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What Is FIFA For?

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A wide-ranging look at football’s powerful but controversial governing body. Football is the world’s most popular sport and truly a global phenomenon. As a result, it attracts huge sums of money fr...
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  • 31 March 2026
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A wide-ranging look at football’s powerful but controversial governing body.

Football is the world’s most popular sport and truly a global phenomenon. As a result, it attracts huge sums of money from its advertisers, sponsors and broadcasters, much of which flows to FIFA, the sport’s international governing body. So, given its decidedly chequered history, the question of what FIFA is for is crucial to the game’s future.

Examining the organisation’s successes such as the explosion of interest in the women’s game, alongside its failures and continuing crises over corruption and ethics, Alan Tomlinson asks: what will it take for FIFA to genuinely live up to its own mission of integrity, fair play and accessibility?

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Price: $13.95
Pages: 192
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Series: What Is It For?
Publication Date: 31 March 2026
ISBN: 9781529245745
Format: Paperback
BISACs: SPORTS & RECREATION / Soccer, Association football (Soccer), POLITICAL SCIENCE / Corruption & Misconduct, SPORTS & RECREATION / Cultural & Social Aspects, Corruption in politics, government and society, Business ethics and social responsibility, Sport and the law, World Cups and World championships
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“FIFA is world class at making money – but then what? If there's anyone who can answer that question, it's Alan Tomlinson.” Brian Oliver, former sports editor of The Observer
Alan Tomlinson is Emeritus Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Brighton UK and a pioneer of critical sport and leisure research, blending cultural studies with investigative and in-the-field research. He has been writing about FIFA since the big money started to flow in the 1980s and has written extensively on sport and leisure themes.

1 . Introduction: FIFA – What’s at Stake?

2 . FIFA and the Making of the Modern Game

3 . FIFA and its Members

4 . FIFA and its Commercial Partners

5 . ‘Good-looking Governance’: Investigating Corruption

6 . FIFA and the Americas

7 . FIFA in Africa and Asia: Challenges and Constraints

8. FIFA and the Women’s Game

9. A Law unto Itself?

10. Conclusion