On Soccer
What is it about soccer that gets the American backbone up? Is it that America doesn’t own soccer the same way we own baseball and apple pie, the Final Four, or the Superbowl?
Today, NPR ran a story about the “profit” FIFA made on the 2010 World Cup. The surplus, estimated at more than $2 billion, is large for a non-profit. What the NPR article failed to mention, however, is that FIFA has essentially no other source of revenue between the quadrennial World Cup matches, and it lays out beaucoup bucks for less profitable tournaments, including the Women’s World Cup. (For a good discussion of FIFA, click here.)
While NPR is questioning the ethics of FIFA, they might want to consider raising the question of why the NCAA makes hundreds of millions off atheletes from poor families, or why the International Olympic Committee makes equally large surpluses from atheletes whose families have often given everything they have for training?
The World Cup, more than any other sporting event, including the Olympic games, is about the World. Get over it, America.
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