s. That's when World Cup sponsorships, merchandise and TV rights became worth millions. All of this money was largely controlled by 24 officials. The leaders of each confederation and some senior officials, like the president. This group was called the executive committee or ExCo. They had the power to distribute FIFA's money to its member countries for building football fields, holding tournaments and establishing youth programs. Very often this was done about any checks in place.
Lots of money was siphoned off. You know, development a money kickback became almost standard practice in certain parts of the world. FIFA leaders began using corrupt practices to gain and retain power. The corruption that went on suited the two presidents. Havelange was nakedly corrupt and took bribes as well. That’s well documented. Sepp Blatter was very different. He was addicted to power. There was a cabal of nakedly corrupt committeemen within FIFA and Mr. Blatter ignored their excesses because he relied on their support to keep himself in power. It was in this culture of corruption that FIFA in 1964 decided to take the vote away from Congress and give it to ExCo, meaning that to host the World Cup, countries only needed to win the votes of a majority of ExCo, just 13 of them. The fact that such a small body of men had such a powerful position vested among them without any real checks and balances.
Yeah, it absolutely made corruption part of it. FIFA's corruption wasn't a secret, but they had moved their headquarters to Switzerland long ago and that meant their finances couldn't really be traced to confirm corruption, at least for another decade. The 2006 World Cup bid was the most competitive in FIFA's history. It had previously begun accepting bids from countries outside of Europe and South America. It awarded hosting rights to the U.S. in ‘94 and South Korea and Japan in 2002. For the 2006 World Cup, five countries wanted to host it and for good reason. I think there's a huge amount of prestige that it brings to not just the country, but the leadership of the country. It's sort of a step on the way towards nation building. With more and more countries desperate for World Cup prestige, FIFA found ways to play them off each other. The bidding countries spent millions of dollars on a two year gantlet of PR events to impress FIFA and try to outdo each other by promising new stadiums, hotels, infrastructure and lucrative TV offers. This became the well-known public facing side of the bidding process. That was the start, I think, where the World Cup became really very heavily politicized.
When the 2006 vote came to a close, ExCo chose Deutschland. Thanks to one voter abstaining at the last moment. Journalists had later revealed that Germany had bribed at least four ExCo members for their votes, including the official who abstained. It was the first publicly reported incident that revealed FIFA had another layer to its bidding process that involved cutting deals with ExCo members under the table because of a lack of criteria that governed where the World Cup was going to go. The old man who sat on its executive committee were wined and dined and indulged for a significant period of time and in some cases quite handsomely remunerated. And it happened again for the 2010 World Cup bid, which South Africa won. Allegations would later emerge that it too had paid ExCo members for their votes. This shadier side of the bid was becoming vital to winning, and in the next two bids it would destroy the legacy of the World Cup. In the lead up to this announcement, FIFA had decided that the 2018 Cup would be in Europe.
Four bidders emerged. England, with its expansive infrastructure, was the heavy favorite. For the same reasons, the U.S. was the favorite among five bidders for 2022. But of course, this was only part of what it took to win a World Cup bid. The countries that did win the vote that day were the ones who could pour the most money into all levels of FIFA system. People often overlook Russia. You know, Russia is very much at the forefront of everybody's mind. As long as someone like Vladimir Putin were behind it, then they were always going to be very competitive in that process. This is Bonita Mersiades. She saw the World Cup bidding process from the inside while working on Australia's bid that same year. They had the capacity, they had the technical capability, they had the facilities. Russia pledged to spend $10 billion and the use of 16 stadiums. But equally important was the fact that they stacked their bid with rich, influential and well-connected people.
The head of the Russian bid was Igor Shuvalov, the Russian sports minister and the president of the Russian Football Association was also heavily involved. And that they brought in some of the oligarchs to help support it financially, such as Abramovich. What does that tell you? It tells you we've got money. We've got basically fuck you money. We can do what we like. And they did. ExCo member Rafael Salguero would later admit that he agreed to accept $1 million for his vote from Russia and Jack Warner allegedly received 5 million for his. Russia was using the full weight of its government corporations and connections to win every layer of the bid process, just as FIFA had designed it. And they weren't the only ones.
The reason why I thought Qatar was always a possibility was this wasn't just about the World Cup for them. It was the government seeing this as an important step in their nation building. So they really, really wanted it and they had deep pockets. At first glance, Qatar's bid was a longshot. It's a fairly small country with a football team that's never qualified for the World Cup. It was also too hot for football. Temperatures could reach 50 degrees in the summer. And in 2010, Qatar only had one major city and one stadium big enough for a World Cup game. But what Qatar did have is some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world with an enormous amount of wealth, all controlled by the country's emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and they were willing to use it to win the 2022 bid. It pledged to spend an astonishing $200 billion on infrastructure and build 12 brand new, air conditioned stadiums, a bid other countries couldn't match. And they didn't forget about ExCo. British journalists would later allege that a Qatari owned company paid Warner around $2 million for his vote. There's also allegations that Qatar made payments to three other ExCo members. But Russia and Qatar's advantages went beyond wealth. They were the only two authoritarian countries in the contest, meaning they were freer to work the shadier side of the bid.
The Australian World Cup was very well funded as well, but it was all publicly funded and every every cent was meant to be accounted for. You know, maybe you could move stuff around, spreadsheets and so on. But if you're going to engage in the dark arts, you had to be very, very careful. Whereas if you were coming from an authoritarian state by Russia or like Qatar you can do what you like. FIFA created a bidding process that would inevitably be won by the countries with the most cash and the least accountability. And the thing is, Russia and Qatar got away with it, but the scandals that followed nearly destroyed FIFA. Allegations emerged weeks after the 2010 vote, but it wasn't until 2015 that the FBI arrested several FIFA officials in Zurich and launched investigations into decades of FIFA's dealings, even though no one's been put on trial for taking bribes from Qatar since the vote, 13 of the 22 ExCO members present that year have either been indicted or banned from FIFA at some point. Amidst these scandals, Sepp Blatter resigned in disgrace. So in 2016, in an attempt to clean up its act, FIFA gave Congress the power to vote on World Cup hosts once again for the 2018 World Cup in Russia went on as planned, generating record revenue for FIFA. And Qatar is predicted to do the same. Are we comfortable with the human rights record of Qatar and Russia? I'll be comfortable with what Russia is doing at the moment? That decision has been a great enabler for both those countries. It's a decision that just doesn't stand the test of time at all. They didn't get it right then and it's not right now.
