Bloomberg
WANG Jianlin, China’s richest man, smiled from the middle of the first row, in front of the stage where Fifa President Sepp Blatter was about to be elected to a fifth term as global soccer’s top boss.
At Wang’s side on May 29 sat another Blatter, Philippe, the nephew of the Fifa leader and chief executive of Infront Sports & Media, a sports marketing company that does millions of dollars worth of business with Fifa.
Wang’s Dalian Wanda Group bought Infront four months ago, a purchase that Wang said would help China raise its global soccer profile and, eventually, play host to a World Cup.
Backed away
Wang’s entry into the Blatter family’s orbit comes as others are distancing themselves from Fifa’s leadership. Even the Vatican has backed away from the soccer organisation, which has been spiralling in scandal.
Four days after the elder Blatter’s electoral victory, the 79-year-old Swiss executive announced that he would resign from the Fifa presidency. Combined with a sweeping US corruption case against other senior Fifa officials, the resignation raises a vexing question for Wang: Now that his company’s $1.2 billion (R14.6bn) purchase of Infront has opened a channel to the Blatters, do those connections still matter?
At the time of the acquisition, Wang said buying Infront “would speed up the progress” towards achieving the dreams of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is keen to elevate his country’s soccer stature. Its national team ranks 79th in the world.
Infront, based in Zug, Switzerland, has worked with Fifa since 1997; its business with the soccer organisation continued after Philippe Blatter became chief executive in 2006. In 2011, Fifa awarded Infront the rights to sell television contracts to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in 26 Asian territories, including China.
The company also owns a share in Fifa’s exclusive hospitality provider, Match Hospitality, which sells luxury boxes and premium seats at the World Cup. Match Hospitality said it had record sales of $262 million at the 2014 tournament in Brazil. It also has secured rights to the 2018 and 2022 events.
Fifa is a small part of Infront’s business, which includes working with 160 rights holders in various sports and managing 90 percent of skiing’s World Cup events, according to the company.
Sepp Blatter’s business relations with his nephew came under scrutiny in 2000, when he hired consulting firm McKinsey at the time his nephew worked there.
Senior Fifa officials were angry that Blatter did not inform them of the agreement, which paid McKinsey about Sf12m (R157m) over two years to restructure Fifa.
A spokeswoman for McKinsey, Rachel Grant, said the firm never commented on clients. She said Philippe Blatter had left McKinsey in 2005.
In response to questions Infront spokesman Joerg Polzer referred to statements the company made when Fifa had awarded the rights to sell TV contracts. Philippe Blatter was not directly involved in the talks over the World Cup contract, Polzer said.
A Wanda press officer also declined to comment. But in a Chinese TV interview in March, Wang said the success of the Infront purchase was not tied to Sepp Blatter. “It has very little to do with whether he is the president,” Wang said.
In acquiring Infront, the company anticipates China’s domestic market for sports beyond just soccer will grow from $8bn this year to $800bn by 2025, including media rights, licensing, merchandise and sports-facility operations.
Soccer development
Apart from his own business interests, Wang is responding to a request from Liu Yandong, a Chinese vice-premier who leads soccer development.
“Comrade Yandong spoke to me in person, hoping that I would take the task to help rebuild Chinese soccer,” Wang said at a ceremony for a programme that sent 60 children to train at Spanish clubs in 2011, when Wanda spent $80m backing the sport in China.
Sepp Blatter’s announced resignation earlier this month may hinder his efforts. “With the purchase of Infront, Wang plays the role of a bridge”, through his business tie to Fifa and his channel to China’s leaders, said Ma Dexing, the editor-in-chief of Titan Sports online, China’s largest sports web portal.
Then again, China may simply be too big to ignore, regardless of what happens to Fifa in the post-Sepp world. “With or without the Blatter’s tie, Infront has a standing partnership with Fifa – that’s what got Wang a seat” in the Fifa Congress, said Liu Jianhong, the chief content officer for Letv Sports Culture Development, a company backed by Wang’s son and Wanda.
It is unclear how long China will have to wait to realise its World Cup ambitions. A day after Blatter’s election victory, Fifa executives agreed that the 2026 World Cup would not be held in Asia because the previous edition is slated for the region, in Qatar. So China would not be able to vie for the tournament until 2030 at the earliest – unless a separate Swiss criminal probe into how Russia and Qatar beat competitors to host the next two World Cups forces Fifa to change locations for 2018 and 2022.
The day before Blatter’s re-election, Wang met with Blatter and Fifa secretary-general Jerome Valcke. “Blatter promised strong support from both Fifa and himself towards developing football in China,” the Wanda Group said.
Fifa downplayed the meeting as nothing out of the ordinary given Wang’s new position as owner of a significant business partner.
The day Fifa delegates elected their president to a fifth term, the company issued a statement noting that Blatter and Valcke had asked Wang to attend. Wang was “the only Chinese businessman invited to the congress, showing an unprecedented level of courtesy by Fifa towards Chinese football”, the company said.
Wang, who is Asia’s richest man and worth about $43bn according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index, also met Fifa officials from Asia and Africa.
Whatever happens in the next few World Cups, Xi’s commitment to soccer is clear. As vice-president, during a 2011 meeting with a South Korean official, he said he hoped his country would one day not only host the World Cup but win it. In March, Xi’s government said it would quadruple the number of soccer training academies to 20 000 by 2020.
Wang’s own enthusiasm for soccer dates to the 1990s, when his investment transformed an unknown team in Wanda’s home base of Dalian into a four-time national champion within six seasons.
Corruption scandal
The success also won Wanda supporters in the government. As the team kept scoring, one of its biggest fans was then-Dalian mayor Bo Xilai, who went on to gain national prominence until his 2012 downfall in a corruption scandal. Wanda became a national brand.
Sepp Blatter probably will not be there to see if Wang’s efforts to boost China’s soccer stature actually bear fruit. While Blatter has not been accused of any wrongdoing by US prosecutors, he is expected to step down by the end of the year. The European Parliament on June 11 called for him to stand down immediately.
The Vatican said it was suspending an agreement to receive charitable donations from Fifa’s South American confederation.
Still, Wang’s relationship with Blatter may provide some benefit beyond soccer. During their discussions in Zurich, Blatter said he would support Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. As a member of the International Olympic Committee, Blatter is one of as many as 98 voters who will pick Beijing or Almaty, Kazakhstan, as host in a secret ballot next month.
His nephew, Philippe, may help there as well. – Bloomberg