Latest / Best of Business / Fred de Jong: former All White on the proposed $20 billion FIFA World Cup commercial rights sale plan

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Fred de Jong: former All White on the proposed $20 billion FIFA World Cup commercial rights sale plan · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: So we spoke about this earlier. But Infantino, as the
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  Speaker 2: FIFA boss, wants to sell off the FIFA World Cup,
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  Speaker 2: I know, the Jewel in the Crown, wants to create
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  Speaker 2: a private company, a subsidiary to run the cup. And
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  Speaker 2: guess what, the Kushner family I the Trumps have been
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  Speaker 2: named as private investors backing the idea. The European Football
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  Speaker 2: Body don't like it. Fred Diong is a former All
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  Speaker 2: White joins me. Now, Fred, your.
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  Speaker 3: Thoughts show me a bit of transparency would be the
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  Speaker 3: first one I think. Yeah, you'll sort of line up
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  Speaker 3: with you AFA on this one. Not a good idea,
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  Speaker 3: you know, as you say, it's the Jewel the FIFA
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  Speaker 3: World Cups, the Jewel in the Crown. This would actually
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  Speaker 3: be an organization that runs all of FIFA's tournaments. So
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  Speaker 3: you'd be looking at the Women's World Cup and the
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  Speaker 3: Club World Cup as well, and then the Women's Club
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  Speaker 3: World Cup. And I think there's some worrying things in
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  Speaker 3: here because obviously you give it to a third party
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  Speaker 3: who would have a non controlling stake in that separate company.
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  Speaker 3: But still they would have a lot of influence and
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  Speaker 3: they will have shareholders who want to maximize the profit.
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  Speaker 3: So what are they going to want to see out
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  Speaker 3: of the World Cup. They want to see sixty four teams.
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  Speaker 3: They want to see it played every two years instead
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  Speaker 3: of every four years. And that's sort of at a
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  Speaker 3: macro level. I think at a micro level, you'll see
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  Speaker 3: a whole lot more advertising, hydration breaks, timeouts. You'll see
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  Speaker 3: there's one of the cool things about football is when
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  Speaker 3: you look at a football pitch, there's no advertising on
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  Speaker 3: the football pitch, and there's no advertising on an international
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  Speaker 3: team shirt. So those sort of things will disappear and
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  Speaker 3: you'll see so the game will change, and not for
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  Speaker 3: the better.
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  Speaker 2: Fred, I'm sitting here listening to you and nodding. However,
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  Speaker 2: there are many sports around the world who would die
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  Speaker 2: to be in the position where advertisers and investors were
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  Speaker 2: falling over themselves to rush at your sport. You know,
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  Speaker 2: is there not a way? Because this money, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: if you listen to Inventino's is going to help go
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  Speaker 2: to a development fund that's going to give some programs
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  Speaker 2: and make the sport bigger and better. Is it could
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  Speaker 2: this not be seen as a positive thing?
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  Speaker 3: I think again it's skepticism because interestingly, they're going to
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  Speaker 3: sell a twenty percent steak for four point two billion.
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  Speaker 3: There's two hundred and eleven countries around the world that
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  Speaker 3: lines beautifully up for twenty million dollars each. So that's
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  Speaker 3: why I'm slightly cynical about some of these things. So
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  Speaker 3: at the moment, countries, any country in the world, the
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  Speaker 3: two hundred and eleven FIFA countries can get eight million
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  Speaker 3: dollars in grants. So what they're saying here is we're
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  Speaker 3: going to up that eight million to twenty million, and
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  Speaker 3: then it's going to go more and more. So it's
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  Speaker 3: basically pork goal politics because you want to All they're
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  Speaker 3: doing is saying, here's twenty million dollars, I want you
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  Speaker 3: a vote. So this is the trade off for this money.
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  Speaker 3: And so yeah, it's the countries around the world. For
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  Speaker 3: some countries, twenty million dollars is dropping the bucket. For
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  Speaker 3: a lot of countries around the world, it's yeah, it's
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  Speaker 3: a lot of money, and so they would be very
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  Speaker 3: easily swayed to say yes to something like this. It's
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  Speaker 3: just that again. It comes back to for me when
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  Speaker 3: you say, you know it, could it be a good thing.
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  Speaker 3: It's a transparency around it. If it was a really
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  Speaker 3: good thing, then it should be something that's discussed and
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  Speaker 3: at board levels and then proposals put forward and they
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  Speaker 3: like rather than it's rather than edict that comes down.
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  Speaker 2: This is it from on high and the guy is
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  Speaker 2: giving thank you for that. Fred. That's Fred Diong who
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  Speaker 2: formed All White with basically saying bad idea, don't like
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  Speaker 2: it and don't like where it's come.
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