FIFA’s latest crisis shows why sport needs independent oversight

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Every now and then, sport is plunged into crisis when external scrutiny exposes opaque decisions or wrongdoing that its own institutions failed to identify or confront.

World football entered one of those moments a few weeks ago.

Reporting by The Times journalist Martyn Ziegler revealed Gianni Infantino’s plan to restructure FIFA’s commercial operations. From there, the tectonic plates began to shift.

UEFA threatened to boycott FIFA competitions, confederations protested the lack of consultation, and senior figures inside FIFA broke ranks. In an extraordinary statement, FIFA’s then chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, called the proposal the “project of one person”, said staff had been “deceived”, and accused the leadership of “contempt and intimidation”.

Within days, Infantino withdrew the plan.

FIFA’s elected bodies and internal checks did not alert the football world. Investigative journalism did.

Then the familiar cycle begins. Sports leaders claim to have learned the lessons and announce another round of reforms promising greater transparency and integrity – until the next survivor, whistleblower or investigation exposes what the system still failed to stop.

Play the Game has documented more than 25 years of corruption, doping scandals, abuse, match manipulation and other integrity breaches. Reform has too often followed external intervention rather than effective action from within sport.

The pattern stretches across sports. Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov, supported by investigative journalist Hajo Seppelt, helped expose Russia’s state-backed doping system.

The Larry Nassar case laid bare the devastating human cost of sport’s failed self-regulation: warnings from young gymnasts were mishandled or ignored until survivors, lawyers and journalists revealed that hundreds of girls and women had been abused. The institutions meant to protect them had instead left them trapped and helpless within the system.

Abdullah Ibhais, meanwhile, paid for speaking out about the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar with years in prison and prolonged separation from his family.

These cases differ in character, but share an institutional lesson: survivors, whistleblowers, journalists, lawyers, prosecutors and police repeatedly carry the burden of accountability when sport’s own structures fail.

This time, much of the attention has turned to Infantino’s future and UEFA’s search for a successor.

But any successor will inherit the same incentives, patronage networks, and fragile checks and balances. Replacing the person without changing those structures merely prepares the ground for the same failures to return.

The latest FIFA crisis opens a much larger debate about accountability across international sport.

That recurring failure led Play the Game to develop ClearingSport: a proposal for an independent international entity able to counter crime, corruption, and other integrity breaches in sport to protect athletes and those who interact with sport. It draws on extensive research and consultation with more than 200 experts in sport, law enforcement, governance, and integrity.

Its purpose is straightforward: to set common minimum standards for how sport is governed; establish a global regulator to monitor and enforce them; strengthen investigations while protecting athletes, whistleblowers, and others at risk; and provide fairer routes to dispute resolution.

ClearingSport aims to build on and strengthen the work of police, prosecutors, courts, public agencies, sports organisations and existing integrity bodies rather than replace them.

Why sport remains vulnerable

After almost three decades of recurring scandals, we can no longer watch idly as the global sports economy outgrows its safeguards. Its revenues attract legitimate investment but also create fertile ground for organised criminal networks and actors willing to exploit weak regulation, inadequate oversight, and conflicts of interest.

Most sports bodies began as amateur membership associations. Many have since become billion-dollar global enterprises controlling major events, commercial rights, markets, and careers, while their accountability structures have failed to keep pace.

The same officials may write the statutes, sell the product, regulate, investigate alleged breaches, and ultimately decide whether they themselves acted appropriately.

Even supposedly independent oversight remains fragile when appointments, mandates, and removals depend on the very leaders being scrutinised. As former FIFA governance chair Miguel Maduro has argued, rules alone do not create accountability. Without independent institutions to enforce them, sport is left with impressive codes on paper but no reliable way of holding those in power to account.

Over the past 25 years, sports bodies, governments, and international organisations have adopted hundreds of laws, codes and integrity initiatives. Many of these efforts are valuable. The weakness lies in the gaps between them: efforts remain divided across betting, safeguarding, financial crime, human rights, and corruption, while the problems cross those boundaries.

Evidence may sit in one country, suspects in another, and victims in a third. Sports bodies may lack the authority, capacity or institutional will to act; police may lack specialist knowledge and cross-border reach; prosecutors may struggle to resource complex cases.

Sport has rules and laws in abundance. It lacks coordinated and independent enforcement.

From emergency accountability to permanent capacity

The consequences of this accountability gap extend far beyond reputational damage. Hundreds of billions of dollars are wagered through illegal betting markets each year. Also, up to $140 billion may be laundered through sports betting annually. Sports governing bodies are estimated to have received more than $1bn in bribes during the 2010s. Research also suggests that as many as 80 per cent of sports participants have experienced psychological, physical or sexual violence.

Facing these huge financial, societal and human costs, the question is not whether we can afford a new global body, but whether we can afford the status quo.

Frankly, there is no shortage of money in elite and professional sport. Sports bodies, governments, sponsors, broadcasters, and other commercial beneficiaries should all contribute.

ClearingSport sets out to connect and strengthen the work of sports organisations, public authorities, investigators, and courts while remaining independence of any of them.

Governments and sports organisations should help establish the body, but neither should control it. Athletes, civil society, law-enforcement specialists, and human rights and anti-corruption organisations must sit alongside them in decision-making. Its mandate should come from a broad international agreement among those stakeholders.

FIFA’s latest crisis is a chance to demand real change. The next athlete who reports abuse should not be left alone inside the system that failed them. The next whistleblower should not have to sacrifice a career, freedom or family life to make the truth visible. The next crisis should not depend on another scoop, documentary or police raid.

International sport cannot remain the sole judge of its own conduct. That is why we propose ClearingSport.