By: Hee-Dee Walenga
The recently concluded World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland saw the five-day congregation of the world’s most powerful leaders. Whilst the forum exists to discuss the world’s economic issues, sport was also on the agenda.
I was uber excited to hear how sport would be discussed on a world stage in front of people who are responsible for the world’s economy. To save you the suspense, I was left unfulfilled and confused.
FIFA President, Giovanni Infantino, former Arsenal manager and current FIFA Chief of Global Football Development, Arsène Wenger, and Italian icon & World Cup winner Alessandro Del Piero, represented the sporting world during a discussion labelled as the ‘Kick Off’ for the 2026 FIFA World Cup – which should have been an early red flag – but my excitement remained.
Infantino kicked things off by stating that the economic impact of the FIFA World Cup is to the tune of US$80 billion. “This is not me saying this, this is according to the World Trade Organisation,” the FIFA President assured.
He added that it created 825 full time jobs and pays salaries of over US$20 billion. “We will have 7 million spectators in the stadiums and 6 billion people all over the world watching the World Cup,” Infantino added. He also revealed that FIFA has received half a billion ticket requests for this year’s World Cup, 50x the volume of requests normally received.
To put that into perspective, since the first World Cup in 1930, FIFA has sold ≈ 50 million tickets to World Cup matches. At that pace, FIFA has received 1000 years’ worth of World Cup ticket requests for the 2026 World Cup.
Inexplicably, the FIFA president also used his time to make a joke about how “For the first time in history also, no Brit was arrested during a World Cup,” in reference to the alcohol-free 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
After a series of non-economic questions that I can politely describe as filler questions, Wenger was asked about the FIFA Talent Development Scheme, a global programme which he leads and has been the recipient of major investment from FIFA.
“Before I came to FIFA, I did not know what FIFA does with the money, but I know today that it goes to the federations to develop their infrastructures,” the legendary manager stated.
Wenger also made the correlation between education and footballing success. “There is a huge correlation between the quality of education and the ranking at the senior level,” he stated whilst explaining that the countries currently ranked in FIFA’s top 20 are those with high levels of education.
“The AFCON final was between Morocco and Senegal, two countries that are among the best at the youth level. It is not a coincidence that they made the final because we know how educated their youth are,” Wenger explained.
Disappointingly, that is where the economic conversation ended in relation to sport at the World Economic Forum. Del Piero was only there to answer questions such as how he felt lifting the World Cup trophy in 2006 and his first World Cup memory.
I suppose the session successfully ‘kicked off’ the World Cup, although I am not sure why we needed to hear this at the World Economic Forum.
