How FIFA built a business empire around the world’s most popular sport

What do you think when you read or hear FIFA? Arguably the largest and most powerful single-sport governing body in the world, Zurich-headquartered FIFA -- the global governing body for football -- operates on a unique financial model built around four-year tournament cycles.

For the current 2023-26 cycle, it has budgeted a record $13 billion in revenue, including $8.84 billion earmarked specifically from television broadcasting, marketing, licensing and hospitality rights, and ticket sales, over the course of the cycle, according to the Inside FIFA portal. The cycle revenue marks a 72 per cent jump over the actual revenue in the previous cycle, reflecting cycle-on-cycle growth.

For its flagship tournament, the World Cup 2026, FIFA will host 104 matches between 48 teams in 16 cities across three host countries: the US, Canada and Mexico.

FIFA’s Business Logic: More teams = More matches = More broadcast = More tickets = More revenue

The 2026 edition of the Men’s FIFA World Cup marks the addition of 16 teams to the tournament, taking the total number of teams to 48. The unprecedented revenue cycle is focused on FIFA’s expanding scale.

Adding 16 more teams raises the number of matches to 104 versus 64 in the 1998-2022 era when 32 teams competed. The teams were divided into eight groups of four with each team playing the other three teams in their group once (48 group-stage matches with six matches per group). That was followed by 16 knockout-stage matches: eight ‘rounds of 16’ matches, four quarter finals, two semi finals, a third place play-off and the final.

In the 2026 edition of the high-octane contest, FIFA has introduced 16 knockout-stage ‘rounds of 32’ matches.

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What does this mean?

Essentially, more matches mean more broadcast hours to sell to global media partners, higher ticket sales, greater stadium attendance and increased revenue opportunities. The decision to expand the Men’s FIFA World Cup format by 50 per cent, to 48 teams, marks one of the biggest structural and commercial changes in the tournament's history.

FIFA plans to reinvest 90 per cent of its budgeted investments -- precisely $11.67 billion -- into global football development and related activities, like tournaments, member associations, infrastructure and training initiatives.

How FIFA came about and expanded its footprint

Founded in May 1904 in Paris, France, FIFA emerged as the first international governing body for football.What began as a modest administrative body in early 20th century delved into standardising football rules – including the first World Cup in 1930 -- through 1974.

The business empire truly emerged under Joao Havelange during the mid 70s to late 90s. Havelange created exclusive global partners sponsorship tiers with Coca-Cola and Adidas. Havelange is accredited with advocating the flow of money for FIFA’s growth. His partnership with Horst Dassler, son of the Adidas founder, and marketing firm ISL led to the concept of global partners -- or exclusive, high-priced sponsorship tiers -- in FIFA.

The federation’s partnerships with Coca-Cola (1974) and Adidas (1970) went beyond advertisements to structural investments in the sport’s development.

It was post-1998, widely considered as the modern football era, which saw TV rights become FIFA's top revenue source under Sepp Blatter and Gianni Infantino.

Today, FIFA operates its main tournaments, including the Men’s World Cup and the Women's World Cup, in a quadrennial cycle.

Z scores big for India

Zee Entertainment Enterprises has partnered with FIFA to bring 39 global football events including the FIFA World Cup 2026, the FIFA World Cup 2030 and the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027 for eight years in a row till 2034 through its newly-launched Unite8 Sports linear TV channels.

The FIFA World Cup kicks off on June 11. Indian viewers can catch the festival of football live across Unite8 Sports channels and Zee 5.