Saudi Arabia confirmed as 2034 World Cup host despite criticism

Transcript

00:00Let's talk now to Kieran Maguire, who is a football finance expert from the University of Liverpool.

00:05Good to see you again, Kieran. Welcome back to the programme.

00:08So, as we were hearing there, not everyone happy about the process of awarding these World Cups.

00:14Norway's Football Federation calling this process flawed. What's going on?

00:21Well, I think if we take a look at the historic granting of World Cups to individual jurisdictions,

00:28there tends to have been a competitive process that would have allowed individual football associations

00:35or those deciding to work together to put together a bid on a set of criteria.

00:41Certainly, the relatively short period of notice that FIFA gave potential bidders did act as a disincentive.

00:50And Saudi Arabia appeared to be extremely well-prepared and therefore effectively became the only bidder in 2034.

00:58Realistically, it could only have come from Asia, given that the 2026 World Cup is taking place in Central and North America

01:06and the 2030 World Cup is taking place in South America, Europe and Africa.

01:10So the process, undiscretionally, but the choice of Saudi Arabia itself, partly because of some of those issues

01:17we were just hearing about, but partly because of Saudi Arabia's links to FIFA and its head, that's also raising eyebrows.

01:25Well, FIFA announced earlier this year that it signed a long-term sponsorship deal with Aramco

01:32and that's deemed to be worth, I think, around about $100 million a year.

01:37So that will be beneficial from FIFA's perspective.

01:40I think cynics will say that that may be linked to the decision to award the bid.

01:46FIFA does not have a particularly good track record in terms of transparency.

01:50If you take a look at the reports into the granting of the 2018 and the 2022 World Cups, there was criticism there.

01:58But if you're any type of global organisation, the chances are you are going to face criticism

02:03because everybody's got their own perspectives and own viewpoints as to what's an acceptable process.

02:10Well, as you say, this is not the first time by any means that FIFA has come in for criticism over transparency.

02:17Do you think we will, though, ultimately see a change in FIFA because of this criticism?

02:22Highly unlikely.

02:24Gianni Infantino is very dismissive of anybody that questions him.

02:29He would normally accuse the media of having some form of witch hunt against him and FIFA in particular.

02:35And if we take a look at the history of FIFA under Gianni Infantino, he's been more than happy to ignore the criticism.

02:43And his focus will always be on the money that's going to be generated from the tournament.

02:48There's going to be more companies, more countries taking place in the tournament than ever before.

02:54There's going to be more money raised than ever before.

02:56And that means that FIFA will be able to distribute more money to individual football associations.

03:01And that will be part of their concerns and their desire to develop football on a local basis around the globe.