From Sophie's front desk — Friday, July 31
BBC News — read the full story
The memo came back marked "not for sale" — Fifa's private equity plan rejected by fifty-five nations in a single vote. B.B.C. reports that Uefa's confederations have drawn a line: if Gianni Infantino pushes ahead with selling stakes in the World Cup, they'll boycott it entirely. The move isolates him — even Concacaf is walking away. Seneca thought this worth a word, and Benjamin Franklin after him.
Lucilius, You ask what I make of the news from the north , that the governors of the games have threatened to withdraw their cities from the great contest rather than see it sold to the money-lenders. I saw this shape in Corsica. The praetor there auctioned the grain supply to a syndicate of equites; the people starved while the ledgers balanced. When the spectacle becomes merchandise, the crowd becomes a customer. We called it annonaria then; they call it equity now.
The name changes. The hunger does not. I watched the gladiators at midday in the amphitheatre at Pompeii. The lanista sold his best fighter to a richer patron the night before the games. The crowd roared for a man who no longer fought for them.
That is the injury: not that the game changes hands... but that the loyalty embedded in it is treated as transferable property. The confederations have done the only honorable thing. They have said: this belongs to the people who play it and the people who watch it. Not to the calculators.
Write to me when you have seen the next auction. I want to know whether the buyers even know the rules.
events the issues of the most admirable projects, though we ought to praise the will itself which makes an effort in the right direction. Even though another passes it by with swifter pace, yet the palm of victory does not, as in publicly-exhibited races, declare which is the bet…
which are too great for a cynic to receive, yet nothing is so small, that it does not become a gracious king to bestow it." If you ask me, I applaud Antigonus; for it is not to be endured that a man who despises money should ask for it. Your cynic has publicly proclaimed his hatr…
athletes. But the solemnity is ended; go away like a grateful and modest man; make room for others; others also must be born, as you were, and, being born, they must have a place, and houses, and necessary things. And if the first do not retire, what remains? Why are you insatiab…
athletes. But the solemnity is ended; go away like a grateful and modest man; make room for others; others also must be born, as you were, and, being born, they must have a place, and houses, and necessary things. And if the first do not retire, what remains? Why are you insatiab…
all agreed. As when our neighbor’s boy has broken a cup, or the like, we are ready at once to say, “These are casualties that will happen”; be assured, then, that when your own cup is likewise broken, you ought to be affected just as when another’s cup was broken. Now apply this …
A joint-stock company buys a lighthouse; the light still shines, but the keeper now answers to shareholders who have never tasted salt spray. You have seen this in your own coffeehouse , the subscription library that thrives because every subscriber owns a share and guards the whole, versus the proprietary venture that sells its catalog to a London bookseller and finds the best volumes shipped abroad before the ink dries on the deed. We fought a war, you and I, against a proprietorship that treated Pennsylvania as its private estate. The Penn family sold quitrents and manor lands while the assembly begged for paper money to pay the frontier forts. Private equity in a public trust does not align incentives; it extracts them. The World Cup, as these footballers call it, belongs to the associations that built it , fifty-five voices, one vote each.
Infantino offers them a price. They answer with a boycott. A public office is a public trust, Poor Richard might have said, but a public tournament sold to private capital becomes a private tollgate... Yet I recall the Philadelphia Contributionship, 1752 , a mutual insurance company, owned by its policyholders, capital pooled from private purses for public fire protection. Private money, public purpose, governed by those who bore the risk. The difference?
The policyholders held the charter. These football confederations hold nothing... but a threat to walk away. The ball is round. The game is ninety minutes. The governance is everything else.
Sir March. 13. 78. Before I quitted this place it was my wish to put the public commercial business, as far as I was empowerd, into such a train that it might be conducted with harmony and effect. I had experienced in myself that the partiality you and Mr. Deane manifested for Mr…
This letter from Elias Boudinot, president of Congress, not only announces the resignation of Minister for Foreign Affairs Robert R. Livingston, it also encloses a resolution of great importance to the peace commissioners. On February 5 John Adams had written to Congress that the…
would have to be acknowledged, for “otherwise The Compact would not be Compleat.” This message put the delegates in a difficult position. If they agreed to an unofficial meeting, they might be accused of clutching at any straw to find a settlement; if they refused a meeting, they…
may it not? A. Suppose a military force sent into America, they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one. [84] Q. If the act is not repealed,…
<The Hague, November 20, 1778, in French: Returning here, I learned from our friend that the Provincial Assembly by majority vote has resolved against providing convoys and in favor of the Admiralty’s advisory. Amsterdam has inserted a formal protest, which it demands be publishe…
The Contributionship worked because every policyholder inscribed his name in the ledger and every claim required a vote of the directors chosen from their own number , a charter that could not be amended by a single secretary in Zurich. F.I.F.A.'s statutes today grant the Congress one vote per association... yet the Council appoints the committees that write the regulations the Congress merely ratifies. That is not mutual ownership; that is a board of trustees who meet behind closed doors while the policyholders watch the fire spread. The London Assurance of 1720 failed when the directors speculated in South Sea stock with the premiums entrusted to them. Private capital serving public purpose demands a charter that binds the governors to the governed, not a statute that lets the governors rewrite the charter. The Philadelphia Contributionship still stands on Fourth Street because its deed cannot be altered without two-thirds of the subscribers. Football's confederations hold no such deed.
The story ran in B.B.C. News. Fifa's attempt to privatize the World Cup has unified football's major confederations against it — a rare moment when the sport's power brokers agree that some things shouldn't have shareholders. That's all for Old News today.