Hi ,
Did you join the millions of fans who felt absolutely apoplectic about FIFA President Gianni Infantino's secret plan to sell off the commercial rights of the World Cup?
The outrage was beautiful to see, and this week, it reached boiling point. UEFA launched criminal legal proceedings against Infantino in Switzerland, accusing him of "criminal mismanagement" and trying to push through a multibillion-dollar scheme at a "fraudulently off-market price" for his own benefit.
Cool. That is one thing. But what really gets to me, and what I find absolutely riveting, is that UEFA's court filings give a blow-by-blow account of the exact mechanism of extractive capitalism at play.
Investors targeted cash-strapped national associations by offering them $40 million in "survival money" to buy out their long-term wealth. It isn't surprising, even though it is. When an organisation struggles to pay for basic youth travel or equipment, they are over the barrel; its hard not to say no to millions. The result is they lose the luxury of choosing the long-term good because they have to accept whatever cash is on the table just to survive.
Which bring us quite neatly to what is happening closer to home and in the halls of Westminster.
The model of extraction shown in UEFA court filings is the exact same mechanism operating right under our noses. It happened when successive UK governments sold off shared assets, and it happened when our prime minister quietly dropped donation-cap promises under lobbying pressure, and where offshore cryptobillionaires fund entire political parties.
So while the football headlines dominate the back pages, are spoken about around the water cooler and in the pub, we have to ask ourselves: why do we only get this angry about football?
The FIFA plan was a sudden, bare-faced smash-and-grab, a loud and immediate project that acted as an instant lightning rod.
But when the same extractive forces operate in Westminster, or in our local councils, why do they not hit us with a sudden shock?
It is because they rely on a slow creep; coming up so slowly, step by step, that we grin and bear each new iteration. We normalise the erosion of our democracy and public services, losing our outrage along the way. They have made it so.
I will leave you with a lingering question: how do we make sure we are no longer ambivalent about the sell-off of our community wealth and of our democracy? |
