Earlier this year, former ESPN president John Skipper was subpoenaed by the FBI over his negotiations to bring FIFA World Cup broadcasts to the worldwide leader. And in an interview on Pablo Torre Finds Out released Thursday, Skipper shed light on the whole saga and why in his eyes, FIFA is a “corrupt organization.”
ESPN aired the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, and Skipper is a known soccer fan. He expected to enter the negotiating room and win the rights for 2018 and 2022 as well.
“I certainly expected to walk in and be able to renew those rights,” Skipper told Torre. “I had more marketing resources than any other company, we had plenty of channels to put these on, we had done it twice.”
But Skipper soon realized there were arrangements being made behind the scenes that he missed, despite being the incumbent.
“It’s one of the characteristics that you feel when you spend time with FIFA,” Skipper explained. “They think they’re an independent geographical entity. I don’t know if they think they’re a country, they do think they’re a nation-state of sorts.”
Quickly, Skipper understood that FIFA did not want games to air on ESPN.
“What I know is they wanted to award it to Fox,” he said.
Former president of ESPN, John Skipper, explains how a handshake deal with FIFA for World Cup broadcast rights turned into becoming a government witness for the feds. 😳
"We had an agreement. … What I know is, they wanted to award it to Fox."
More: https://t.co/5iP4OZ04Kl pic.twitter.com/tNHS7t29mb
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) January 4, 2024
When FIFA ultimately decided to give the 2018 and 2022 rights to Fox, Skipper was shocked.
“We didn’t lose many bids at ESPN. When we did, I was always disappointed,” he said. “This is the only time I ever felt like, I was not out-foxed here. I was out-Foxed … I was angry.”
It was the final straw to Skipper determining FIFA was broken.
“It’s the greatest disappointment in a rights deal … I’d like to compete on a fair playing field,” he added. “But we knew we were dealing with a corrupt organization. FIFA is a corrupt organization. FIFA regards itself almost as outside the law.”
Skipper joked about FIFA boasting billions in free cash flow despite theoretically being a non-profit as just one of the questionable things about how the world soccer organization operates.
Since Skipper left ESPN, the FBI has continued to go after FIFA. In its multiple investigations into the organization, the FBI determined that a marketing company delivered bribes to FIFA on behalf of Fox.
“I cannot definitely suggest that I know firsthand that anybody did such a thing, but what the U.S. case suggested was that these men paid money to officials at FIFA in order to obtain advantages in acquiring the rights to the World Cups in ’18 and ’22,” Skipper said.
Last year, Skipper alluded to these troubling negotiations in an episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. Shortly after, the FBI asked him to testify about his experience.
“I believe somebody from the FBI heard me discuss my suspicions that we were not in an entirely transparent, above the board bidding process,” Skipper said. “And of course that’s what they wanted to prove.”
Despite appearing before federal officials, Skipper was not able to glean much about the nature of the latest inquiry. And Skipper resisted going all-out against the association.
“Did part of me want to go, ‘I know that some motherf***ers gave some money to somebody?'” Skipper joked, admitting he did. “But you can’t really do that.”
To this day, Skipper still wonders why FIFA would accept less money. His assumption is that somewhere in the process, FIFA was receiving additional funds to even out the difference between ESPN and Fox’s bid.
“To be fair, I was willing to pay the most money officially,” he said. “And none of the money that ESPN was going to pay was going to go anywhere than into the general FIFA coffers.”
Already, 14 people were convicted from a 2015 FBI case. Late last year, the United States government openly acknowledged FIFA accepted bribes while selecting the 2018 and 2022 host cities.
It seems there is still more to come, with Skipper roped into all of it.
[Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube]
