FIFA

• 1. Introduction

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  FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, runs the most-watched sport on Earth from a headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. It was founded on the 21st of May 1904 in the rear of a building on the Rue Saint Honoré 229 in Paris, representing just eight national associations. Today it counts 211 member associations, a number that exceeds the membership of the United Nations. That gap exists because FIFA has admitted associations from 23 non-sovereign entities as full members, including the four separate Home Nations within the United Kingdom.

  In 2022 alone, FIFA generated revenues of over US$5.8 billion. That same cycle ended with a net positive of $1.2 billion and cash reserves of over $3.9 billion. For an organisation whose founding documents speak of integrity, fair play, and growing the game internationally, those numbers tell one part of the story. But between the 1904 founding and that financial peak lies a history of war, withdrawal, scandal, and a corruption case described by the US Department of Justice as spanning approximately two decades and involving approximately $150 million in bribes. How the world's football body became what it is today, who shaped it, and why so much of its story unfolds in Swiss hotels and American federal courts are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. Paris, 1904

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  Robert Guérin became the first president of FIFA on the day of its founding, the 21st of May 1904. He led the organisation for less than two years before being replaced in 1906 by Daniel Burley Woolfall from England. The founding members were the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Spain's seat was held by Real Madrid CF, because the Royal Spanish Football Federation would not exist until 1913. On that same founding day, the German Football Association sent a telegram declaring its intention to affiliate.

  The French name and acronym were adopted universally outside French-speaking countries, a small detail that reflects how much of the organisation's early character was shaped by continental Europe. The first tournament FIFA staged was the association football competition at the 1908 Olympics in London. It proved more successful than its predecessors, even with professional footballers present, which sat awkwardly against the amateur principles FIFA had written into its founding framework.

  Membership expanded beyond Europe in the years that followed. South Africa applied in 1909, Argentina in 1912, Canada and Chile in 1913, and the United States in 1914. These were early signs that football's governing body would eventually outgrow its European origins. Woolfall died in office on the 24th of October 1918, with World War I having severely tested the organisation. Travel for international fixtures had become nearly impossible, and the survival of FIFA itself was in doubt. The Dutchman Carl Hirschmann ran the organisation after Woolfall's death, saving it from extinction but losing the Home Nations in the process. They cited an unwillingness to compete with their wartime enemies and eventually returned to membership.

• 3. Jules Rimet and the First World Cup

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  Jules Rimet took office as president on the 1st of March 1921 and would hold the role until the 21st of June 1954, a tenure of more than three decades. His name is most closely tied to the achievement that defined his presidency: the creation of the FIFA World Cup. The first tournament was held in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay. It was a moment that carried enormous symbolic weight, staged at a time when international travel was difficult and the concept of a global football competition was genuinely new.

  Rimet served longer than any other FIFA president. By the time he left office, the organisation he had steered was a different institution from the loose association of European federations that had gathered in Paris in 1904. The Women's World Cup came much later, commencing in 1991, nearly six decades after the men's first edition. The gap between those two founding moments reflects how slowly the governing body acknowledged women's football as a priority.

• 4. Structure and Scope

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  FIFA's supreme body is the FIFA Congress, an assembly of representatives from each affiliated member association. Every national football association holds one vote regardless of its size or the strength of its footballing program. The Congress assembles in ordinary session once each year and has held extraordinary sessions once a year since 1998.

  Below Congress sits the FIFA Council, formerly called the FIFA Executive Committee. It comprises 37 people: the president, who chairs it; eight vice-presidents; and 28 members drawn from the confederations. Each confederation must elect at least one woman to the Council. Six of the vice-presidents hold the role automatically as the presidents of their respective confederations. The Council reviews bids to host the World Cup and proposes up to three candidates to Congress, which then votes on the host.

  The six confederations recognised by FIFA span every inhabited continent. CAF, the Confederation of African Football, counts 56 members. UEFA, covering Europe, has 55. The Asian Football Confederation has 47. CONCACAF has 41. The Oceania Football Confederation has 13. CONMEBOL, covering South America, has 10. Membership of a confederation is a prerequisite for FIFA membership.

  The laws governing football are not solely FIFA's to set. That responsibility belongs to the International Football Association Board, known as IFAB, which was jointly established in 1882 by the football associations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. FIFA holds four seats on that board; the four Home Nations collectively hold the other four. A change to the Laws of the Game requires the agreement of at least six delegates. FIFA's role is to apply and enforce those laws across all FIFA competitions.

• 5. The Corruption Scandal

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  On the 27th of May 2015, Swiss authorities arrested several high-ranking FIFA officials at a hotel in Switzerland. The US Department of Justice had indicted 14 FIFA officials and marketing executives, charging them with receiving approximately $150 million in bribes over approximately two decades. The specific charges, brought under the RICO act, included wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. Vice presidents Jeffrey Webb and Eugenio Figueredo were among those arrested.

  The scandal traced back years earlier. In May 2006, British investigative reporter Andrew Jennings published a book titled "Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-Rigging, and Ticket Scandals," published by HarperCollins, detailing an alleged international cash-for-contracts scandal following the collapse of FIFA's marketing partner International Sport and Leisure. A BBC Panorama exposé broadcast on the 11th of June 2006 reported that Sepp Blatter was being investigated by Swiss police over a secret deal to repay more than £1 million in bribes. Lord Triesman, former chairman of the English Football Association, described FIFA as an organisation that "behaves like a mafia family."

  Mel Brennan, a former CONCACAF official described as the highest-level African-American in the history of world football governance, became the first high-level football insider to go public with substantial allegations. He joined Jennings and Trinidadian journalist Lisana Liburd in exposing allegedly inappropriate allocations of money by CONCACAF and drew connections between that alleged criminality and similar behaviors at FIFA.

  A further Panorama broadcast on the 29th of November 2010 alleged that three senior FIFA officials, Nicolas Leoz, Issa Hayatou, and Ricardo Teixeira, had been paid large bribes by ISL between 1989 and 1999. Jennings claimed they appeared on a list of 175 bribes paid by ISL totalling about $100 million. Sepp Blatter, though not initially named in the criminal investigation, resigned shortly after being re-elected for a fifth term. He was later suspended by FIFA's ethics committee, along with Michel Platini and Jérôme Valcke.

• 6. World Cup Bids and Vote Buying

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  FIFA's decisions to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar generated years of investigation and allegation. A whistle-blower cited by The Sunday Times alleged that FIFA executive committee members Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma were paid $1.5 million to vote for Qatar. A Nigerian official, Amos Adamu, was later suspended after a FIFA ethics court ruled he had solicited bribes from undercover Sunday Times reporters posing as lobbyists.

  On the 17th of July 2012, FIFA appointed US lawyer Michael J. Garcia as chairman of the investigative chamber of its Ethics Committee, with German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert as chairman of the adjudication chamber. Garcia delivered a 350-page report in September 2014. Eckert then announced it would not be made public for legal reasons. When Eckert released a 42-page summary in November 2014, it cleared both Russia and Qatar. Garcia himself called the summary "materially incomplete" with "erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions." FIFA's Appeal Committee dismissed his appeal on the 16th of December 2014 as "not admissible." A day later, Garcia resigned, citing a "lack of leadership" and lost confidence in Eckert's independence.

  According to leaked documents seen by The Sunday Times, Qatari state-run television channel Al Jazeera secretly offered $400 million to FIFA for broadcasting rights, just 21 days before FIFA announced Qatar as the 2022 host. In 2018, FIFA revised its code of ethics to remove corruption itself as one of the enumerated bases for ethical violations. The revision also made it an offence to make public statements of a defamatory nature against FIFA. Alexandra Wrage, a former member of the FIFA governance committee and an expert in anti-bribery compliance, said the revision's "real value to FIFA is the chilling effect this will have on critics."

• 7. Technology, Anthem, and Awards

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  FIFA's anthem was composed by the German composer Franz Lambert and adopted from the 1994 FIFA World Cup. It has since been re-arranged and produced by Rob May and Simon Hill. The anthem plays at the start of official FIFA-sanctioned matches and tournaments, from international friendlies to the Beach Soccer World Cup. Since 2007, FIFA has required most broadcast partners to use short sequences including the anthem at the beginning and end of FIFA event coverage.

  For most of FIFA's history, the organisation opposed the use of video evidence in matches. The 1970 meeting of the International Football Association Board agreed to ask television authorities to avoid slow-motion replays that might reflect adversely on a referee's decision. As recently as 2008, Sepp Blatter argued for leaving football "with errors," saying a man, not a machine, should make decisions. That stance was overturned on the 3rd of March 2018, when IFAB wrote video assistant referees permanently into the Laws of the Game, though their use remains optional for competitions.

  Goal-line technology followed a high-profile incident during a second-round match at the 2010 FIFA World Cup between England and Germany. A shot by Frank Lampard crossed the line but was not judged to have done so; England lost that match 4-1 to Germany. FIFA sanctioned the use of goal-line technology in early July 2012.

  In 2000, FIFA presented two special century awards. Real Madrid won FIFA Club of the Century. Diego Maradona and Pelé were named joint FIFA Player of the Century. The Best FIFA Football Awards ceremony has been held annually since 2016, recognising the top men's player, top women's player, top coach, and the FIFA FIFPRO World 11. On the 5th of December 2025, at the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington, D.C., FIFA presented the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump, a prize the organisation announced on the 6th of November 2025 as an award to recognise exceptional actions for peace and unity.