The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game

Donald Trump being awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize by Gianni Infantino

World Cup season is upon us- and even though it was held in the winter months in 2022 due to Qatar's scorching summer heat, June every four years usually means that it's time to bring out the vuvuzelas and bagpipes for most of the world. Yes, even the ones that did not qualify- one of the few categories you can put both Italy and India under. I'm sure Meloni and Modi will be delighted to find something in common!

However, before the tournament has even begun, greed and market politics have already reared their ugly heads towards the Indian football audience. With just a few weeks to go until the inaugural match of this year’s World Cup between Mexico and South Africa -hosted at the iconic Estadio Azteca (the first stadium to host two World Cup finals, in 1970 and 1986, and the venue where Diego Maradona scored his infamous Hand of God goal)- India still had no official broadcaster for the matches. The 2022 edition had been exceptionally smooth, with rights acquired by Viacom18 (the JioCinema/Sports18 network), which had made all matches free to watch for everyone, regardless of subscription. As a result, expectations among Indian viewers were already high.

Those hopes were quickly shattered when this year’s plans were revealed.

FIFA had initially demanded around $100 million (approximately ₹840 crores) for the broadcast rights. Both JioStar and Sony expressed interest in bidding, but ultimately backed out due to the time-zone difference- since the tournament is being hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, many matches will air at inconvenient hours for Indian viewers. Only a small fraction will kick off before midnight IST, significantly reducing expected viewership and advertising revenue. In simple terms, less money for broadcasters.

On the first of June, the official broadcast partner for the World Cup was finally confirmed: Zee5 had acquired the rights not only for this edition, but for over thirty FIFA events stretching until 2034, including the 2027 Women’s World Cup and the 2030 Men’s edition, for a reduced price of $60 million (approx. 500 crores) from FIFA. Unlike the free model offered by JioCinema four years ago, its subscription plans are exorbitant for Indian audiences.

Although the tournament itself lasts barely a month, Zee5 introduced 'World Cup special' subscription packages -either for three months or a full year- priced far beyond what most average viewers would consider reasonable. The 3-month plan costs ₹799 (with limited advertisements), while the annual plan is priced at a whopping ₹1,699. Moreover, while the platform initially advertised 4K streaming on its website and app, it was later clarified on Twitter that matches would only be available in 1080p, not 4K as suggested previously. These unbelievable prices have led most of the Indian youth to depend either on pirated streams ("Illegal, but free" being their motto) or exploiting the 3 devices per account limit to share a single account (and the cost of it) with friends- although it still has not been confirmed by Zee5 whether matches can be streamed simultaneously on three devices.

Zee5 subscription plans for the 2026 FIFA World Cup

This gross commodification of football is not limited to distant overseas audiences, nor just international tournaments; even the most popular clubs in their respective European leagues have priced out the average fan from attending matches over the course of the last couple of decades. At Arsenal, the 2025/26 English Premier League defending champions and UEFA Champions League finalists (not winners- haha), the most expensive season ticket now costs over £2,000 (about ₹2.5 lakhs)- yet elsewhere, clubs such as Bayern Munich have historically maintained far lower ticket prices, helped by Germany's 50+1 fan-centric ownership structure and culture. Their cheapest season ticket is around £150, 7.5% of Arsenal's ticket price. However, this 50+1 structure (which allows investors to buy big stakes in the club, but does not give them the power to make uncontested decisions without the club members' agreement) does not appear to be coming to England anytime soon. Only one of the traditional Premier League 'big 6' is owned completely by UK-based groups- Tottenham Hotspur, which is owned roughly 87.6% by the ENIC family and the rest by minority stakeholders. Out of the remaining five, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool are owned fully or partially by American-led families or consortiums, and Manchester City is infamously owned by the City Football Group, led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan from the UAE. This illustrates yet again how supporters may fill the stadiums, but in modern football, they are not the people with a seat at the table. 

As George Carlin once said, 

"It's a big club, and you ain't in it."

And nowhere is that club more elusive and elitist than at the headquarters of FIFA itself.  

In late 2025, FIFA created a brand-new Peace Prize (to "reward individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and by doing so have united people across the world") and immediately awarded its inaugural edition to US President Donald Trump during the 2026 World Cup draw. Let us analyse that reasoning for a bit.

"Individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace"- doesn't that sentence just conjure up the spitting image of the President when you read it? This is the man whose supporters stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempted coup, who authorized a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020 and most recently, started a literal war in Iran, which has led to innumerable deaths of innocent civilians. 

"United people across the world"- this bit might actually hold a semblance of truth. He really has united people across the globe and turned the most powerful nation in the world to a laughing stock, seemingly overnight, after the commencement of his second term. What he definitely has not done, however, is bring people together in an effort to foster peace and goodwill. You can confirm that with the Iranian boy who lost his father, the Ukrainian parent who lost their only child (Trump has always maintained an ever-hearty relationship with Russian 'president' Vladimir Putin) or the Palestinian patients who died due to Israel's bombings (In 2025, Trump publicly disagreed with the UK's decision to recognize Palestine).

Is this really a man who deserves to be anywhere near any sort of a peace prize? You can ask that question to FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Does a footballing body even need to have a dedicated international peace prize? 

Infantino has presented his repeated moral ambiguity unashamedly since he was elected in 2016 as the reformer who would clean up FIFA after ex-president Sepp Blatter (whose actions probably deserve a standalone article). 

In 2017, FIFA removed the heads of its Ethics Committee, Hans-Joachim Eckert and Cornel Borbély- quite bold to be elected after campaigning as someone against corruption and then removing your heads of ethics a year later, eh?

In 2020, Infantino held a series of unofficial, undocumented and undisclosed meetings with Switzerland's attorney general Michael Lauber, who was investigated and accused of corruption. The attorney general was later found by a court to have concealed information about said meetings. Swiss special prosecutors opened proceedings relating to Infantino, but they were eventually closed without charges.

And that doesn't even include FIFA's continued defence of controversial World Cups in Russia and Qatar, tournaments that became synonymous with allegations of human-rights abuses and political sportswashing. Infantino is really beginning to look like someone who should never be giving out peace prizes, right?

And yet, he is, and presumably will be, for the foreseeable future. There is next to nothing that the average football fan like you or me can do about it. Protests against the commercialization of the beautiful game have been on the rise ever since the tried-and-failed introduction of the European Super League in 2021, with the Chelsea FC fans making their voices heard outside Stamford Bridge on 20th April of the same year- which eventually led to Manchester City and Chelsea being the first clubs to withdraw from the breakaway league just two days later. One of my proudest moments as a Chelsea fan. However, protests against the ever-rising ticket prices and the constant distancing of the fan from the pitch remain to be as widespread as the ESL was in 2021. 

Chelsea fans protesting against their American consortium-led ownership, BlueCo, on 20th March 2026

So... what's the solution here? More protests? More outrage? Not going to games? Boycotting the World Cup?

While all those solutions sound great in theory, none of them are practical. If you don't buy your club's season ticket, someone else definitely will, at the first chance they get. If you don't make the trip to the USA for the World Cup, someone else will gladly snatch your seat- and for good reason. Perhaps it would be the first ever World Cup game for that person, or maybe they have saved up for years to take the flight to the game. After all, it's football. It's not really just a game, is it? It never has been. It was, is, and always will be a culture. A lifestyle. 

I think the first step is acceptance. As fans, we need to step back and accept that football has effectively been taken away from our hands. It is not the people's sport anymore, and has not been for the last few decades. It has been stripped away from us and handed to the global elite- for advertisements, brand recognition, and again, just a source of 'earning' even more millions and perhaps billions. As much as I hate Arsenal, another part of our beloved sport died when PSG won its second consecutive Champions League trophy against them, 15 years after Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) purchased a 70% stake in the club. It died when an Emirati sheikh bought Manchester City, and turned them into quite a nuisance for Manchester United -and the rest of the league- winning 9 PL titles and a UCL since their takeover in 2008. As much as it hurts to say, it also died when Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch, bought Chelsea in 2003. 

Dear reader, I am not asking you to give up your viewership of this year's World Cup, but I do request you to keep this article -and more importantly, its words- in the back of your mind as you watch the matches. Remember the lives of the migrant workers of years past who died to build the stadiums the games were held in. Remember those who died due to the advocacy of the elites associated with our game.

Yes, our game. Forever and always.