It is not every day that one surveys the annual performance of a venerable 120-year-old organisation, notes a near $400 million loss, and concludes that business is ticking along very nicely. Then again, the organisation is FIFA and the business is football – a realm which, you might often be forgiven for thinking, operates in keeping with a commercial logic that is entirely its own.
To understand why these 2023 numbers constitute such a positive, perhaps ground-breaking, showing for the governing body, you need to bear in mind two things. First, that this was the first year of a new four-year cycle that will culminate with the first supersized 48-team men’s World Cup, FIFA’s cash cow par excellence. Second, that when FIFA released its 2023 budget, tucked away in the 2021 annual report https://publications.fifa.com/en/annual-report-2021/2021-financials-and-2023-budget/2023-budget/ , it was projecting a much bigger deficit of some $900 million, before factoring in taxes and financial income.
So what changed? What aspects of the Zurich body’s business outperformed expectations so markedly? The answer is potentially hugely significant. A big chunk of the better-than-expected performance was down to marketing, aka sponsorship. This generated just under $456 million – almost exactly double what was budgeted.
This represents a massive turn for the better.
Marketing was FIFA’s second-biggest source of revenue over the 2019-2022 period, accounting for a total of $1.795 billion. But this was up only around 8% from the figure of $1.66 billion for 2015-2018; and that in turn was less than 2% higher than the $1.629 billion of 2011-2014.
If the level of performance achieved in 2023 can be sustained – and the eye-popping $11 billion overall revenue budget for the current World Cup cycle released last year included a 50% jump to $2.69bn from…
Source link : https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2024/03/19/david-owen-worm-turns-new-2023-financials-point-long-delayed-sponsorship-uplift-infantinos-fifa/
Author : Paul Nicholson
Publish date : 2024-03-19 14:16:56
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