FIFA to invest $800m into football development

The world’s soccer governing body, the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) has pledged to invest an amount of $800 million into football development programmes between the periods of 2011-2014.

FIFA, whose reserves as at December 2010 increased to $1.2 billion due to the success of the South Africa 2010 World Cup, said the increase of investment from $691 million to $800 million is to lower annual results than in previous years and to develop more interest in football.

“Thanks to its solid reserves, FIFA will increase its investment in football development programmes over the upcoming 2011-2014 period from the $ 691 million that was in the budget for 2007-2010 to $ 800 million”, said Julio H. Grondona, Chairman of FIFA’s Finance Committee in its Financial Report 2010 presented during the 61st FIFA Congress which ended on March 4, 2011 in Zurich, Switzerland.

“Given the healthy state of FIFA’s finances, plans have been put in place to ensure that a significant proportion of FIFA’s revenue is reinvested in football, which will generally lead to lower annual results than in previous years”, Grondona added.

According to Joseph S. Blatter, FIFA’s President, each confederation was given $5 million and an additional $550,000 under the Financial Assistance Programme (FAP) to develop football.

“In 2010, we were able to give each member association a total extraordinary FAP payment of $550,000 and each confederation $5 million”, Mr Blatter said.

2010 South Africa World Cup sold 2,967,349 of the 3 million available tickets making a 97.5% mark in the tournament particularly given the widespread concerns before the World Cup that the stadiums would be empty, FIFA says.

FIFA’s total expenditure as at the end of 2010 stood at $3.5 billion with70% of overall expenditure invested directly in football, according to its 2010 financial report.

By Ekow Quandzie