About the campaign
What is the Reboot campaign?
Football needs a global, not-for-profit association that truly represents its member associations and the football community. FIFA can be that. But not without fundamental changes.
Our research and investigations have shown that FIFA isn’t fit to govern world football and needs to be rebooted as an organisation so that it runs the global game in the interests of players, supporters and communities, rather than the interests of corrupt football elites, big business and authoritarian states.
Our work has also shown that FIFA cannot and will not restructure itself into a more democratic, transparent and accountable organisation – the vested interests in keeping the same broken system are too powerful. Change will have to be imposed on FIFA.
This will not be easy but it is possible. We believe we can force FIFA to fundamentally change its structure by:
- exposing how it has become more self-serving, unaccountable and dysfunctional as an organisation since bringing in its own governance ‘reforms’ in 2016 in response to US Department of Justice prosecutions of senior FIFA officials,
- uncovering hard evidence of abuse of power, exploitative governance and, if it exists, corruption,
- showing how the people who run football are divorced from and have no interest in representing the true football community,
- putting all of this concrete evidence in front of the people who have the power to reform FIFA – politicians, governments, football associations and sponsors — and pushing them to act.
Proving that FIFA is more badly run than it has ever been, outlining the disastrous impact of this, and effectively explaining why that matters to millions of people, will enable us to get this issue on the political agenda of governments who can force it to reform, and transform it into the progressive force for good for world football it has the potential to be.
A rebooted FIFA would have a radically different structure and would operate under basic principles of good governance for the first time in its history:
- The billions of dollars it distributes would be properly audited, and development money would go to the member associations that need it the most.
- Its commercial operations would be entirely separate from its regulatory and governance functions to eliminate gross conflicts of interest.
- It would be open and transparent about its affairs, properly accountable to its members and the football community, and answerable to the figures in the media that have exposed wrongdoing over decades.
Who’s behind the campaign?
The campaign is run by FairSquare. We’re a UK-based non-profit organisation working to improve accountability in sport.
We believe sport has the potential to play a transformative, positive role in society, but too often its power is misappropriated and exploited.
Our work is rooted in rigorous research and effective advocacy and is informed by years of reporting and campaigning on abuses connected to the Qatar 2022 World Cup, and the role of FIFA.
We have led calls to end state ownership of football clubs, and used legal and other avenues to challenge rule-breaking, governance failures and violations of international law, simultaneously exposing how football has become a political tool for autocrats and billionaires.
You can read more about our work here.
Our Advisory Board
The Reboot campaign also has an Advisory Board. Its members have been chosen for their knowledge, experience and commitment to the issues we’re campaigning on. They come from a diversity of backgrounds and provide advice, support and guidance.
FAQS
FIFA has been “reforming” for decades after multiple investigations, exposes and scandals, but it has never addressed the central structural problems in its governance system. As a result it has ended up even less accountable to the people and groups it is supposed to represent and worse governed and more dangerous than at any time in its history.
But FIFA has also never been subjected to a sustained, systematic and rigorous campaign for it to radically restructure itself. We believe if we can fully expose the scope and gravity of its failings, we can force change.
Investigations have proved corruption in the past, but while they exposed the problems, they let FIFA decide how to fix them. Exposes and scandals have captured public attention, but have failed to convince the people who actually have the power to properly reform FIFA.
If we can gather enough hard evidence, and enough support from people around the world who care about the game and understand why it’s important, we believe we can persuade politicians, governments, football associations and sponsors to act to reboot and regulate FIFA.
FIFA’s problems are serious but there are lots of things about the way it currently operates that do make a lot of sense.
FIFA should be a not-for-profit association that represents its member associations.
Its job should be to develop the game and redistribute the money football generates to the countries that need it most and where football’s transformative potential is vast.
Football needs an organisation at the top of a pyramid to set rules and principles and standards.
And while the problems it has cannot be fixed from within, from a structural perspective they are not particularly complex.
Independent auditing of how FIFA redistributes money, the separation of its commercial and regulatory branches, and updating its basic governance structures so that they are underpinned by the principles of transparency, democracy and accountability will fix the key problems.
Replacing it entirely could leave the door open to a full takeover from private capital and authoritarian states that have done so much damage to the game already.