The few people that seem interested in watching the FIFA Club World Cup will not be seeing any messaging regarding FIFA’s anti-discrimination campaigns.
According to a report by Adam Crafton of The Athletic, FIFA has opted not to distribute the anti-racism and anti-discrimination materials it produced and developed in the months leading up to the Club World Cup in the United States.
Per Crafton, “This approach represents a significant change from previous competitions, such as the Women’s World Cup in 2023 in Australia and New Zealand and the men’s World Cup in 2022 in Qatar when messages were shown in the stadium on big screens and on social media.
“FIFA has also not performed any announcements within its stadiums explaining the anti-racism protocols or the organisation’s ‘universal anti-racism gesture’ which was rolled out in September last year and was supposed to be applied to all competitions,” the report notes.
The decision raises immediate questions about whether FIFA will decide to utilize this type of messaging during the World Cup hosted in the United States next summer. Recently, organizations have grown wary of promoting anything resembling a diversity, equity, and inclusion effort amid the Trump administration’s recent crackdown on such policies. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has grown cozy with Trump in recent years.
The governing body did not respond to The Athletic when asked if the decision to eliminate anti-racism messaging during the Club World Cup was made to assuage the current political climate. They also did not comment about whether or not this type of messaging would be present for the World Cup in 2026.
FIFA did, however, issue a statement to The Athletic reiterating its anti-discrimination agenda. “FIFA has a firm, zero-tolerance stance against all forms of discrimination and racism,” the statement read. “This commitment was recently reinforced through the unanimous approval by the FIFA Council of the revised FIFA Disciplinary Code, which introduces new measures to fight racist abuse — including increased minimum bans for racist incidents and enhanced financial penalties as duly informed to the 75th FIFA Congress in Asuncion in May 2025.”
To state the obvious, it’s difficult to see exactly how FIFA is upholding its commitment to anti-discrimination efforts by eliminating that messaging from its competitions. However, they would be far from the first organization to make similar moves. Earlier this year, the NFL opted to remove its “End Racism” messaging from the end zone during the Super Bowl.
Given how the Club World Cup has been received so far, which has largely been crickets, the decision might not make waves at this moment in time. But if this is a sign of things to come for next year’s men’s World Cup, FIFA’s decision will face a lot more scrutiny.
