Ask HN: Is it possible to make another Football Federation?
We all love the game of football (soccer in US) and we all see how FIFA ruin the game. They are reluctant to use video technology and other rules (like allowing teams to make challenges on referee's decision) to help referees in their decisions and make a fair game. The goal line technology is using in this WC, but there are more things we can do to help in decisions like offside, red card, penalty. Football is the game of 22 players on the field, and the referees are there to make it fair, not to make wrong decisions that change the whole game. Referees are humans and they make mistakes, but we have technology to fix their mistakes and probably save their life. There were cases where referees received death thread. And of course with all the corruption that we've heard about ...
We sure can make it better. And on the financial side, if we could form another football federation it would be a real business with a huge market. The revenue of this on-going 2014 Worldcup is 4B.
3 comments
In principle, yes. In practice its tough. You can look for parallels in what happened with Cricket in India, where it is huge.
A media mogul named Subhash chandra came up with the idea of "India Cricket League" (similar to English Premier league in English soccer. Lots of young cricketers signed up. When the Indian cricket association realised the money potential of this new tournament, they made declared that no one who participated in ICL would be allowed to participate in Indian national team, owned by India's cricket association. And since its the dream of every Indian boy to be part of national team (big bucks and media exposure), almost all players quit ICL...and teh league was effectively dead.
Moral of the story...How will you get players to play in your league?
A media mogul named Subhash chandra came up with the idea of "India Cricket League" (similar to English Premier league in English soccer. Lots of young cricketers signed up. When the Indian cricket association realised the money potential of this new tournament, they made declared that no one who participated in ICL would be allowed to participate in Indian national team, owned by India's cricket association. And since its the dream of every Indian boy to be part of national team (big bucks and media exposure), almost all players quit ICL...and teh league was effectively dead.
Moral of the story...How will you get players to play in your league?
Sure...if you have a lot of money and patience. As you point out, the current world cup is generating ~$4 billion in revenue...which means FIFA has a lot of bargaining power because it is already sitting on a lot of money.