Fifa has admitted defeat over plans to make Visit Saudi a major sponsor of this year’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand after a huge backlash from organisers and players.
At the Fifa congress in Kigali, Rwanda, Gianni Infantino said: “I can clarify that there were discussions with Visit Saudi. At the end this discussion didn’t lead into a contract. How do you say it? It was a storm in a water glass. A storm in a teacup.”
Despite the Fifa president’s attempts to make light of the situation, this is a significant victory for organisers, who were left blindsided in January by reports suggesting a deal was close, given the Saudi state’s appalling human rights record, and had put significant public pressure on Fifa to change course.
Several players had also spoken out, including Arsenal’s Netherlands striker Vivianne Miedema, who told Fifa it should be “deeply ashamed” for even considering such a deal. However, Infantino, who announced a $150m (£124m) prize fund for this year’s Women’s World Cup – a 300% rise from 2019 – said he didn’t see anything wrong with taking sponsorship from countries such as Saudi Arabia.
“Fifa is an organisation of 211 countries,” he said. “For us they are all the same. There wouldn’t be anything bad in making sponsorships from Saudi Arabia, China, United States of America, Brazil or India as far as we are concerned.”
Infantino also pointed out that while there had been a backlash to the mooted Visit Saudi deal, very little was being said about the $1.5bn worth of trade between Australia and Saudi Arabia every year. “This doesn’t seem to be a problem,” he said. “But between a global organisation like Fifa and Visit Saudi this would have been an issue. There is a double standard here, which I really don’t understand.
“There is no issue and no contract. There are discussions and, of course, we want to see how we can involve Saudi sponsors in women’s football generally, how we can involve Saudi sponsors in men football, or we can involve Qatari sponsors in women’s football and men’s football, and all other sponsors from all over the world.”
The decision was welcomed by Football Australia’s chief executive, James Johnson, who said: “Equality, diversity and inclusion are really deep commitments for Football Australia and we’ll continue to work hard with Fifa to ensure the Women’s World Cup is shaped in this light.”
Earlier, Infantino targeted broadcasters, some of them public service channels funded by taxpayers, who he said offered up to 100 times less for rights to the women’s tournament. “Well, offer us 20% less, 50% less, but not 100% less,” he said in closing remarks to the congress. “That’s why we can’t do it.”
Infantino set a target of equal prize money for men and women at their next World Cups, in 2026 and 2027, respectively – a tough task when the 32 men’s teams shared $440m at last year’s World Cup in Qatar. “Women deserve much, much more than that and we are there to fight for them and with them,” he said.
After being elected unopposed to another four-year term, Infantino told delegates a visit to a memorial for the victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide had inspired him to carry on when his first campaign for the top job in football looked in trouble.
“I was pretty depressed, about to give up,” he said, after hearing that African delegates would not support him. “I had already packed, and suddenly somebody came to see me and he gave me a ticket for the match of the final, because I had no ticket, and he told me: ‘This is a ticket offered to you by President Paul Kagame.’
“And then I remembered my visit to the memorial. And I said: ‘Who am I to give up?’ What this country has suffered and how this country came back up is inspiring for the entire world, dear president [Kagame]. So I certainly couldn’t give up because somebody was saying something. The next day I attended the match, I continued to campaign and I was elected the Fifa president a few months later.”
Infantino also took a shot at critics who derided his speech at the World Cup where he accused critics of Qatar’s human rights record of hypocrisy and racism, saying: “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel like a migrant worker.”
“You don’t need to like me, you don’t need to love me,” he said. “But today, I was reelected after having received more than 200 letters of endorsement. I got a standing ovation. So the overwhelming majority has the feeling that I’m doing a pretty good job.”
