A neoliberal sports event? FIFA from the Estadio Nacional to the fan mile

Volker Eick

City, 2010, vol. 14, issue 3, 278-297

Abstract: With more than 200 member associations the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world. Founded in 1904 as an Old Boys Network, from the 1980s onwards, it turned football into a global business and the FIFA World Cup into its main product, thus generating billions of euros from sponsors, the sports and media industry, from host nations and host cities. Every four years and for a time period of four weeks, FIFA invades cities, beforehand setting rules and regulations the applicants for holding the event have to obey to—including but not limited to infrastructure demands, advertisement regulations, safety and security rules. Taking the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany as an example, the purpose of the paper is twofold: it firstly asks, using Jessop’s approach about promoting and adjusting global neoliberalism through strategies of neostatism, neocorporatism and neocommunitarianism (2002), whether and if so to what extent FIFA can be described as a neocommunitarian but neoliberalizing global institution shaping and being shaped by 'actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner and Theodore, Antipode 34(3), pp. 349--379, 2002). In the second section, the World Cup is taken as an empirical example for how and in which forms neoliberalization FIFA‐style shapes and is shaped by the urban form, that is, the commercialization and commodification of (public) space and its hierarchization. In the same line, the 'safety, order and security’ complex (SOS) and its strategies and tactics demanded by FIFA are analyzed in terms of humanware, software and hardware. The paper concludes by showing that the nonprofit FIFA has been able to determine not only the glocal football market, but as well the urban form, the respective security networks, and the tax‐free absorption of profits from state and private actors before, during and after World Cups.

Date: 2010
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DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2010.482275

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