Jon Oliver of Last Week Tonight thinks that the arrests of top FIFA officials for widespread corruption does not go nearly far enough and has launched one of his campaigns, this time calling for the removal of its long time head Sepp Blatter, which he says could be facilitated by major sponsors withdrawing their support for FIFA.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Although FIFA is certainly corrupt, the reason that Blatter got re-elected is that under him, FIFA distributes funds to developing countries -- especially in Africa. This makes a change from a carve-up between the already rich and powerful (US, UK, Europe), which is the case in so many other areas. It is hard to shake the suspicion that a breakaway competition might go the way of the Premier League in England when it broke away from the football league -- a change for the wealthy teams to become even wealthier by dominating the take of TV revenues etc.
Another point -- I think that Blatter does not select the (possibly corrupt) members of the FIFA executive committee -- I think these are elected by the individual national football associations. Maybe Blatter had the power to change this but did not; this is not clear from the media reports -- all one hears is character assassination.
I agree that certainly FIFA should have taken a tougher stand about the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar.
Sepp Blatter to resign as Fifa president amid corruption scandal
Sepp Blatter says he will resign as FIFA president
I hadn’t seen his name mentioned until today, but the man who broke this story is a man whose name should already be familiar: Andrew Jennings, author of “The New Lords of the Rings”. He did the same twenty years ago, exposing corruption at the IOC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jennings