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    FIFA Secures $1 Billion Broadcast Deal With DAZN for Club World Cup

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    An agreement with the London-based streaming company DAZN came just a day before the draw for the inaugural event and after other networks balked at FIFA’s demands.With time running out, and most broadcasters running away, FIFA said on Wednesday that it had finally managed to secure a broadcast partner for its inaugural 32-team Club World Cup in the United States next year.The announcement of a global deal with the London-based streaming company DAZN came just a day before FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who has championed the event, was set to preside over the draw for the monthlong tournament.While financial details of the agreement have not been announced publicly, DAZN is paying close to $1 billion, according to two people familiar with the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss financial matters. DAZN has also secured an option for future rights for the event. In recent weeks, FIFA told teams and other officials that it expected to raise $800 million in television rights fees, part of the roughly $2 billion it expected the event to generate, a figure most market professionals said was unrealistic.FIFA initially tried to secure a $1 billion global deal with Apple before the technology company walked away, believing FIFA’s demands, which had already halved in value from Mr. Infantino’s earlier estimates, were too high.DAZN, a sports media company owned by the Ukraine-born and Russia-raised British billionaire Len Blavatnik, has been growing its footprint in soccer. The company has secured prime rights for major leagues and competitions across Europe and beyond, though it has hemorrhaged considerable amounts of cash along the way. Mr. Blavatnik has invested more than $5 billion since starting DAZN in 2016, and has counted losses in the billions of dollars since then.The company has cycled through business strategies and chief executive officers. Most recently, it partnered with Saudi Arabia as the Gulf nation emerged as one of the biggest investors in global sports. DAZN has become the go-to destination for Saudi sports properties including tennis, boxing and domestic soccer, raising speculation that the partnership may soon lead to direct Saudi investment in DAZN as the country looks to build a sports network of its own. FIFA will award the 2034 men’s World Cup to Saudi Arabia next week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      FIFA President’s Bet on Club World Cup Meets Reality

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      Gianni Infantino has tied his legacy to the 32-team tournament, even inscribing his name on the trophy. Its success is far from guaranteed.Next summer, the United States will play host to an event that may define the legacy of FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino.The Club World Cup, featuring 32 men’s teams gathered from leagues across the globe, is Mr. Infantino’s signature innovation, a competition he is so wedded to that his name appears on the newly created championship trophy not once but twice.The tournament will take place in June and July in stadiums around the United States and is an attempt to deliver on Mr. Infantino’s oft-quoted catchphrase about making soccer “truly global.” It is his ambition to create a quadrennial club tournament that will grow into one of sports’ tent-pole events and endure long after he leaves office.But despite Mr. Infantino’s high hopes, there is no guarantee that the tournament will be a success. Obstacles and missteps have blighted the path to the first game, and a huge uncertainty over its funding continues, even as a draw for the event is set to take place in Miami on Dec. 5.In Europe, leagues and the global players’ union have filed lawsuits over what they say are Mr. Infantino and FIFA’s unilateral moves to add more events to an already congested global calendar that risks the health of players. Fans have also expressed dismay at how, in an effort to generate interest, FIFA appeared to have found a way to secure a place for Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami squad, eliminated from the Major League Soccer playoffs in the opening round. That happened despite Mr. Infantino’s insistence that the tournament would be the most merit-based in the world. But some of the biggest concerns persist around the event’s business model.With less than a year to go before the tournament, FIFA, which has kept its revenue projections guarded, has started to share some of the details with a broader circle of officials and some of the 32 participating teams. Those include some of Europe’s biggest, like Real Madrid, which have demanded significant eight-figure fees in addition to prize money to appear.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Amsterdam Police Arrest 5 More Men Over Antisemitic Attacks

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      A total of eight people were being held in connection with last week’s violence, and unrest in the largest city in the Netherlands continued on Monday night.The police in Amsterdam arrested five more people on assault charges this weekend, four of whom are still being held, over the attacks on Israeli soccer fans in the city late last week after a match between an Israeli and a Dutch team.The total number of people who are still being held in connection to with the violence is now eight, the police said, and more arrests were possible. The people arrested were all men ranging in age from 18 to 37. The police urged people to share any video footage as a way to aid their investigation.On Monday afternoon, Dick Schoof, the prime minister of the Netherlands, told Dutch reporters that the perpetrators who attacked Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters in Amsterdam primarily had “a migration background.”“We have an integration problem,” Mr. Schoof said, “This is an expression of that.”Over the past year, tensions related to the war in Gaza have been high in Amsterdam, a city with a large Muslim population angered by Israel’s conduct in the conflict, which was set off by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. While most of the hundreds of Gaza-related protests in Amsterdam have been peaceful, some have turned turbulent. One disrupted the opening ceremony for the city’s new Holocaust museum.On Monday night, the unrest continued, with riot police responding to vandalism and people throwing fireworks, which set a tram on fire in a square in the western part of the city. The police urged people to stay away from the square.In neighboring Belgium, two boys — ages 14 and 17 — were arrested in Antwerp on Sunday and Monday, Antwerp officials said, for allegedly spreading calls on social media to attack Jewish residents in the city.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About the Attacks on Israeli Soccer Fans in Amsterdam

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      Dutch and Israeli officials described the clashes after a soccer match as antisemitic.A soccer game between Dutch and Israeli teams in Amsterdam on Thursday night led to dozens of arrests, in what officials in Israel and the Netherlands described as antisemitic attacks on the fans of the Israeli team.As of Friday, many details of what happened on Thursday, including the identities and affiliations of those involved in the attacks on fans, are still unclear.Here’s what you need to know:What happened in Amsterdam?How many people were hurt?Who attacked the Israeli fans?Who are the teams involved?What happened before the game?What happened after the game?What happened in Amsterdam?Dutch officials said that attackers had assaulted Israelis, and the Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands said that some victims had been kicked or beaten.The attacks unfolded over several hours in multiple locations, with many taking place in the hours after the game ended.Officials said that 62 people had been arrested in connection with the violence and that most had been later released. El Al, an Israeli airline, sent planes to transport Israeli citizens back to Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Manchester City’s Premier League Hearing, Explained

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      The world’s richest soccer league accused its champion of years of financial violations. A hearing that began this week could tarnish the club’s accomplishments and reshape the competition.After six years of investigations, delays and behind-the-scenes battles, a hearing finally began this week into allegations that Manchester City used a yearslong cheating scheme to transform itself into a global soccer powerhouse and a serial Premier League champion.The hearing is among the most consequential in British sports history, the culmination of a case that has been the talk of English soccer since the Premier League charged Manchester City with more than 100 violations of its financial regulations last year.The charges — that City corrupted the world’s richest soccer competition for a decade or more — threaten to rewrite years of Premier League history. And the repercussions might go well beyond the soccer field. In accusing City’s owner, the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, of presiding over years of rule-breaking, the case could veer into the highest levels of international diplomacy.And then there are the fans. With the suggestions that cheating helped to deliver trophies to City while wealthy rivals were left empty-handed, the hearing has incited the passions of tens of millions of soccer followers around the world.Whatever is decided will shape the Premier League for years to come: Either Manchester City will have been found to have corrupted the world’s richest soccer competition, or the league will have been unable to enforce its rules against one of its most powerful members.What is the Manchester City case about?It is now 19 months since the Premier League announced a set of charges against Manchester City so wide in scope that the reputational damage to the team’s decade of success will most likely be stained even if it prevails. The charges date back to 2009, a year after City’s purchase by the brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi. That acquisition began a turbocharged era of spending — and success — for a club that had not won a championship since 1968.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Victory at Last for San Marino, the World’s Worst Soccer Team

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      San Marino scored its first competitive win. “To beat Liechtenstein has been an incredible joy,” one player said.Take a look at the men’s world soccer rankings. At the top, you will find the giants of the sport, Argentina, France and Spain.Then descend, past good teams like the United States and Australia, past decent teams like Honduras and Armenia. Keep going, past Mongolia and Djibouti. Even past the tiny island nations like Guam and Anguilla. And at the very bottom, below all of them, you will find San Marino, ranked 210th and last.When you are the worst team in soccer, you lose. A lot.San Marino had not won a men’s soccer game since 2004. And that game was a friendly match. The team had been playing official competitive games since 1990 and had never won.Until this week. San Marino beat Liechtenstein (ranked 199th) on Thursday, 1-0, finally getting a victory, which was played in San Marino before fewer than 1,000 fans.“We had a great performance,” said Dante Rossi, 37, a defender for San Marino who had never before tasted the thrill of winning at this level. “To beat Liechtenstein has been an incredible joy. It is complicated to find the right words to describe the massive emotions we felt.”Nicko Sensoli, a 19-year-old midfielder, scored the winning goal. He was not even alive when San Marino last won. “I’m over the moon,” he said after the game. “To win at home in front of your family and fans is just something that is priceless.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Uruguayan Soccer Player Juan Izquierdo Dies Days After Collapsing on Field

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      Juan Izquierdo, 27, suffered cardiac arrest on Aug. 22 while he was playing for Nacional against São Paulo in Brazil.Juan Izquierdo, a Uruguayan soccer player who collapsed on the field during a game in Brazil last week, died on Tuesday, his team said.Izquierdo, 27, was playing for Nacional, a Uruguayan club, in the Copa Libertadores, a top South American tournament, when he suffered cardiac arrhythmia, or an irregular heartbeat, and cardiac arrest on Aug. 22, his team said. They were playing against the Brazilian team São Paulo.Players from both teams appeared shocked and distressed at the Morumbi stadium as Izquierdo was placed in an ambulance and rushed to a hospital.Nacional said doctors at a hospital in São Paulo put Izquierdo in intensive care and placed him on a ventilator. The episode also affected his brain.Izquierdo started his professional career in 2018. This was his second stint for Nacional, one of Uruguay’s top soccer clubs. He was married with two children, according to the Montevideo-based team. More

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      Issa Hayatou, ‘the Emperor of African Soccer,’ Dies at 77

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      In his posts atop the governing bodies for African and global soccer, he fought to establish the continent as an equal to Europe and South America.Issa Hayatou, a savvy Cameroonian deal-maker who was hailed as “the emperor of African soccer,” leading its confederation for nearly 30 years and raising its international profile, including helping to steer the 2010 World Cup to South Africa, a first for the continent, died on Aug. 8 in Paris. He was 77.His death, in a hospital during the Olympic Games, was announced by the Confederation of African Football, the governing body of African soccer. It did not cite a cause. He had been receiving kidney dialysis treatment for several years.When Mr. Hayatou took over the confederation in 1988 — he would remain its president until 2017 — it was “an ossified organization that seemed far more concerned with internal power and privilege politics than the development of African football,” New African Magazine observed in 2017.But, the magazine added, he soon “deployed his own substantial diplomatic and leadership skills and his wide contacts to move African soccer swiftly and surely out of the ghetto” and lead it “onto the world stage.”Mr. Hayatou was a member of the International Olympic Committee for 15 years, starting in 2001, and later an honorary member. He was also a vice president of FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and was its interim president from October 2015 to February 2016 following the resignation of the longstanding president Sepp Blatter amid a corruption scandal that led to the arrest of many FIFA officials.Mr. Hayatou in 2010, the year he helped steer the World Cup to South Africa.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are Games Like the Euro 2024 Final the Riskiest Gig in Music?

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      Performing before a major match like the Euro 2024 final offers priceless visibility, and the nonzero chance that you’ll be booed.Even to some of the most glittering names in music, the pitch is compelling.There is a gig. It is a very short gig: a tight six minutes or so. It is also unpaid. In exchange, though, the offer promises exposure that borders on priceless: a live crowd numbering somewhere around 70,000, and a captive television audience in the hundreds of millions.The appeal of serving as the pregame entertainment at one of European soccer’s twin showpieces — the finals of the Champions League and the European Championship — is so obvious, and the benefits of that brief performance so extravagant, that the likes of Camila Cabello, Alicia Keys and the Black Eyed Peas (albeit without Fergie) have signed up to do it.There is, however, a catch. For most, what is likely to be one of the most high-profile gigs of their career might also be the riskiest booking in music, one that comes with a nonzero chance of being loudly, unapologetically, unremittingly booed.Regret is not a guarantee, of course. There are acts that look back on their brush with soccer fondly, artists who serve as beacons of hope for the (somewhat unwieldy) trio that is scheduled to play just before the final of Euro 2024 on Sunday in Berlin. That lineup — the Italian dance act Meduza, the German singer Leony and the American rock band OneRepublic — have presumably chosen to focus on the more positive precedents.Dua Lipa was such a hit at the 2018 Champions League final that she has subsequently suggested she now considers herself an honorary Liverpool fan. Oceana, a German singer who performed at the final of the 2012 European Championship, remembers it as one of the highlights of her career. “The whole stadium was singing,” she said in an interview last week.Dua Lipa’s performance at the 2018 Champions League final forged a lasting connection with Liverpool and its fans. Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More