Empire of Money — Havelange, Adidas, and Broadcast Rights

Last time, Argentina’s military regime used football for the sake of politics. But around the same period, off the pitch, an entirely different force was preparing to swarm around the game. Not politics — money.

Until now, the World Cup had been told as a story of national prestige and reconstruction. From here on, another protagonist steps to the front. It is a force that moves not on the field but in the boardroom — the story of how FIFA itself, an organization, gradually transformed into a “power that transcends nations.” Standing at that turning point was a single Brazilian.

The Man Who Took the Throne

In June 1974, just before the West Germany World Cup kicked off, a coup of sorts took place at the FIFA Congress held in Frankfurt.

For 33 years, FIFA had been led by the Englishman Stanley Rous — a gentleman of the old world who sought to protect football as “the noble pursuit of amateurs.” He was defeated at the ballot by the Brazilian businessman João Havelange, the first man from outside Europe ever to take the FIFA presidency.

Why was Havelange able to win? The votes he gathered did not come from Europe’s old powers. They came from Africa, Asia, and Latin America — the very nations that had until then been kept far from FIFA’s center of gravity.

Elected on lofty ideals but with no funds to support them: this very contradiction that Havelange faced would become the engine that changed football from the ground up. If there isn’t enough money, then earn it. He made the decision to turn football into something to sell.

Dassler the Alchemist

Before a Havelange in search of funds, one man appeared with exquisite timing: Horst Dassler. The son of the founder of the sporting-goods maker Adidas, he was a man then taking firm hold of the company’s reins.

Dassler was no mere heir to a shoe shop. He was the first in the world to see that “sport and marketing belong together” — a genius of commercialization, you might say. Put shoes on the athletes, build connections with the executives of governing bodies, turn the tournaments themselves into advertising media: he was the man who systematized that method earlier than anyone.

Dassler drew close to the new president Havelange and offered a solution to FIFA’s weakness — its lack of money. Sponsors and broadcast rights.

Dassler is said to have talked the world’s largest beverage company, Coca-Cola, into becoming FIFA’s first full-scale corporate sponsor. The sum promised was on the order of eight million dollars. From here began the age in which the logos of giant consumer brands lined football matches. Before long, Dassler partnered with firms such as Dentsu to launch a dedicated sports-marketing company, building a colossal machine that handled the commercial rights to the Olympics and the World Cup all at once. FIFA’s once-empty coffers swiftly began to fill.

Broadcast Rights, a Gold Mine

Alongside sponsorship fees lay another vast gold mine: television broadcast rights.

As we saw earlier, television had already turned the World Cup into a planet-sized event. Billions of people around the world watched the same match in the same instant. No broadcaster could be expected to air content that commanded such attention for free. The “right to show these images” itself came to carry an astronomical price.

FIFA became the house that held those broadcast rights. The bigger the tournament grew and the more viewers it drew, the higher the value of the rights climbed. Sponsorship fees and broadcast income — these two pillars pushed FIFA, in one stroke, into a wealthy organization.

The money that flowed in was, in part, spent as promised. At the 1982 Spain World Cup, the field expanded from 16 to 24 teams. Beyond Europe and South America, the gate widened so that nations of Africa and Asia could stand on the world’s greatest stage. A youth world championship was created as well. Havelange’s campaign promises, thanks to the money Dassler brought, genuinely took shape.

A Power That Transcends Nations

What was born here deserves a clear-eyed look.

FIFA had originally been no more than a liaison body coordinating national football associations. Then, gaining the twin pillars of sponsorship and broadcast rights, it became an organization that generated enormous wealth on its own. Wealth breeds power. Which country hosts the World Cup. How many entry slots go to which continent. FIFA’s vote, holding the power to decide such things, became something even heads of state would bow to obtain.

Havelange held the presidency until 1998 — 24 long years. During that time, it is true, he advanced programs to support football’s developing regions and contributed greatly to the game’s global spread. But the system of “commercialization and concentrated power” that he established would later reveal grave side effects. A flow of enormous money lacking in transparency can become a breeding ground for corruption — and those seeds were quietly planted in precisely this period, as the wealth swelled.

And at Havelange’s side stood a man who supported the commercial line in practice: Sepp Blatter, who became general secretary in 1981. He is the one who would inherit this empire and, in time, inflate its contradictions to their peak. That story will be told a little further on.

The empire of money was built in this way. Wealth swelled, attention gathered, and the eyes of the world were fixed on a single point: the World Cup. A stage grown this immense needs a performer to match it.

Next time, onto that stage, a genius appears. A single individual, he nonetheless carried the destiny of a nation and the emotions of its people on his small frame. 1986, Mexico. The story of Diego Maradona begins.