9. Football Governance

Football Governance consists of all expenditure in relation to FIFA’s statutory objective to govern association football and related matters. It includes football governance bodies and third-party services dedicated to regulate football and define and protect the Laws of the Game. Consequently, it does not include the governance of FIFA itself, which is listed under FIFA Governance & Administration (see Note 10). The Ethics, Disciplinary and Appeal Committees are FIFA’s judicial bodies and are to be composed in such a way that the members have the knowledge, abilities and specialist experience necessary for the due completion of their tasks. The independent Ethics Committee is primarily responsible for investigating possible violations of the FIFA Code of Ethics, whereas the Disciplinary Committee imposes the sanctions described in the FIFA Statutes and the FIFA Disciplinary Code on member associations, clubs, officials, players, players’ agents and licensed match agents, and the Appeal Committee is responsible for handling appeals against decisions of the Disciplinary Committee. In 2023, expenses relating to the judicial bodies amounted to USD 3.4 million (2022: USD 3.1 million). The three chambers of the Football Tribunal – the Players’ Status Chamber (PSC), the Agents Chamber (AC) and the Dispute Resolution Chamber (DRC) – decide on claims and disputes relating to the legal rights and obligations of football stakeholders. The PSC monitors compliance with the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players and determines the status of players for various FIFA competitions, whereas the AC deals with disputes relating to player agency contracts between a player agent and a client, and the DRC conducts arbitration proceedings on the basis of equal representation of players and clubs. Their combined expenses totalled USD 2.5 million in 2023 (2022: USD 2.6 million). In October 2023, FIFA implemented the FIFA Football Agent Regulations (FFAR), which include the mandatory use of licensed football agents, a cap on service fees and new provisions to ensure the protection of minors. The FFAR framework helps to resolve systematic failures in the player transfer system and ensures that transfer-related conflicts concerning football agent services are resolved fairly and equally for all stakeholders. Related implementation and organisational costs added up to USD 14.3 million in 2023 (2022: USD 0 million). The FIFA Clearing House is a payment institution established in France that acts as an intermediary in payments related to training rewards. It ensures that payments by new clubs are correctly distributed to training clubs. The payments are based on the final electronic player passport (EPP) and allocation statement approved by the FIFA administration. In 2023, FIFA Clearing House-related expenses amounted to USD 4.8 million (2022: USD 3.1 million). Further expenses related to Sportsradar Integrity Services, which provides FIFA with its Fraud Detection System to identify and prevent match manipulation and amounted to USD 0.3 million in 2023 (2022: USD 1.9 million). Costs for The International Football Association Board (The IFAB), the guardian of the Laws of the Game of association football, came to USD 3.4 million (2022: USD 1.8 million), and general professional football and regulatory services, which also include the remaining expenses of the FIFA Fund for Football players, totalled USD 6.3 million (2022: USD 8.3 million). Personnel expenses relate to the administration of the FIFA Clearing House and to the corresponding departments of FIFA that perform an advisory role in the field of football governance, which is to ensure that FIFA’s activities are carried out in strict compliance with the law, and to represent FIFA and its stakeholders before the competent courts. For further details, please refer to Note 32 – Personnel expenses.