FIFA’s latest grand tournament, the month-long Club World Cup has kicked off in the USA. The expanded 32-team games flex the football industry’s money making power, while spotlighting its disregard for people and planet
There’s a huge football tournament taking place right now in the USA, yet low ticket sales and elite player complaints of the ‘excessive workloads’ that a prolonged football season has on their wellbeing speak to FIFA’s Club World Cup not being high up on anyone’s summer wishlist.
That’s before considering how this super event, expanded from a format that featured a seven-team knock-out played within a couple of weeks to a whopping 32-team competition played over one month, negatively impacts the climate. Nor has FIFA given much consideration to the fact that this tournament is taking place against the backdrop of an increasingly authoritarian US government routinely conducting immigration raids described by Amnesty International as “fixated on his (President Trump’s) mass deportation agenda, rooted in white supremacist beliefs and narratives, to unjustly go after our immigrant friends and neighbours across the United States.”
Commenting on the Guardian Football Weekly podcast, host and journalist Max Rushden said, “Experienced dictatorships – Russia, Qatar – they made sure that we didn’t see that during the tournament. This country that is trying to become a dictatorship but isn’t quite there yet, hasn’t worked this subtle part out.”
FIFA throughout it all has been entirely enthusiastic of its showcase event, which offers an incredible $1 billion prize purse and hosts powerhouse teams, including reigning European champions Paris Saint Germain, 15-time Champions League winners Real Madrid, and Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami.
Moneyball
The enlarged scale of this event comes as no surprise. It fits in with FIFA’s general push in recent years for ever-bigger and brasher events. Where there is money to be made, it seems that world football’s governing body can be found excitedly kicking the ball into the net.
The organisation does not appear to be picky about where its money comes from, as reflected in its addiction to fossil fuel sponsorship, despite its stated commitment to the climate. These range from FIFA’s global partnership with Saudi Arabian petroleum giant Aramco, which was announced last year, to the Club World Cup sponsored by high-emission operations, including the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Qatar Airways.
These sponsorships do work – for the sponsor and FIFA, not for the climate. New Weather Institute research shows that airlines are major footballing sponsors. For example, Qatar Airways spent an eye-watering $119 million to sponsor the 2022 World Cup. This was equivalent to 4.2 million tonnes of emissions, according to the New Weather Institute.
FIFA also doesn’t appear terribly troubled about where its competitions take place. Recent editions have been held in one problematic destination after another, in terms of their human rights, labour rights or environmental record. The 2018 World Cup was awarded to Russia, the 2022 edition to Qatar, the majority of the 2026 event will take place in the increasingly authoritarian USA, before a three-continent climate bomb in 2030 and Saudi Arabia’s heavy investment in football being rewarded with the 2034 showpiece.
Gianni Infantino, the president at the heart of FIFA’s big decisions, is entirely comfortable operating amongst this rogue’s gallery.
The Swiss native attended President Trump’s inauguration where he gleefully expressed, “I would like to thank President Trump, with whom I have a great friendship, and to assure him that, together, we will make not only America great again, but also the entire world, of course, because football – or soccer – unites the world.”
Washing as green as the grass on the pitch
Whether we should take Infantino’s words at face value is open to question.
An examination of the 2025 Club World Cup’s Climate Awareness page contains outdated information and imagines climate responsibility as an action of the individual, rather than for the organisation.
The page contains a link to FIFA’s climate strategy – published several years ago and only containing perspectives up to and including 2023. The foreword is attributed to Infantino who states correctly, “There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a climate emergency. Environmental and climate change experts are reporting increasing global levels of carbon dioxide, temperatures around the world at the highest levels ever recorded, ice caps melting and ocean levels rising faster than predicted, and with the world experiencing more extreme weather events than ever before.”
Yet, that FIFA has not thought to continuously update this document, or promote an updated version is evidence of corporate posturing that washes as green as the grass on the pitch.
A sustainability strategy is available for next summer’s World Cup, but not for this summer’s event.
For the 2025 Club World Cup, attendees are recommended repeatedly to take responsibility for their own footprint, and to get in touch with their local climate organisation. Climate leadership, that is not. That would require FIFA taking full responsibility for dialing down the entire tournament’s carbon footprint, both the direct emissions associated with hosting the tournament and the indirect emissions from fans travelling to watch the games.
The tournament’s giant footprint
Prior to the start of the tournament, 30 professional men’s players signed a letter calling for FIFA to move away from fossil fuel sponsorship. However, problematic sponsorship is not the only climatic concern of the Club World Cup.
Fossil Free Football has estimated that this expanded month-long format will result in the teams travelling a massive cumulative total of 564,877km of flights and 44,390 minutes of air-time across the tournament. That is before accounting for the travel of supporters during the tournament, which includes venues on both the East and West coast of the USA.
There is also significant worry that scenes from last summer’s Copa America tournament will reoccur. Matches then were played in the heat of the day, as they will for this edition to satisfy television broadcasting demands.
At a 2024 Copa America fixture played in Miami, Uruguay defender Ronald Araújo was substituted at half-time due to dizziness and a drop in blood pressure caused by dehydration, while the referee collapsed on the pitch when Peru played Canada in Kansas City.
Celtic defender Alistair Johnston (NOTE – whose penalty was saved heroically by Aberdeen goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov to deliver a sensational Scottish Cup victory for the granite city team) said of the Kansas City contest, “It”s one of those kinds of matches that the conditions you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”
The Canadian suggested that matches should be scheduled to take place in the evening, “Because honestly, it’s not even safe for the fans.”
Regrettably many Club World Cup matches will take place in the heat of the day, compounding player welfare issues.
Fair play for the climate
For CMW’s Benja Faecks, who dissected the climate credentials of the 2024 Paris Olympic games, FIFA must start walking the walk, and not just talk the talk.
“Mega events must undergo a fundamental makeeover. There is no way an event’s mass climatic impact can be compensated by a well-meaning sustainability mindset alone,” Faecks explained. “FIFA must return to football’s fair play ethos. Rather than unchecked financial greed, tournaments must be built on the foundations of social and climate responsibility.”
In CMW’s 2024 ‘Going for Green’ report we outlined strategies for how mega events should adapt to a low-carbon world. These included setting a carbon budget compatible with the Paris Agreement, and structuring the event to reduce the size of the games and limit air travel.
Our analysis of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar urged FIFA to communicate responsibly about its environmental claims, rethink how it organises this tournament, and slash the need for massive construction and air travel. That regrettably continues to fall on deaf ears.
It is Infantino’s dream to make the world great again through football. Rather than great again, he must make the beautiful game beautiful again. Climate and social concerns must become the sport’s primary goals, taking precedence over oiling football’s slick profit machine.
