Commercial Monopoly

[The world football governing body was] not driven by any selfless goal of global equity within FIFA, more by the entrepreneurial motivation and machiavellian global networking of FIFA’s bosses and their business allies … In such contexts and circumstances, global markets for sports business and for major sponsors have expanded with little or no reference to the wider constituencies of sport, or to the ruling forum of individual sports organisations. Benefits may have accrued to under-resourced areas of the football world, but such expansion has been driven by the commercial interests of an incestuous network of sports leaders, administrators and commercial entrepreneurs.

1 Introduction These are challenging times for those who roam the corridors of power in the highest echelons of international sport, with some international sports federations (notably the two biggest players, the International Olympic Committee and FIFA) having experienced crises of governance and well publicised allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the past decade or so. The Salt Lake City Olympic