December 14, 2022 • 57 mins
Guess who's going to win the 2022 World Cup? We can tell you. Tune in to learn more about the past, present and future of FIFA -- one of the world's oldest, most powerful, and most cartoonishly corrupt NGOs. They don’t want you to read our book.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Ol is not here today,
but we'll be returning shortly. They called me Ben. We're
joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission control decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Stute listeners, you may hear a bit of something almost
(00:48):
like oceanic tides on my end of the recording today.
That is because it is a wonderfully emo day here
in Atlanta, Georgia. You could look outside and swear you
were in c attle. As a result, the street near
me has turned into a river, so always Ponts is
always a river when it rains bad. So it's it's
(01:09):
kind of soothing, you know, and maybe that's something people
need nowadays. I think just occasionally moments of self reflection, quietness,
getting away from the screens, something soothing. And it's good
that we're starting off that way because for a lot
of sports fans in the audience today, this episode is
(01:31):
going to piss you off. And you know about some
of it, but you may not know about all of it. Uh, Matt,
Mr Frederick, would you consider yourself a fan of sports?
All the sports? Huge? Everyone face painting every day pretty
much because there's so many sports that I gotta paint
my face for boxing, chess, you know, that's a real
thing where people alternate chess and boxing all the sports
(01:53):
without exception. So I only like boxing before they started
wearing gloves, you know, where it was pretty much focused
on body lows. You couldn't really punch the face because
it would break your your fist. That's that's really where
my boxing excitement lies. And I can see when you
square up your old school you know, definitely your you
(02:13):
cover your your chest right because you don't want to
get livershot break those ribs exactly. Well, that's the thing,
you know, whether or not you are a die hard
sports fan in general, whether or not you like our
good pal Max, have one specific sport you like. Max
Williams is a baseball fan. Uh. You have definitely heard
(02:36):
about something called the World Cup. As we record and
as this episode releases, the twenty twenty two World Cup
is reaching a culmination in the Middle Eastern nation of
cutter or Qatar. Uh. It's this World Cup is the
top competition for the most popular sport on the planet.
(02:57):
Americans call it soccer literally, really everyone else calls it
some version of football. Uh. And that's that's where we
start today. We're gonna talk about sports, but we're quickly
going to go to some strange, sinister places today, as
the world waits to see which country will win the Cup,
we're here to explore the stuff FIFA doesn't want you
(03:19):
to know. Here are the facts. Yes, as we record today,
Japan and Croatia are battling it out in Brazil and
South Korea are also engaged in Mortal Kombat a ka
football ump up on a pump, pump up on up
on up. Yes. Yes, And so let us just talk
(03:43):
about the World Cup in general. Let's let's set the table,
shall we. It's this thing called FIFA that maybe you
only know because you're a gamer and you like video
games and so do your friends, and you play a
game called FIFA and it has to do with soccer.
They're also known as the or actually they're known for
real as the Federation International. Now their football or football
(04:08):
association also is on there. Yeah, they're very old. I
was not aware of this for for some time, but FIFA,
being founded on May oh four four is one of
the world's biggest non governmental organizations or in g os.
It's also one of the oldest ones that still exist today.
(04:32):
And if you look at the history, it makes sense
somebody needed to organize this stuff. At the dawn of
the twentieth century, seven different national associations, associations that governed
football in their own countries, came together did a vultron thing,
assembled their avengers and so Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.
(04:54):
They all said, Okay, we're going to make an even
bigger band, and we're gonna make a supergroup, and we're
going to do some important things. We're gonna like uniform
We're gonna uniformize these things. If I if I could
style on American English for a second, Yeah, it'll be
like the Olympics. It'll be worldwide, but it will only
(05:16):
be for football, and we'll control I like how you
said the dawn of the century, because the way I
see this instead of d A W N. I I
read it d O N of the twentieth century because
it is this massive organization and somebody's got to lead
it and be the dawn of FIFA. What a great setup.
(05:37):
And I like that organized crime reference to you'll see why, folks. So,
no matter how you feel about FIFA today, if you
think they're the worst thing ever, or you're such a
fan boy that you sing FIFA Las Vegas to yourself
in the shower, the point is the organization had to exist.
Something like this would have arisen due to necessity. You know,
(06:00):
as as the twentieth centuries going on, more and more
international games are being played, right, people are absolute fanatics
for their chosen team, right, and they said, okay, we
need somebody to organize everything. We need some group making
sure that all competitions have the same rules, have the
(06:21):
same processes in place. We need to do stuff like
agree that if a player is suspended, that suspension is
recognized by everybody, right, so another country doesn't just go
snap this person up, you know. And then of course
their main thing was to ensure the games were fair.
That is um still officially a big concern. Objectively, this
(06:46):
was a fantastic idea. And if you look at the
dawn d o n of FIFA, you've got to look
at the very first president. Who wasn't you know, criminal kingpin?
He was He was just he was a French guy.
Is a very smart French guy. Yes, named Bob Robert Queren.
He ran things from oh four, nineteen o four to
nineteen o six. And uh, there have been a lot
(07:09):
of people who have held that title the president of FIFA,
and a lot of people have held it for a
long time. Some people have only held it for a
wee little bit of time, like Rodolf the seed Dreyers,
Sidre Sildreers, seal Dreer's so how you would say it,
Rodolf Seldreers of Germany, This guy only served for a year.
(07:32):
He got in and then he went, oh all those
doors opened that were you know, secret before becoming president
and he went, nope, how about I'm just kidding. We
don't know what happened. He just had one heck of
a year. But because of the way the terms for
the president work, it is possible to serve for much longer,
(07:53):
like dr Aling out of Brazil served for more than
two decades from seventy four all the way up until Yeah. Yeah,
he put his time and he's got his stripes. UH.
The current president there's a guy named Giotni Infantino out
of Switzerland. He took office in sixteen. Presidents are elected
(08:13):
for a four year term. UH, and now they can
you know, they can have they can be re elected
multiple times. So FIFA experiences a lot of ups and
downs over the decades. UH is similar to the modern Olympics. Right.
This has struggled through world wars, numerous economic downturns. Let
(08:35):
us not forget the world is ending for someone somewhere
every single day. So they almost collapsed in eighteen. There's
some pretty inspiring stories about the people who kept it going,
but really the love of the sport across across human experience,
across so many demographics kept the World Cup alive and
(08:57):
the real like the official inaugural World Cup by FIFA
was actually not held until nineteen thirty. It was in
Uruguay from July nineteen thirty. UH. Uruguay paid out the
nose for this. By the way they paid UH, they
(09:18):
paid all the travel expenses. They had to split ticket
sales with FIFA. It's the money was already getting crazy.
I think about the tourism dollars been sure, yes, sure,
the tourism dollars. And hey, maybe all the people who
work in the service industry or at those hotels and restaurants,
maybe their wages increased to spoiler, we'll see. But the
(09:43):
thing and the thing is it wasn't it wasn't exactly simulcast, right,
They didn't get to see it the world over. You
had to be there to watch the World Cup in Yeah, yeah,
you absolutely had to be there. And now the idea
of marketing, right, the idea of broadcast rights, all that
stuff is another huge revenue stream because obviously, folks, way
(10:07):
more people are watching this remotely than kind of afford
to actually go across the planet to watch these games
in person. And some people, as we'll see uh this year,
even if they could afford to go, they were a
little too concerned maybe about their personal safety to make
the journey. So, yeah, the competition only expands over time.
(10:30):
The popularity of the World Cup only grows because it's
an awesome thing, especially if you like football, And as
it grew, the money grew as well. The money metastasized
today of all sports fans globally have their finger on
(10:50):
the pulse of the World Cup. They know what's going
to happen. They know it's happening every four years. They're
stoked about it. Billions of yours are watching, which is
nuts when you think about it. There are eight billion
people in the world, and a huge percentage of them
time zones be damned, are watching this stuff live across
(11:14):
hundreds and hundreds of nations. You know, even some of
the U n doesn't recognize snap. That's true, you know been.
I wonder if those five percent of people that don't
know what the World Cup is. I wonder if there's
a higher likelihood that they are Americans, simply because soccer
in this country isn't as popular as it is in
(11:34):
almost every other country on the planet. I wonder if,
like most of that five percent is somewhere in the US.
But surely they'd be at least aware of it, because otherwise,
what what would the phrase World Cup mean to you?
Or five percent of Americans going I've got my own cups.
I don't need to share one with the world. That's
(11:54):
a stupid idea. You'd never be able to build a
big enough cup. They also don't have friends, and they
don't have a television or internet because and they've never
played a video game or heard of them or the
margin of error is five percent, so like here, So
here's the issue. When you get this many people involved
(12:18):
in literally anything, because of the way people work, opportunities
for corruption are going to grow exponentially. And that's why,
you know, nobody is really surprised that FIFA has become
the subject of numerous allegations over the decades. Uh And
in fact, you know, under the auspices of previous FIFA presidents,
(12:43):
it's been accepted as an open secret that there was
at least some degree of corruption. And when we ask
about conspiracies, not theories, but actual conspiracies, corruption and crime
when it comes to FIFA, you know, well we have
to Well, the answer, simply put is, if you ask
(13:05):
how much corruption exists in FIFA, the answer is way
more than you might think, way, way way more. Ted right, yes, way,
here's where it gets crazy, all right, honestly, it's Uh,
we spent some time going into the weeds of the
(13:28):
Byzantine process for getting your country to host the World Cup.
We're not going to go all the way into it.
You can definitely you may already know the ins and
outs at least the official explanations um you could probably make.
I'm sure there are multiple fantastic sports podcast probably on
our network that talk about the FIFA selection process. But
(13:53):
it's the thing is, it's a huge win for that
host competition. It's not hyperbole to say it's as nostigious
as hosting the Olympic Games. In fact, it's a bigger
deal than hosting the Olympics. Sorry, IOC well, and the
way to imagine it for me is if you somehow
convince the International Olympic Committee to get the Olympics in
(14:17):
your country, Uh, somehow you do it, and it's not easy.
It's usually about what kind of infrastructure do you currently
have and what new stuff are you gonna build for it?
And it's not dissimilar to what happens with countries working
with FIFA to get the World Cup in their town
or in their city or their country, because it's not
(14:39):
cheap to either build a brand new stadium or maybe
two stadiums, or to retrofit your old stadium so that
it can you know, have that many people inside of
it to even host a single game, let alone the
entire tournament. Um, it is very expensive to get the
World Cup of the Olympics in your country. Yeah, I
(15:03):
mean why stop at stadiums. Some countries have built cities
for the World Cup, right. Uh that's where that's where
cutter comes in. Uh, you know, you make a great
point about the infrastructure. I would also add that part
of the argument to win hosting rights for the Olympics
or the World Cup goes down to the question of
(15:25):
what sort of message do we as FIFA want to
give to the world. Right. There's a lot of uh,
geopolitical stuff at play here, a lot of tremendous opportunity
for good and bad things. Uh. Yeah, So you nailed
it though, because most countries just they're not going to
have that. They're not gonna say, hey, we got eight
(15:47):
stadiums at an empty, brand new city as new car smell.
You know, all the hotels you could possibly need, Like
we're talking a hundred forty empty hotels ready to rock.
It's really be glad you guys came along because you know,
we were sort of freestyling this one. You know, we
build cities the way people play jazz. Right, just we
(16:11):
just we get a general theme and then I don't
figure itself out. But that's exactly Uh what happened when
the most recent country to host has built a city. Uh.
And it's costs two hundred billion dollars US or the equivalent. Uh.
And this is not this spending tens and tens of
(16:33):
billions of dollars. It's not especially unusual. But here's the
question met your earlier point, is that a solid investment
for the for the country's like a local example here
for us in Atlanta would be when's the last time
you went to Centennial Park for a free concert years ago?
Wait a minute, how are they making money? It's a park.
(16:58):
I guess you can have more other events there. That's
one way to recoup some money, right, But what do
you do with all those hotels you built, or you know,
the streets and the street lights and all the things
you build when you create an entire city, How does
that recoup money for you? I guess by having other
big events. That's one of the only ways to do it. Yeah,
(17:19):
now you might have experienced. Now you might have created
a path dependence situation where you have to continually figure
out how to pack those stadiums now to get people
to pay to see whatever show or spectacle is occurring.
If really, if you ask yourself whether the World Cup
is a salid investment for a country, it depends on
(17:40):
how you define success. I mean, we can walk through
the obvious revenue right TV rights um for the last
Cup in Russia, those were sold to broadcasters around the
world for billions of dollars, like four point six billion
dollars US and that was all kept by FIFA. So Russia,
(18:01):
Russia didn't make money off that. Oh yeah, because FIFA
sold it sold the rights to show it. That's odd.
That's very odd. So like this year and Cutter, how
much money did you say they spent building that city?
Two billion? Around two that's what's been projected by CNN.
Good golly, imagine that's how much you spend on the
(18:25):
city right to get the World Cup there, and then
the rights to show the thing to the world go
to somebody else and that money gets kept by the
company that's showing up in your country using all your
facilities you just built and ticket sales. They're owned by
a subsidiary company which is owned by FIFA. Wait, okay,
(18:52):
and they just give that money to the host country, right.
Uh no, even if like how this operates in the past,
there have been splits, right, like in Uruguay the first
World Cup, that country was able to walk with like
half of the ticket sales revenue. That's something, but marketing,
(19:17):
if they want to market it, they have to pay FIFA. Again,
FIFA also has the marketing rights. That alone was worth
more than one billion dollars US and FIFA is making
a lot of money. And again, uh, you know you
could say, well, they have to write they own the brand,
they owned the thing. You know, Uh, you will get
(19:38):
sued into oblivion if you just got a bunch of
your buddies from some other countries to say, hey, we're
doing our We're gonna call it the Globe goblet, you
know what I mean, the globe chalice or something. They
will not play, do not pass, go, do not collect
two hundred dollars. You're going straight to like the the
(19:58):
kind of jail that rich people said to other rich
people too. Okay, yes, exactly, So okay, I'm trying to
write my head around this. Ben. Let's say your cutter,
the country hosting the World Cup. Right now, you're spelling
that money. You're not making money on any of these ways.
Why the heck would you do this to yourself? Ah? Yeah,
why would you? Indeed, to answer that question, I think
(20:21):
we need to pause for a word from our sponsor
and then uh dive in. Are the rights to these
commercials owned by wait? I guess it's I heeart, No,
it's all FIFA. FIFA also owns I hear because we're talking. Yeah, yeah,
(20:43):
all right, we're back now. Before anybody accuses us being
biased against the good folks at FIFA. Obviously, the actions
of folks at the top of an organization are not
representative of what everybody in an organization believes. Obviously. Uh. Secondly, yes,
I do have a World Cup bracket, and yes it
(21:05):
is in the tank. I named it Fortune Favors the Foolish.
Oh boy, Matt, was I wrong? I was wrong on
so many important games. I there were a lot of
wins I did not see coming. Yeah mm hmm, yeah.
I was actually really hoping for Japan there until today. Yeah. Yeah, same,
(21:31):
it's just the one. I think one of the ones
that really really knocked me was Saudi Arabia. Yeah, that
was that was my bad. But you know, it's already
suckered me. I'm talking as though I was playing. Oh man, Ben,
it makes so much sense now you're speaking to me.
(21:51):
I'm thinking about the black market for World Cup, all
the betting, or the gray market, or maybe it's a
white market. I don't know what. If you would describe
it as it's the legal bedding and the under the
table bedding, I bet there's so much. Oh gosh, can
you imagine honestly what Vegas must be looking like right now? Now.
(22:12):
I'm not personally a gambler. I don't have the whatever
brain mechanism makes up fun, but no ding on it
because it's a huge business. A lot of people like
doing it. It's just I literally went through and randomly
picked countries. Yeah, I was like, because you know, the
way those brackets often work is everybody puts in twenty
(22:34):
bucks or something and first places you get the pots,
second place you get your money back. And I it
was something like that. You know, so I'm not in
an intense thing. I just wanted to try it out,
and turns out there's a learning curve a little bit
you can't just I thought I could be like the
the old stereotype of the horse or chicken just randomly
(22:57):
picking stuff off a racing sheet. That was not this
time that you still play the lottery? All right, Okay,
that was great. That was great. That's gonna be on everybody.
Check out our YouTube to see that your missus nuance
here visually. But to your question, why why do this?
(23:19):
Why go through this huge headache? Well, there's a tourism spike.
We talked about that. So if you are a local
business owner. Let's say you own a restaurant that's near
a stadium where the World Cup is happening, You're probably
gonna pop your prices up a little bit, right, You're
definitely gonna have to hire more people. You might want
to stay open later to uh and that'll in hotels
(23:41):
will raise their rates they know they know they'll be
at capacity regardless. But the expense of handling all that
extra capacity as a country, that kind of that that
expense is bigger than the increase in revenue, you know
what I mean. I think about the expense on security,
(24:03):
Like over the entire area. You don't even know how
many miles out you'd have to go our kilometers out
from the major stadium, but you'd have to have increased
security for a single restaurant just in case. We you know,
football matches and nothing against them, but people get rowdy
and after a match, you know, some some bad things
(24:25):
go down every once in a while, not all the time,
but every once in a while. You're gonna want to
have somebody watching that stuff. Oh yeah, of course, especially
if there is a heated rivalry between some teams or
a hotly contested game. I mean most games are in
some level hotly contested. But additionally, those security guards might
(24:48):
not necessarily be getting paid more than their average wage
people work in this service industry. To answer our spoiler
question earlier, they're not getting more money maybe if they
work in tips. But tipping the way we understand it
in the United States is not not the way the
rest of the world largely understands it. Uh. Also, countries
(25:11):
are typically giving out tax breaks right all all across
the board to make themselves look more attractive to FIFA
and its partners, but those to cut into the country's
bottom line. Al Jazeera had this great article where they
talked about who makes money in in the World Cup,
(25:31):
and they said, people with money make money here, people
without it don't. So if you already are, if you're
already well healed, the World Cup is going to be
awesome for you. If you own the land where the
stadium is being built, you know what I mean. If
you own some logistics or supply company, if you're in
an industry that gets touched, then you're going to walk
(25:55):
away with a likelihood of making some some hefty coin. Uh.
I think the big winner, no matter which team takes
the Cup, the big winner of the World Cup is
always FIFA. That's how the system is built. Uh. I
don't know, man like Okay, When when we think of
(26:16):
the idea of whether or not it's worth it for
a company or a country to host FIFA, we're talking
in terms of money. There's much more there. There are
many more ways to think of success or profit than
just financial. But I think when most people think of
corruption in FIFA, they're thinking of the of the numbers, right,
(26:38):
They're thinking of the cash, the scratch, the cheddar. That's right,
that's right. And part of that has to do with
which country you end up hosting your event in, and
that's why we should talk about that. So how did
the World Cup end up in Cutter this year? Qatar Um.
It's because there's this extensive process to sell act the
(27:00):
host country, right. We know that there's a bidding process
that countries, just like the Olympics. It's very similar to
the Olympics process where a host country says, hey, you
should you should do the World Cup in my country
because of X Y Z all the way to like
triple Z and I love saying triples said that. I
don't know why that's fun. It sounds good when you
say that. Those English roots somewhere deep inside me. Uh
(27:24):
so they bid, They put their hand up and say
this is why you should host it here. Then FIFA
as an organization votes on those you know, the different
people who have made that bid. And the crazy thing
is that they're so backed up. Basically in this process,
there's split seven to ten years out in choosing host
(27:46):
countries at this point. Yeah, yeah, this you're exactly right,
seven years in advance. And it was a little bit
unusual recently because the host of the tournament were chosen
at the same time as the host for the eighteen tournament.
So it's it's not always a constant rule, but if
(28:09):
you are one of the committees, uh, they're trying to
get your country recognized as the next host country. Well,
it's a full time job, and it's a arduous, murderous
job because you have the lobby for you have to
lobby hard. Each of the member states of FIFA get
(28:31):
one vote. That's to make things fair and equitable. So
if you want to be the host country for the
next World Cup, you have to get the majority vote.
That sounds simple enough, right, I mean that's how people
get elected to political positions in democracies. Yeah, no, it's true.
And there's only two hundred and eleven member states, so
(28:56):
to get a majority of that and well, and everybody's
got one vote, so maybe you only have to get
countries to vote for you thirty I don't know. Yeah, okay, Yeah,
that's the thing. Um, if you if it comes down
to just like two countries, then it's whomever has more
(29:18):
than fifty, because I'm assuming you would get so many
there would probably be several dozen countries in the running
after that first vote. I'm assuming, right, they make a
short list, right, and then the yeah, and then the
song and dance of glad handing begins. The next World Cup,
by the way, folks has already been decided. It is
(29:40):
the United to bid. Uh. It is gonna take place
in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and it beat out Morocco. Yeah.
Pretty interesting. Huh yeah, that's very different. Kind of like it.
I kind of like it to. I mean, obviously it's
gonna be a little easier for folks like you or
(30:02):
me to get there. Uh. It's going to be the
first time World Cup has been hosted by three countries
at once. Wow. Wait, what was the name of that
currency that was going to be Canadian, American and Mexican?
The Amaro? Is that right? The Amaro, the Amero Cup.
It's the globalist they're coming soccer ball. Yeah. Uh so, Okay,
(30:28):
there's another big reason. It's not all the weird stuff
we're about to get into uh in our third act here,
But there's a there's another neat just off the top
reason that you would want your country to host the
World's Cup. It is this, if you get to host it,
then your country's team automatically qualifies to compete. So if
(30:53):
you feel like your gang doesn't have a chance of
getting into the competition normally, then when you host, that
question goes out the window. They're already it do you
win like a trillion dollars when you win the World Cup?
Just like all the team members get a billion apiece?
Is that what you get? That would make sense. We'll
(31:16):
drop two billion, you know, and then each team member
can get a cool bill. The way they put it is,
the total prize pool works out to four d forty
million this time around. And that's uh, that includes a
forty two million dollar prize for the winning team. That's
not too shabby. It seems like a big investment though
(31:38):
for that amount of cash. Right, Well, it's not just
about the money, right It's sending a message. So this
is where things get very very strange. So over the years,
a lot of critics, when you say over the years,
we mean decades, a lot of critics have been saying
there are countries out there who are not just lobby
(32:00):
not just trying to make a good presentation about their infrastructure,
their potential, their outright buying votes. These accusations surface when
Russia hosted They resurfaced again when Cutter got back in
the news leading up to this World Cup in We're
gonna jump around in time here, okay, in the Department
(32:21):
of Justice in the US said representatives working for Russia
and Qatar had outright provably dribed FIFA officials, just just
paid them to vote this way, get get the cup
in Okay, fine, you can put them in Russia this year,
but take them to our side of town, you know. Yeah,
(32:44):
oh yeah. And there's a New York Times piece that
you can read right now if you can gain access
to it through whatever means necessary. Uh. It was written
by Tarik Punja and Kevin Draper, and it really does
break down the allegations that are set out here about
specific think FIFA officials, reps, let's say, who were paid
(33:04):
lots of money, millions of dollars. And this money was
not just you know, going across a table. You don't
really do that with millions of dollars. Generally, it's a
little more difficult to just push across the table. They
were going through shell companies, like from foreign countries to
FIFA officials. Yeah. And that story in particular dates back
(33:26):
to US prosecutor Yeah. Right. US prosecutors say Russia and
Cutter paid five members of FIFA's top board uh to
choose their countries. I had of time, right, and these
folks can influence each other. But the weird thing is
(33:47):
for at least two of the individuals named, this was
old beans. You know, they were like that meme of
James Franco getting hanged and saying first time because Nicholas
Leo's and Ricardo Texilera, Uh, we're both indicted in on
(34:08):
charges related to selling soccer rights to sports broadcasters for
a kickback. So I think we need to talk about
the biggest issue. When people talk about FIFA and corruption,
they're often talking about the scandal. H. This is not
good to four FIFA because the FBI is involved. That's
(34:30):
never good. Yeah. So back in the day, there were
a number of people, I think fourteen people indicted in
connection with an investigation the FBI was doing. Also, guess
what the I R s uh, oh tax man, it's
their Criminal Investigation division. They were looking into wire fraud
(34:53):
and racketeering and good old fashioned money laundering. And uh,
you know that's not great, right, not a good look
for that to be going around the news cycle back Uh.
What was going on been, oh, fourteen people in all
got indicted, uh, charged with wire fraud, racketeering, and good
(35:16):
old money laundering. The U S A. G. Attorney General
also said we're gonna unseal these indictments, meaning the you
know the public can learn about them. Uh. And we're
gonna show you the prior guilty please by two corporations
and four football executives. The whole thing was the idea
what that people were playing fast and loose in a
(35:41):
dirty profitable way with media and marketing rights for FIFA
games in the America's h and at least there were
at least ten million dollars in bribes. Uh. And that's
just touching the surface, right. Uh. And there were at
least a hundred and ten million dollars in brais in
just one case, and that's scratching the surface. Yeah. There's
(36:03):
a FIFA official named Chuck Blazer who said who admitted, Yeah,
I took bribes uh. And it was a quick pro quo.
I got paid to give the World Cup to France
and give it to South Africa. In this bribery appeared
to be a long running grift. This was like a
the way business was done. At least that's what the
(36:27):
critics were alleging. Uh. So the voting turned out to
be a lot more like a who can pay the
most kind of kind of situation. Well, yeah, because Chuck
Blazer admitted freely admitted, well, I'm not the only one
doing this. We all accept this kind of thing. I mean,
what this is broad We're talking FIFA broadcast, right, so
(36:47):
you know how much money that is. He didn't say
it just like that, but it was similar. Yeah, he
didn't sound as cool as you just did, but he
did say it. He did basically say that, and uh,
this dated back to at least ten two. That's when
Blazer said he would quote facilitate the acceptance of a
bribe in that selection process. So handshakes, getting people, um,
(37:13):
getting people connected. And then okay, so this this thing
is catastrophic for FIFA's public image, and somebody, several people
have to fall on their swords. Right, they're looking for scapegoats,
which is what large organizations almost always will do. So
the president of FIFA, guy named sept Bladder, announces his
(37:35):
resignation very shortly thereafter. Um Blatter was uh. In the
eyes of some journalists, Bladder was portrayed as a guy
who knew bribes were going on but accepted it because
he needed internal support to allow him to retain power
(37:56):
as president of FIFA. You know, Ben, this reminds me
of the Black Monday Murders. What's the name of the
the position within the inner circle that is this sacrifice.
It's like the chair, No, what is it? Stone chair,
the stone chair. That dude said, bladder was on the
stone chair. He was on the stone chair. Just I
(38:16):
was thinking the same thing to um. Oh gosh, that
book is just great. Uh the end is supposed to
be coming out finally. I keep hearing years That's what
I keep hearing too. I bet you I said I
didn't gamble, but now I've got the bug. I would
bet you um a night out on the town that
Black Monday Murders still comes out before the next George R. R.
(38:40):
Martin Song of Ice and Fire Book. I probably wouldn't
take that back because I think I think it might
be right not to try. But but yeah, so the
damage is done and again not we're not saying everybody
working in FIFA is some kind of criminal or uh
m master uh, financial supervillain. No, but in the eyes
(39:05):
of the public, where a lot of people have been
very suspicious of shady dealings and conspiracies within FIFA for generations,
this scandal proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that
parts of the story were true. Factions in the organization
were committed pretty serious crimes, and there's a lot more
(39:25):
to the story, enough to make an entire podcast series
at which boy one shout out our powel miles over
at Daily Zeitgeist. I think the EPD a show called
Lords of Soccer, which is about this kind of crime
and corruption. Oh yes, good old miles of gray. And Okay,
so we've got what seems to be a systemic process
(39:45):
of buying votes occurring multiple times, and still financial corruption is,
believe it or not, only a piece of the conspiracy puzzle. Yeah,
if there's more, it's going to get unsettling. After the break,
we'll be right back, and we're back a little conspiracy realist.
(40:08):
Remember how Matt and I were talking about the billions
of dollars host countries spend to get everything in line
for the World's Cup. Well, someone has to build all
that stuff. They're paying for, stadium's facilities, you name it.
Countries don't have that. A lot of them don't have
that stuff just laying around already or lying around. Somebody
(40:28):
has to physically make it happen. And you gotta keep
costs down. Guys. You know you gotta keep costs down.
And how do you do that? Oh? Yeah, you just
don't pay people. Uh, this is this is a huge problem. Uh.
There is a particular kind of sponsorship. It roughly translates
(40:51):
to um Cutter, which we'll get into it, but if
you you'll see why a lot of people say this.
Calling it sponsorship is kind of a euphemism for something
much nastier. Critics have said Cutter has this longstanding record
of numerous human rights violations, especially when it comes to
(41:12):
their treatment of foreign workers of LG, T, b Q,
people of folks who identify as women. As far back
as ten international sources of note we're saying, hey, the
World Cup and Cutter might be supporting slavery. In fact,
I believe it was Amnesty Internationals started calling it the
(41:33):
Slave Cup. Uh because for a while foreign workers, a
lot of whom came from Nepal, the Philippines in India.
There was an investigation the Guardian did and they did
great work with it that seemed to prove Nepalese workers
were dying at a rate of almost one per day,
(41:56):
and Cutter under pretty vague circumstances to like a heart
attack heart failure, which as you know, can be caused
by any number of things, folks. It can be overworking
the heck out of somebody could cause that probably, um,
And we would say go ahead and pull up your
old HBO MACS subscription if you've got one, or YouTube.
(42:19):
You can find it on YouTube. That's the way I
would do. Actually, check out last week tonight from back
in the day years ago when John Oliver talked about
this very thing and then talked about it again pretty
recently with Cutter. So the Nepalese workers, the people of
Nepalese origin there were they or are the single largest
(42:40):
group of laborers in the country. And if you look
at the way the International Labor Organization define slavery, then
the circumstances under which they are laboring fit that definition.
And we're being careful about it. But the accusations are
incredibly terrifying things stuff like evidence of forced labor without compensation,
(43:05):
or statements from employees who say they haven't been paid
for months, and sometimes their salaries are withheld to stop
them from just running away out of desperation. Their passports
are confiscated. They can't get I D cards, which means
that the system itself is making you an illegal alien
(43:27):
after it has taken you within its borders. And that's
not to mention an entire investigation that the Guardian, but
this UK outlet that also functions across the globe, they
found that there were atrocious conditions under which a lot
of men, these Nepalese men who were working there in Qatar. Uh,
they were held in these gross situations. We're talking like
(43:50):
twelve people to a room. We're talking of filthy conditions,
people getting really sick. It was not it, not at all,
and uh they you know, you can see footage of
this in numerous journalistic sources. Now it's it's not livable, right,
And and the heat there is in saying the environment
(44:10):
is pretty brutal too. That's another thing a lot of
journalists will bring up and a lot of critics will
bring up when they say, why did Cutter get chosen
for this right as such a hot place where you
can easily die of dehydration or exposure to the sun. Well,
and and all of that stuff sucks on a human
level so hard. It's terrible, right. But then when you
(44:31):
think about the amount of money that is being poured
into the buildings that are being created by folks who
are being exploited in this way, it just becomes that
much more disgusting. I think, yeah, yeah, there's just not
a good part to the story, you know. And how
we also consider we have to consider that this country
(44:55):
has the highest ratio of migrant workers to domestic population
on the planet. More of the workforce they're immigrants from
some somewhere else. That means that logically these practices are
influencing the majority of workers in that country. And then
you know, consider even if you're not working there, you
can still be affected by just visiting for the World Cup.
(45:17):
Cutter has laws that restrict and outright illegalize certain lifestyles. Uh.
They have a sodomy law on the books. Uh so,
same sex contact between dudes can get you seven years
in in a jail in that country in prison, and
they're very specific about it. Things that are considered a
(45:41):
moral are not allowed. Originally, there was this big deal
about Budweiser, for instance, being one of the I think
it was Budweis will be one of the sponsors of
the Cup, and there was going to be this deal
where you could drink beer in the stadium, or they
were gonna they were gonna relax some of the um
anti alcohol laws. Right true, of course, a big deal
(46:05):
in these countries. But then there was a brief stink
because Cutter went back and said, oh no, no, we're
not doing that. Uh about of a concern of our
own citizens. We don't want them to be offended or
feel unsafe. So that was there reasoning for this, but
obviously some Western sponsors felt like they had been had
(46:26):
or swindled. Uh. And the thing gets me about it, man,
you have to remember anytime you go to another country,
you have to respect the laws of that land. Like
you can't go to a place that has the death
penalty for possession of certain drugs and say, oho, you guys,
(46:47):
calm down. I know it's Malaysia, but I'm from the
Netherlands where weed is fine. So just go find someone else,
you know, and half a great day. Yeah yeah, and
the same with any other substance. Right, you can't just
step all over some other countries laws. I can't do that.
But what happens when the laws in that country are
(47:10):
human rights and nature? Right? Do your existence as you
whoever you are, as you identify, is not okay here
and not allowed, right, Yeah, like a country says we
refuse to acknowledge your existence as an lgt b Q
person or something like that, Like it's not anything you did,
it's who you are that is against the law. Your
(47:33):
existence is against the law. This is a question the
international community is wrestling with now. And the thing is
that FIFA is not a government. FIFA is a very
powerful organization, but it is not a government. So it
can pressure countries to change their laws or make exceptions,
(47:55):
but it's only real carrot stick mechanism that can deploy
is letting you have the world's cup or not letting
you have the world's cup. Right, And so this is
you know, that's a door you can only open and
close so many times. Since it's dealing with countries actual
sovereign powers, it can't really at this point make a
(48:17):
nation do anything. It just it can't. Um it can
exert economic pressure, right, But also FIFA is a traveling show.
Every four years, it's someplace different, right, So, so it's
not exactly the same as the kind of economic squeeze
(48:38):
like a UNI lever or a Nestley could exert on
a country just to just to show how those are
two different situations. All right, we'll explained a lot of
a lot of weird stuff. One thing we we should
probably hit before we get to the end is why
host it all? If it's such a headache and their backlashes.
(49:00):
You already have to spend billions of money above board,
probably several hundred million beneath board, right to grease the
right poems. Why are you doing this just because? No,
it's gotta be it's got to be something that just
I'm not thinking about ben but something that just changes
(49:23):
the way other countries think about your country. Maybe I
don't know, Oh, you know, you know exactly. It's good
all soft power, it's the Confucius Institutes here in the US,
it's Voice of America. It's stuff like that. Diplomacy is
a hell of a drug, you know. In politics and
in geopolitics in particular, soft power is this ability to
(49:47):
co opt rather than coerce. Hard powers coercion, right, hard
power is send in the army. Soft power is because
you know, don't like us now, like uh, and self
power happens everywhere right like uh. You will see organized
crime rings, doing public outreach during disasters, right or tough
(50:11):
economic times. We'll feed your family and make sure you
remember that it was us who did. So that's soft power. Oh.
I just want everybody listening, and if there are any
young people listening, go ahead and just uh turn it
off right now, parents going turn off? You turn it
back on in just a second. Um. I just I
(50:31):
want you to go back, go back a few seconds there.
Listen to the whole section of Ben explaining that, and
it makes all total sense. And it does and I agree, Ben,
but just think about it in the context of a
male sexual organ and then like think about to two
different types of power, because it totally matches up and
it freaks me out. It's creepy, but it's hilarious too,
(50:53):
it's really really funny. Okay, okay, come back, turn back on.
All right, here we go. All right. So this is uh,
this is a real thing. It's what people are talking
about when when they say winning hearts and minds, and
there's nothing inherently wrong with it. That's I think there's
absolutely nothing wrong with it. That's why it's a big
(51:15):
part of civilization, I mean human civilization as well as
the amazing game series Civilization. Matt, did you ever play
that game? So, I'm sure you have. I'm certain you have.
I did, But honestly, I'm not into it. I'm not
into it. It's just way too many. I got increased
numbers here and there and do small actions, not enough,
not enough real action. You know. It was more of
(51:36):
like a soft game for me than a hard game.
Does that make sense? Oh my god, you're not letting
this go all right? Uh? Yeah, no, it makes sense.
People who play Civilization, one of the things will notice
is that there are ways to win the game that
are entirely cultural and nature. You can have a chosen religion,
you can become a theocracy. You can achieve a cultural
(51:58):
victory with out deploying militaries. So there is, I feel
we're saying it now, there is power to that soft
power stuff, right, Uh, but not all of it is ethical.
This is something. This leads us to something called sportswashing,
and there's not a real, like agreed upon definition, but
(52:22):
most people think that it is a phenomenon defined by
a couple of things. A big powerful entity, a state,
or maybe in a nonstate actor uses sports to make
themselves look better in the public eye, and they can.
This can be anything from uh, sponsoring sports teams. Right,
(52:44):
you know, a very wealthy person who needs the reputation
repaired buys a sports team. Then there are you know,
the idea of hosting sporting events and competitions. Right, the
the the Olympics in modern history have all always been
to a degree diplomatic in nature. Right, there's a lot
(53:04):
of soft power there. Okay, we're just start We're gonna
start calling it some different hard power for softwire. You
guys gotta see Matt, I just wish I do with
the jokes that we're going through your head. I'm sorry,
I'm like ten twelve years old. Today we're hard powering
through it. It's we'll see no, Paul, keep it a uh.
(53:30):
So both sides of the human rights argument, engage in
sports is diplomacy, right, The United Nations does it, International
development agencies do it. Uh. Sports plays a role in
the story of a country. Right In South Africa, when
President Mandela co signed the national rugby team during the
(53:51):
World Cup of then that was seen as an example
of reconciliation. And that's why the world's most important sock
games or football games, excuse us, are a lot more
than just some excellent athletes kicking a ball around that.
And that's also why FIFA is not going to go away,
just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. It's already
(54:12):
the most popular, it's already the biggest name in the
most popular sport on the planet, which means I'll just
generate more and more money. Nott, my friend, I'm asking you,
what does this mean? How do people even try to
fix this? Well? I mean, I don't see how you do.
(54:33):
Right now, I think we should consult with Miles and
get him on the show to like give us, ah,
you know, some pointers. What does he think? How would
he change it? Let's put it on Miles instead of
on us. We'll pass that that well, we'll pass that buck,
(54:54):
We'll kick that ball over to over to Miles. I
think having a I think having that conversation, right, how
do you actually get a huge organization like this that does,
you know, connect all of these different countries, all of
the teams, all of the fans. How do you get
that organization to play fairly? And what would that even
(55:17):
look like? Because you know theoretically they've got the bidding
concept and the voting thing and all of that, And
I think that might be the crux of the problem,
or at least the the biggest place where corruption can
begin is that bid that everybody has to put in.
I don't know, there's something about that. Yeah, I think
(55:39):
that's a good point too. And this is just an intro, uh,
an intro into again, a multigenerational, ongoing series of conspiracies. Folks,
We want to hear from you. What would you say
are the solutions to this? Uh? Does FIFA have a
responsibility to be come more involved in controversies around human rights?
(56:04):
Or are they simply a sports organization with no um
Should that not affect their decision at all? We want
to hear from you. All you have to do is
drop by our Facebook page or Instagram page or our
YouTube conspiracy stuff. And if you don't like the social meads,
(56:25):
well you can always give us a phone call. Yes,
our number is one eight three three std w y
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Please give yourself a cool nickname. We don't care what
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and say whatever you'd like. If you've got more to
(56:46):
say they can fit in that three minutes, why not
instead send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. M h M.
(57:14):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Ol is not here today,
but we'll be returning shortly. They called me Ben. We're
joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission control decond.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Stute listeners, you may hear a bit of something almost
(00:48):
like oceanic tides on my end of the recording today.
That is because it is a wonderfully emo day here
in Atlanta, Georgia. You could look outside and swear you
were in c attle. As a result, the street near
me has turned into a river, so always Ponts is
always a river when it rains bad. So it's it's
(01:09):
kind of soothing, you know, and maybe that's something people
need nowadays. I think just occasionally moments of self reflection, quietness,
getting away from the screens, something soothing. And it's good
that we're starting off that way because for a lot
of sports fans in the audience today, this episode is
(01:31):
going to piss you off. And you know about some
of it, but you may not know about all of it. Uh, Matt,
Mr Frederick, would you consider yourself a fan of sports?
All the sports? Huge? Everyone face painting every day pretty
much because there's so many sports that I gotta paint
my face for boxing, chess, you know, that's a real
thing where people alternate chess and boxing all the sports
(01:53):
without exception. So I only like boxing before they started
wearing gloves, you know, where it was pretty much focused
on body lows. You couldn't really punch the face because
it would break your your fist. That's that's really where
my boxing excitement lies. And I can see when you
square up your old school you know, definitely your you
(02:13):
cover your your chest right because you don't want to
get livershot break those ribs exactly. Well, that's the thing,
you know, whether or not you are a die hard
sports fan in general, whether or not you like our
good pal Max, have one specific sport you like. Max
Williams is a baseball fan. Uh. You have definitely heard
(02:36):
about something called the World Cup. As we record and
as this episode releases, the twenty twenty two World Cup
is reaching a culmination in the Middle Eastern nation of
cutter or Qatar. Uh. It's this World Cup is the
top competition for the most popular sport on the planet.
(02:57):
Americans call it soccer literally, really everyone else calls it
some version of football. Uh. And that's that's where we
start today. We're gonna talk about sports, but we're quickly
going to go to some strange, sinister places today, as
the world waits to see which country will win the Cup,
we're here to explore the stuff FIFA doesn't want you
(03:19):
to know. Here are the facts. Yes, as we record today,
Japan and Croatia are battling it out in Brazil and
South Korea are also engaged in Mortal Kombat a ka
football ump up on a pump, pump up on up
on up. Yes. Yes, And so let us just talk
(03:43):
about the World Cup in general. Let's let's set the table,
shall we. It's this thing called FIFA that maybe you
only know because you're a gamer and you like video
games and so do your friends, and you play a
game called FIFA and it has to do with soccer.
They're also known as the or actually they're known for
real as the Federation International. Now their football or football
(04:08):
association also is on there. Yeah, they're very old. I
was not aware of this for for some time, but FIFA,
being founded on May oh four four is one of
the world's biggest non governmental organizations or in g os.
It's also one of the oldest ones that still exist today.
(04:32):
And if you look at the history, it makes sense
somebody needed to organize this stuff. At the dawn of
the twentieth century, seven different national associations, associations that governed
football in their own countries, came together did a vultron thing,
assembled their avengers and so Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.
(04:54):
They all said, Okay, we're going to make an even
bigger band, and we're gonna make a supergroup, and we're
going to do some important things. We're gonna like uniform
We're gonna uniformize these things. If I if I could
style on American English for a second, Yeah, it'll be
like the Olympics. It'll be worldwide, but it will only
(05:16):
be for football, and we'll control I like how you
said the dawn of the century, because the way I
see this instead of d A W N. I I
read it d O N of the twentieth century because
it is this massive organization and somebody's got to lead
it and be the dawn of FIFA. What a great setup.
(05:37):
And I like that organized crime reference to you'll see why, folks. So,
no matter how you feel about FIFA today, if you
think they're the worst thing ever, or you're such a
fan boy that you sing FIFA Las Vegas to yourself
in the shower, the point is the organization had to exist.
Something like this would have arisen due to necessity. You know,
(06:00):
as as the twentieth centuries going on, more and more
international games are being played, right, people are absolute fanatics
for their chosen team, right, and they said, okay, we
need somebody to organize everything. We need some group making
sure that all competitions have the same rules, have the
(06:21):
same processes in place. We need to do stuff like
agree that if a player is suspended, that suspension is
recognized by everybody, right, so another country doesn't just go
snap this person up, you know. And then of course
their main thing was to ensure the games were fair.
That is um still officially a big concern. Objectively, this
(06:46):
was a fantastic idea. And if you look at the
dawn d o n of FIFA, you've got to look
at the very first president. Who wasn't you know, criminal kingpin?
He was He was just he was a French guy.
Is a very smart French guy. Yes, named Bob Robert Queren.
He ran things from oh four, nineteen o four to
nineteen o six. And uh, there have been a lot
(07:09):
of people who have held that title the president of FIFA,
and a lot of people have held it for a
long time. Some people have only held it for a
wee little bit of time, like Rodolf the seed Dreyers,
Sidre Sildreers, seal Dreer's so how you would say it,
Rodolf Seldreers of Germany, This guy only served for a year.
(07:32):
He got in and then he went, oh all those
doors opened that were you know, secret before becoming president
and he went, nope, how about I'm just kidding. We
don't know what happened. He just had one heck of
a year. But because of the way the terms for
the president work, it is possible to serve for much longer,
(07:53):
like dr Aling out of Brazil served for more than
two decades from seventy four all the way up until Yeah. Yeah,
he put his time and he's got his stripes. UH.
The current president there's a guy named Giotni Infantino out
of Switzerland. He took office in sixteen. Presidents are elected
(08:13):
for a four year term. UH, and now they can
you know, they can have they can be re elected
multiple times. So FIFA experiences a lot of ups and
downs over the decades. UH is similar to the modern Olympics. Right.
This has struggled through world wars, numerous economic downturns. Let
(08:35):
us not forget the world is ending for someone somewhere
every single day. So they almost collapsed in eighteen. There's
some pretty inspiring stories about the people who kept it going,
but really the love of the sport across across human experience,
across so many demographics kept the World Cup alive and
(08:57):
the real like the official inaugural World Cup by FIFA
was actually not held until nineteen thirty. It was in
Uruguay from July nineteen thirty. UH. Uruguay paid out the
nose for this. By the way they paid UH, they
(09:18):
paid all the travel expenses. They had to split ticket
sales with FIFA. It's the money was already getting crazy.
I think about the tourism dollars been sure, yes, sure,
the tourism dollars. And hey, maybe all the people who
work in the service industry or at those hotels and restaurants,
maybe their wages increased to spoiler, we'll see. But the
(09:43):
thing and the thing is it wasn't it wasn't exactly simulcast, right,
They didn't get to see it the world over. You
had to be there to watch the World Cup in Yeah, yeah,
you absolutely had to be there. And now the idea
of marketing, right, the idea of broadcast rights, all that
stuff is another huge revenue stream because obviously, folks, way
(10:07):
more people are watching this remotely than kind of afford
to actually go across the planet to watch these games
in person. And some people, as we'll see uh this year,
even if they could afford to go, they were a
little too concerned maybe about their personal safety to make
the journey. So, yeah, the competition only expands over time.
(10:30):
The popularity of the World Cup only grows because it's
an awesome thing, especially if you like football, And as
it grew, the money grew as well. The money metastasized
today of all sports fans globally have their finger on
(10:50):
the pulse of the World Cup. They know what's going
to happen. They know it's happening every four years. They're
stoked about it. Billions of yours are watching, which is
nuts when you think about it. There are eight billion
people in the world, and a huge percentage of them
time zones be damned, are watching this stuff live across
(11:14):
hundreds and hundreds of nations. You know, even some of
the U n doesn't recognize snap. That's true, you know been.
I wonder if those five percent of people that don't
know what the World Cup is. I wonder if there's
a higher likelihood that they are Americans, simply because soccer
in this country isn't as popular as it is in
(11:34):
almost every other country on the planet. I wonder if,
like most of that five percent is somewhere in the US.
But surely they'd be at least aware of it, because otherwise,
what what would the phrase World Cup mean to you?
Or five percent of Americans going I've got my own cups.
I don't need to share one with the world. That's
(11:54):
a stupid idea. You'd never be able to build a
big enough cup. They also don't have friends, and they
don't have a television or internet because and they've never
played a video game or heard of them or the
margin of error is five percent, so like here, So
here's the issue. When you get this many people involved
(12:18):
in literally anything, because of the way people work, opportunities
for corruption are going to grow exponentially. And that's why,
you know, nobody is really surprised that FIFA has become
the subject of numerous allegations over the decades. Uh And
in fact, you know, under the auspices of previous FIFA presidents,
(12:43):
it's been accepted as an open secret that there was
at least some degree of corruption. And when we ask
about conspiracies, not theories, but actual conspiracies, corruption and crime
when it comes to FIFA, you know, well we have
to Well, the answer, simply put is, if you ask
(13:05):
how much corruption exists in FIFA, the answer is way
more than you might think, way, way way more. Ted right, yes, way,
here's where it gets crazy, all right, honestly, it's Uh,
we spent some time going into the weeds of the
(13:28):
Byzantine process for getting your country to host the World Cup.
We're not going to go all the way into it.
You can definitely you may already know the ins and
outs at least the official explanations um you could probably make.
I'm sure there are multiple fantastic sports podcast probably on
our network that talk about the FIFA selection process. But
(13:53):
it's the thing is, it's a huge win for that
host competition. It's not hyperbole to say it's as nostigious
as hosting the Olympic Games. In fact, it's a bigger
deal than hosting the Olympics. Sorry, IOC well, and the
way to imagine it for me is if you somehow
convince the International Olympic Committee to get the Olympics in
(14:17):
your country, Uh, somehow you do it, and it's not easy.
It's usually about what kind of infrastructure do you currently
have and what new stuff are you gonna build for it?
And it's not dissimilar to what happens with countries working
with FIFA to get the World Cup in their town
or in their city or their country, because it's not
(14:39):
cheap to either build a brand new stadium or maybe
two stadiums, or to retrofit your old stadium so that
it can you know, have that many people inside of
it to even host a single game, let alone the
entire tournament. Um, it is very expensive to get the
World Cup of the Olympics in your country. Yeah, I
(15:03):
mean why stop at stadiums. Some countries have built cities
for the World Cup, right. Uh that's where that's where
cutter comes in. Uh, you know, you make a great
point about the infrastructure. I would also add that part
of the argument to win hosting rights for the Olympics
or the World Cup goes down to the question of
(15:25):
what sort of message do we as FIFA want to
give to the world. Right. There's a lot of uh,
geopolitical stuff at play here, a lot of tremendous opportunity
for good and bad things. Uh. Yeah, So you nailed
it though, because most countries just they're not going to
have that. They're not gonna say, hey, we got eight
(15:47):
stadiums at an empty, brand new city as new car smell.
You know, all the hotels you could possibly need, Like
we're talking a hundred forty empty hotels ready to rock.
It's really be glad you guys came along because you know,
we were sort of freestyling this one. You know, we
build cities the way people play jazz. Right, just we
(16:11):
just we get a general theme and then I don't
figure itself out. But that's exactly Uh what happened when
the most recent country to host has built a city. Uh.
And it's costs two hundred billion dollars US or the equivalent. Uh.
And this is not this spending tens and tens of
(16:33):
billions of dollars. It's not especially unusual. But here's the
question met your earlier point, is that a solid investment
for the for the country's like a local example here
for us in Atlanta would be when's the last time
you went to Centennial Park for a free concert years ago?
Wait a minute, how are they making money? It's a park.
(16:58):
I guess you can have more other events there. That's
one way to recoup some money, right, But what do
you do with all those hotels you built, or you know,
the streets and the street lights and all the things
you build when you create an entire city, How does
that recoup money for you? I guess by having other
big events. That's one of the only ways to do it. Yeah,
(17:19):
now you might have experienced. Now you might have created
a path dependence situation where you have to continually figure
out how to pack those stadiums now to get people
to pay to see whatever show or spectacle is occurring.
If really, if you ask yourself whether the World Cup
is a salid investment for a country, it depends on
(17:40):
how you define success. I mean, we can walk through
the obvious revenue right TV rights um for the last
Cup in Russia, those were sold to broadcasters around the
world for billions of dollars, like four point six billion
dollars US and that was all kept by FIFA. So Russia,
(18:01):
Russia didn't make money off that. Oh yeah, because FIFA
sold it sold the rights to show it. That's odd.
That's very odd. So like this year and Cutter, how
much money did you say they spent building that city?
Two billion? Around two that's what's been projected by CNN.
Good golly, imagine that's how much you spend on the
(18:25):
city right to get the World Cup there, and then
the rights to show the thing to the world go
to somebody else and that money gets kept by the
company that's showing up in your country using all your
facilities you just built and ticket sales. They're owned by
a subsidiary company which is owned by FIFA. Wait, okay,
(18:52):
and they just give that money to the host country, right.
Uh no, even if like how this operates in the past,
there have been splits, right, like in Uruguay the first
World Cup, that country was able to walk with like
half of the ticket sales revenue. That's something, but marketing,
(19:17):
if they want to market it, they have to pay FIFA. Again,
FIFA also has the marketing rights. That alone was worth
more than one billion dollars US and FIFA is making
a lot of money. And again, uh, you know you
could say, well, they have to write they own the brand,
they owned the thing. You know, Uh, you will get
(19:38):
sued into oblivion if you just got a bunch of
your buddies from some other countries to say, hey, we're
doing our We're gonna call it the Globe goblet, you
know what I mean, the globe chalice or something. They
will not play, do not pass, go, do not collect
two hundred dollars. You're going straight to like the the
(19:58):
kind of jail that rich people said to other rich
people too. Okay, yes, exactly, So okay, I'm trying to
write my head around this. Ben. Let's say your cutter,
the country hosting the World Cup. Right now, you're spelling
that money. You're not making money on any of these ways.
Why the heck would you do this to yourself? Ah? Yeah,
why would you? Indeed, to answer that question, I think
(20:21):
we need to pause for a word from our sponsor
and then uh dive in. Are the rights to these
commercials owned by wait? I guess it's I heeart, No,
it's all FIFA. FIFA also owns I hear because we're talking. Yeah, yeah,
(20:43):
all right, we're back now. Before anybody accuses us being
biased against the good folks at FIFA. Obviously, the actions
of folks at the top of an organization are not
representative of what everybody in an organization believes. Obviously. Uh. Secondly, yes,
I do have a World Cup bracket, and yes it
(21:05):
is in the tank. I named it Fortune Favors the Foolish.
Oh boy, Matt, was I wrong? I was wrong on
so many important games. I there were a lot of
wins I did not see coming. Yeah mm hmm, yeah.
I was actually really hoping for Japan there until today. Yeah. Yeah, same,
(21:31):
it's just the one. I think one of the ones
that really really knocked me was Saudi Arabia. Yeah, that
was that was my bad. But you know, it's already
suckered me. I'm talking as though I was playing. Oh man, Ben,
it makes so much sense now you're speaking to me.
(21:51):
I'm thinking about the black market for World Cup, all
the betting, or the gray market, or maybe it's a
white market. I don't know what. If you would describe
it as it's the legal bedding and the under the
table bedding, I bet there's so much. Oh gosh, can
you imagine honestly what Vegas must be looking like right now? Now.
(22:12):
I'm not personally a gambler. I don't have the whatever
brain mechanism makes up fun, but no ding on it
because it's a huge business. A lot of people like
doing it. It's just I literally went through and randomly
picked countries. Yeah, I was like, because you know, the
way those brackets often work is everybody puts in twenty
(22:34):
bucks or something and first places you get the pots,
second place you get your money back. And I it
was something like that. You know, so I'm not in
an intense thing. I just wanted to try it out,
and turns out there's a learning curve a little bit
you can't just I thought I could be like the
the old stereotype of the horse or chicken just randomly
(22:57):
picking stuff off a racing sheet. That was not this
time that you still play the lottery? All right, Okay,
that was great. That was great. That's gonna be on everybody.
Check out our YouTube to see that your missus nuance
here visually. But to your question, why why do this?
(23:19):
Why go through this huge headache? Well, there's a tourism spike.
We talked about that. So if you are a local
business owner. Let's say you own a restaurant that's near
a stadium where the World Cup is happening, You're probably
gonna pop your prices up a little bit, right, You're
definitely gonna have to hire more people. You might want
to stay open later to uh and that'll in hotels
(23:41):
will raise their rates they know they know they'll be
at capacity regardless. But the expense of handling all that
extra capacity as a country, that kind of that that
expense is bigger than the increase in revenue, you know
what I mean. I think about the expense on security,
(24:03):
Like over the entire area. You don't even know how
many miles out you'd have to go our kilometers out
from the major stadium, but you'd have to have increased
security for a single restaurant just in case. We you know,
football matches and nothing against them, but people get rowdy
and after a match, you know, some some bad things
(24:25):
go down every once in a while, not all the time,
but every once in a while. You're gonna want to
have somebody watching that stuff. Oh yeah, of course, especially
if there is a heated rivalry between some teams or
a hotly contested game. I mean most games are in
some level hotly contested. But additionally, those security guards might
(24:48):
not necessarily be getting paid more than their average wage
people work in this service industry. To answer our spoiler
question earlier, they're not getting more money maybe if they
work in tips. But tipping the way we understand it
in the United States is not not the way the
rest of the world largely understands it. Uh. Also, countries
(25:11):
are typically giving out tax breaks right all all across
the board to make themselves look more attractive to FIFA
and its partners, but those to cut into the country's
bottom line. Al Jazeera had this great article where they
talked about who makes money in in the World Cup,
(25:31):
and they said, people with money make money here, people
without it don't. So if you already are, if you're
already well healed, the World Cup is going to be
awesome for you. If you own the land where the
stadium is being built, you know what I mean. If
you own some logistics or supply company, if you're in
an industry that gets touched, then you're going to walk
(25:55):
away with a likelihood of making some some hefty coin. Uh.
I think the big winner, no matter which team takes
the Cup, the big winner of the World Cup is
always FIFA. That's how the system is built. Uh. I
don't know, man like Okay, When when we think of
(26:16):
the idea of whether or not it's worth it for
a company or a country to host FIFA, we're talking
in terms of money. There's much more there. There are
many more ways to think of success or profit than
just financial. But I think when most people think of
corruption in FIFA, they're thinking of the of the numbers, right,
(26:38):
They're thinking of the cash, the scratch, the cheddar. That's right,
that's right. And part of that has to do with
which country you end up hosting your event in, and
that's why we should talk about that. So how did
the World Cup end up in Cutter this year? Qatar Um.
It's because there's this extensive process to sell act the
(27:00):
host country, right. We know that there's a bidding process
that countries, just like the Olympics. It's very similar to
the Olympics process where a host country says, hey, you
should you should do the World Cup in my country
because of X Y Z all the way to like
triple Z and I love saying triples said that. I
don't know why that's fun. It sounds good when you
say that. Those English roots somewhere deep inside me. Uh
(27:24):
so they bid, They put their hand up and say
this is why you should host it here. Then FIFA
as an organization votes on those you know, the different
people who have made that bid. And the crazy thing
is that they're so backed up. Basically in this process,
there's split seven to ten years out in choosing host
(27:46):
countries at this point. Yeah, yeah, this you're exactly right,
seven years in advance. And it was a little bit
unusual recently because the host of the tournament were chosen
at the same time as the host for the eighteen tournament.
So it's it's not always a constant rule, but if
(28:09):
you are one of the committees, uh, they're trying to
get your country recognized as the next host country. Well,
it's a full time job, and it's a arduous, murderous
job because you have the lobby for you have to
lobby hard. Each of the member states of FIFA get
(28:31):
one vote. That's to make things fair and equitable. So
if you want to be the host country for the
next World Cup, you have to get the majority vote.
That sounds simple enough, right, I mean that's how people
get elected to political positions in democracies. Yeah, no, it's true.
And there's only two hundred and eleven member states, so
(28:56):
to get a majority of that and well, and everybody's
got one vote, so maybe you only have to get
countries to vote for you thirty I don't know. Yeah, okay, Yeah,
that's the thing. Um, if you if it comes down
to just like two countries, then it's whomever has more
(29:18):
than fifty, because I'm assuming you would get so many
there would probably be several dozen countries in the running
after that first vote. I'm assuming, right, they make a
short list, right, and then the yeah, and then the
song and dance of glad handing begins. The next World Cup,
by the way, folks has already been decided. It is
(29:40):
the United to bid. Uh. It is gonna take place
in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and it beat out Morocco. Yeah.
Pretty interesting. Huh yeah, that's very different. Kind of like it.
I kind of like it to. I mean, obviously it's
gonna be a little easier for folks like you or
(30:02):
me to get there. Uh. It's going to be the
first time World Cup has been hosted by three countries
at once. Wow. Wait, what was the name of that
currency that was going to be Canadian, American and Mexican?
The Amaro? Is that right? The Amaro, the Amero Cup.
It's the globalist they're coming soccer ball. Yeah. Uh so, Okay,
(30:28):
there's another big reason. It's not all the weird stuff
we're about to get into uh in our third act here,
But there's a there's another neat just off the top
reason that you would want your country to host the
World's Cup. It is this, if you get to host it,
then your country's team automatically qualifies to compete. So if
(30:53):
you feel like your gang doesn't have a chance of
getting into the competition normally, then when you host, that
question goes out the window. They're already it do you
win like a trillion dollars when you win the World Cup?
Just like all the team members get a billion apiece?
Is that what you get? That would make sense. We'll
(31:16):
drop two billion, you know, and then each team member
can get a cool bill. The way they put it is,
the total prize pool works out to four d forty
million this time around. And that's uh, that includes a
forty two million dollar prize for the winning team. That's
not too shabby. It seems like a big investment though
(31:38):
for that amount of cash. Right, Well, it's not just
about the money, right It's sending a message. So this
is where things get very very strange. So over the years,
a lot of critics, when you say over the years,
we mean decades, a lot of critics have been saying
there are countries out there who are not just lobby
(32:00):
not just trying to make a good presentation about their infrastructure,
their potential, their outright buying votes. These accusations surface when
Russia hosted They resurfaced again when Cutter got back in
the news leading up to this World Cup in We're
gonna jump around in time here, okay, in the Department
(32:21):
of Justice in the US said representatives working for Russia
and Qatar had outright provably dribed FIFA officials, just just
paid them to vote this way, get get the cup
in Okay, fine, you can put them in Russia this year,
but take them to our side of town, you know. Yeah,
(32:44):
oh yeah. And there's a New York Times piece that
you can read right now if you can gain access
to it through whatever means necessary. Uh. It was written
by Tarik Punja and Kevin Draper, and it really does
break down the allegations that are set out here about
specific think FIFA officials, reps, let's say, who were paid
(33:04):
lots of money, millions of dollars. And this money was
not just you know, going across a table. You don't
really do that with millions of dollars. Generally, it's a
little more difficult to just push across the table. They
were going through shell companies, like from foreign countries to
FIFA officials. Yeah. And that story in particular dates back
(33:26):
to US prosecutor Yeah. Right. US prosecutors say Russia and
Cutter paid five members of FIFA's top board uh to
choose their countries. I had of time, right, and these
folks can influence each other. But the weird thing is
(33:47):
for at least two of the individuals named, this was
old beans. You know, they were like that meme of
James Franco getting hanged and saying first time because Nicholas
Leo's and Ricardo Texilera, Uh, we're both indicted in on
(34:08):
charges related to selling soccer rights to sports broadcasters for
a kickback. So I think we need to talk about
the biggest issue. When people talk about FIFA and corruption,
they're often talking about the scandal. H. This is not
good to four FIFA because the FBI is involved. That's
(34:30):
never good. Yeah. So back in the day, there were
a number of people, I think fourteen people indicted in
connection with an investigation the FBI was doing. Also, guess
what the I R s uh, oh tax man, it's
their Criminal Investigation division. They were looking into wire fraud
(34:53):
and racketeering and good old fashioned money laundering. And uh,
you know that's not great, right, not a good look
for that to be going around the news cycle back Uh.
What was going on been, oh, fourteen people in all
got indicted, uh, charged with wire fraud, racketeering, and good
(35:16):
old money laundering. The U S A. G. Attorney General
also said we're gonna unseal these indictments, meaning the you
know the public can learn about them. Uh. And we're
gonna show you the prior guilty please by two corporations
and four football executives. The whole thing was the idea
what that people were playing fast and loose in a
(35:41):
dirty profitable way with media and marketing rights for FIFA
games in the America's h and at least there were
at least ten million dollars in bribes. Uh. And that's
just touching the surface, right. Uh. And there were at
least a hundred and ten million dollars in brais in
just one case, and that's scratching the surface. Yeah. There's
(36:03):
a FIFA official named Chuck Blazer who said who admitted, Yeah,
I took bribes uh. And it was a quick pro quo.
I got paid to give the World Cup to France
and give it to South Africa. In this bribery appeared
to be a long running grift. This was like a
the way business was done. At least that's what the
(36:27):
critics were alleging. Uh. So the voting turned out to
be a lot more like a who can pay the
most kind of kind of situation. Well, yeah, because Chuck
Blazer admitted freely admitted, well, I'm not the only one
doing this. We all accept this kind of thing. I mean,
what this is broad We're talking FIFA broadcast, right, so
(36:47):
you know how much money that is. He didn't say
it just like that, but it was similar. Yeah, he
didn't sound as cool as you just did, but he
did say it. He did basically say that, and uh,
this dated back to at least ten two. That's when
Blazer said he would quote facilitate the acceptance of a
bribe in that selection process. So handshakes, getting people, um,
(37:13):
getting people connected. And then okay, so this this thing
is catastrophic for FIFA's public image, and somebody, several people
have to fall on their swords. Right, they're looking for scapegoats,
which is what large organizations almost always will do. So
the president of FIFA, guy named sept Bladder, announces his
(37:35):
resignation very shortly thereafter. Um Blatter was uh. In the
eyes of some journalists, Bladder was portrayed as a guy
who knew bribes were going on but accepted it because
he needed internal support to allow him to retain power
(37:56):
as president of FIFA. You know, Ben, this reminds me
of the Black Monday Murders. What's the name of the
the position within the inner circle that is this sacrifice.
It's like the chair, No, what is it? Stone chair,
the stone chair. That dude said, bladder was on the
stone chair. He was on the stone chair. Just I
(38:16):
was thinking the same thing to um. Oh gosh, that
book is just great. Uh the end is supposed to
be coming out finally. I keep hearing years That's what
I keep hearing too. I bet you I said I
didn't gamble, but now I've got the bug. I would
bet you um a night out on the town that
Black Monday Murders still comes out before the next George R. R.
(38:40):
Martin Song of Ice and Fire Book. I probably wouldn't
take that back because I think I think it might
be right not to try. But but yeah, so the
damage is done and again not we're not saying everybody
working in FIFA is some kind of criminal or uh
m master uh, financial supervillain. No, but in the eyes
(39:05):
of the public, where a lot of people have been
very suspicious of shady dealings and conspiracies within FIFA for generations,
this scandal proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that
parts of the story were true. Factions in the organization
were committed pretty serious crimes, and there's a lot more
(39:25):
to the story, enough to make an entire podcast series
at which boy one shout out our powel miles over
at Daily Zeitgeist. I think the EPD a show called
Lords of Soccer, which is about this kind of crime
and corruption. Oh yes, good old miles of gray. And Okay,
so we've got what seems to be a systemic process
(39:45):
of buying votes occurring multiple times, and still financial corruption is,
believe it or not, only a piece of the conspiracy puzzle. Yeah,
if there's more, it's going to get unsettling. After the break,
we'll be right back, and we're back a little conspiracy realist.
(40:08):
Remember how Matt and I were talking about the billions
of dollars host countries spend to get everything in line
for the World's Cup. Well, someone has to build all
that stuff. They're paying for, stadium's facilities, you name it.
Countries don't have that. A lot of them don't have
that stuff just laying around already or lying around. Somebody
(40:28):
has to physically make it happen. And you gotta keep
costs down. Guys. You know you gotta keep costs down.
And how do you do that? Oh? Yeah, you just
don't pay people. Uh, this is this is a huge problem. Uh.
There is a particular kind of sponsorship. It roughly translates
(40:51):
to um Cutter, which we'll get into it, but if
you you'll see why a lot of people say this.
Calling it sponsorship is kind of a euphemism for something
much nastier. Critics have said Cutter has this longstanding record
of numerous human rights violations, especially when it comes to
(41:12):
their treatment of foreign workers of LG, T, b Q,
people of folks who identify as women. As far back
as ten international sources of note we're saying, hey, the
World Cup and Cutter might be supporting slavery. In fact,
I believe it was Amnesty Internationals started calling it the
(41:33):
Slave Cup. Uh because for a while foreign workers, a
lot of whom came from Nepal, the Philippines in India.
There was an investigation the Guardian did and they did
great work with it that seemed to prove Nepalese workers
were dying at a rate of almost one per day,
(41:56):
and Cutter under pretty vague circumstances to like a heart
attack heart failure, which as you know, can be caused
by any number of things, folks. It can be overworking
the heck out of somebody could cause that probably, um,
And we would say go ahead and pull up your
old HBO MACS subscription if you've got one, or YouTube.
(42:19):
You can find it on YouTube. That's the way I
would do. Actually, check out last week tonight from back
in the day years ago when John Oliver talked about
this very thing and then talked about it again pretty
recently with Cutter. So the Nepalese workers, the people of
Nepalese origin there were they or are the single largest
(42:40):
group of laborers in the country. And if you look
at the way the International Labor Organization define slavery, then
the circumstances under which they are laboring fit that definition.
And we're being careful about it. But the accusations are
incredibly terrifying things stuff like evidence of forced labor without compensation,
(43:05):
or statements from employees who say they haven't been paid
for months, and sometimes their salaries are withheld to stop
them from just running away out of desperation. Their passports
are confiscated. They can't get I D cards, which means
that the system itself is making you an illegal alien
(43:27):
after it has taken you within its borders. And that's
not to mention an entire investigation that the Guardian, but
this UK outlet that also functions across the globe, they
found that there were atrocious conditions under which a lot
of men, these Nepalese men who were working there in Qatar. Uh,
they were held in these gross situations. We're talking like
(43:50):
twelve people to a room. We're talking of filthy conditions,
people getting really sick. It was not it, not at all,
and uh they you know, you can see footage of
this in numerous journalistic sources. Now it's it's not livable, right,
And and the heat there is in saying the environment
(44:10):
is pretty brutal too. That's another thing a lot of
journalists will bring up and a lot of critics will
bring up when they say, why did Cutter get chosen
for this right as such a hot place where you
can easily die of dehydration or exposure to the sun. Well,
and and all of that stuff sucks on a human
level so hard. It's terrible, right. But then when you
(44:31):
think about the amount of money that is being poured
into the buildings that are being created by folks who
are being exploited in this way, it just becomes that
much more disgusting. I think, yeah, yeah, there's just not
a good part to the story, you know. And how
we also consider we have to consider that this country
(44:55):
has the highest ratio of migrant workers to domestic population
on the planet. More of the workforce they're immigrants from
some somewhere else. That means that logically these practices are
influencing the majority of workers in that country. And then
you know, consider even if you're not working there, you
can still be affected by just visiting for the World Cup.
(45:17):
Cutter has laws that restrict and outright illegalize certain lifestyles. Uh.
They have a sodomy law on the books. Uh so,
same sex contact between dudes can get you seven years
in in a jail in that country in prison, and
they're very specific about it. Things that are considered a
(45:41):
moral are not allowed. Originally, there was this big deal
about Budweiser, for instance, being one of the I think
it was Budweis will be one of the sponsors of
the Cup, and there was going to be this deal
where you could drink beer in the stadium, or they
were gonna they were gonna relax some of the um
anti alcohol laws. Right true, of course, a big deal
(46:05):
in these countries. But then there was a brief stink
because Cutter went back and said, oh no, no, we're
not doing that. Uh about of a concern of our
own citizens. We don't want them to be offended or
feel unsafe. So that was there reasoning for this, but
obviously some Western sponsors felt like they had been had
(46:26):
or swindled. Uh. And the thing gets me about it, man,
you have to remember anytime you go to another country,
you have to respect the laws of that land. Like
you can't go to a place that has the death
penalty for possession of certain drugs and say, oho, you guys,
(46:47):
calm down. I know it's Malaysia, but I'm from the
Netherlands where weed is fine. So just go find someone else,
you know, and half a great day. Yeah yeah, and
the same with any other substance. Right, you can't just
step all over some other countries laws. I can't do that.
But what happens when the laws in that country are
(47:10):
human rights and nature? Right? Do your existence as you
whoever you are, as you identify, is not okay here
and not allowed, right, Yeah, like a country says we
refuse to acknowledge your existence as an lgt b Q
person or something like that, Like it's not anything you did,
it's who you are that is against the law. Your
(47:33):
existence is against the law. This is a question the
international community is wrestling with now. And the thing is
that FIFA is not a government. FIFA is a very
powerful organization, but it is not a government. So it
can pressure countries to change their laws or make exceptions,
(47:55):
but it's only real carrot stick mechanism that can deploy
is letting you have the world's cup or not letting
you have the world's cup. Right, And so this is
you know, that's a door you can only open and
close so many times. Since it's dealing with countries actual
sovereign powers, it can't really at this point make a
(48:17):
nation do anything. It just it can't. Um it can
exert economic pressure, right, But also FIFA is a traveling show.
Every four years, it's someplace different, right, So, so it's
not exactly the same as the kind of economic squeeze
(48:38):
like a UNI lever or a Nestley could exert on
a country just to just to show how those are
two different situations. All right, we'll explained a lot of
a lot of weird stuff. One thing we we should
probably hit before we get to the end is why
host it all? If it's such a headache and their backlashes.
(49:00):
You already have to spend billions of money above board,
probably several hundred million beneath board, right to grease the
right poems. Why are you doing this just because? No,
it's gotta be it's got to be something that just
I'm not thinking about ben but something that just changes
(49:23):
the way other countries think about your country. Maybe I
don't know, Oh, you know, you know exactly. It's good
all soft power, it's the Confucius Institutes here in the US,
it's Voice of America. It's stuff like that. Diplomacy is
a hell of a drug, you know. In politics and
in geopolitics in particular, soft power is this ability to
(49:47):
co opt rather than coerce. Hard powers coercion, right, hard
power is send in the army. Soft power is because
you know, don't like us now, like uh, and self
power happens everywhere right like uh. You will see organized
crime rings, doing public outreach during disasters, right or tough
(50:11):
economic times. We'll feed your family and make sure you
remember that it was us who did. So that's soft power. Oh.
I just want everybody listening, and if there are any
young people listening, go ahead and just uh turn it
off right now, parents going turn off? You turn it
back on in just a second. Um. I just I
(50:31):
want you to go back, go back a few seconds there.
Listen to the whole section of Ben explaining that, and
it makes all total sense. And it does and I agree, Ben,
but just think about it in the context of a
male sexual organ and then like think about to two
different types of power, because it totally matches up and
it freaks me out. It's creepy, but it's hilarious too,
(50:53):
it's really really funny. Okay, okay, come back, turn back on.
All right, here we go. All right. So this is uh,
this is a real thing. It's what people are talking
about when when they say winning hearts and minds, and
there's nothing inherently wrong with it. That's I think there's
absolutely nothing wrong with it. That's why it's a big
(51:15):
part of civilization, I mean human civilization as well as
the amazing game series Civilization. Matt, did you ever play
that game? So, I'm sure you have. I'm certain you have.
I did, But honestly, I'm not into it. I'm not
into it. It's just way too many. I got increased
numbers here and there and do small actions, not enough,
not enough real action. You know. It was more of
(51:36):
like a soft game for me than a hard game.
Does that make sense? Oh my god, you're not letting
this go all right? Uh? Yeah, no, it makes sense.
People who play Civilization, one of the things will notice
is that there are ways to win the game that
are entirely cultural and nature. You can have a chosen religion,
you can become a theocracy. You can achieve a cultural
(51:58):
victory with out deploying militaries. So there is, I feel
we're saying it now, there is power to that soft
power stuff, right, Uh, but not all of it is ethical.
This is something. This leads us to something called sportswashing,
and there's not a real, like agreed upon definition, but
(52:22):
most people think that it is a phenomenon defined by
a couple of things. A big powerful entity, a state,
or maybe in a nonstate actor uses sports to make
themselves look better in the public eye, and they can.
This can be anything from uh, sponsoring sports teams. Right,
(52:44):
you know, a very wealthy person who needs the reputation
repaired buys a sports team. Then there are you know,
the idea of hosting sporting events and competitions. Right, the
the the Olympics in modern history have all always been
to a degree diplomatic in nature. Right, there's a lot
(53:04):
of soft power there. Okay, we're just start We're gonna
start calling it some different hard power for softwire. You
guys gotta see Matt, I just wish I do with
the jokes that we're going through your head. I'm sorry,
I'm like ten twelve years old. Today we're hard powering
through it. It's we'll see no, Paul, keep it a uh.
(53:30):
So both sides of the human rights argument, engage in
sports is diplomacy, right, The United Nations does it, International
development agencies do it. Uh. Sports plays a role in
the story of a country. Right In South Africa, when
President Mandela co signed the national rugby team during the
(53:51):
World Cup of then that was seen as an example
of reconciliation. And that's why the world's most important sock
games or football games, excuse us, are a lot more
than just some excellent athletes kicking a ball around that.
And that's also why FIFA is not going to go away,
just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. It's already
(54:12):
the most popular, it's already the biggest name in the
most popular sport on the planet, which means I'll just
generate more and more money. Nott, my friend, I'm asking you,
what does this mean? How do people even try to
fix this? Well? I mean, I don't see how you do.
(54:33):
Right now, I think we should consult with Miles and
get him on the show to like give us, ah,
you know, some pointers. What does he think? How would
he change it? Let's put it on Miles instead of
on us. We'll pass that that well, we'll pass that buck,
(54:54):
We'll kick that ball over to over to Miles. I
think having a I think having that conversation, right, how
do you actually get a huge organization like this that does,
you know, connect all of these different countries, all of
the teams, all of the fans. How do you get
that organization to play fairly? And what would that even
(55:17):
look like? Because you know theoretically they've got the bidding
concept and the voting thing and all of that, And
I think that might be the crux of the problem,
or at least the the biggest place where corruption can
begin is that bid that everybody has to put in.
I don't know, there's something about that. Yeah, I think
(55:39):
that's a good point too. And this is just an intro, uh,
an intro into again, a multigenerational, ongoing series of conspiracies. Folks,
We want to hear from you. What would you say
are the solutions to this? Uh? Does FIFA have a
responsibility to be come more involved in controversies around human rights?
(56:04):
Or are they simply a sports organization with no um
Should that not affect their decision at all? We want
to hear from you. All you have to do is
drop by our Facebook page or Instagram page or our
YouTube conspiracy stuff. And if you don't like the social meads,
(56:25):
well you can always give us a phone call. Yes,
our number is one eight three three std w y
t K. It's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Please give yourself a cool nickname. We don't care what
it is. Let us know if we can use your
name and voice on one of our listener mail episodes
and say whatever you'd like. If you've got more to
(56:46):
say they can fit in that three minutes, why not
instead send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. M h M.
(57:14):
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Noel Brown
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