Avoiding own goals – lessons for publishers from Fifa

What can news publishers learn from the own goal scored last week by Fifa?

For anyone who has been taking a summer holiday from the news or instinctively switches off when football is mentioned, The Times of London revealed that sport’s global governing body was seeking investors to buy a minority stake in its tournaments, including the World Cup. Those shares could later be traded on the open market.

Unsurprisingly, many in the footballing world were aghast at the idea that Fifa, a Swiss non-profit, would now have investors, and American ones with ties to President Donald Trump at that. The lead name among potential backers of the scheme was Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.

Uefa, the association that governs football in Europe, home to six of the eight quarter-finalists last month, voted 55-0 among its member nations to boycott all future Fifa events, including the World Cup, if the plan went ahead. Two other confederations, representing Asia and North and Central America and the Caribbean, didn’t go quite as far as threatening a boycott but also said they opposed the move. It feels unlikely that Fifa will be able to go ahead with the fundraising as planned. (Editor’s note: the project was pulled just after this was published in last week’s newsletter.)

I think there are abundant lessons for publishers here, particularly in relation to how they are dealing with AI companies and others brandishing cheques in their direction.

First is that there is always a catch with accepting a cash windfall. The reasons Gianni Infantino, the Fifia president who promoted the plan, thought it would be applauded by his 211 member nations is that they would each get a share of the billions that would be raised. For the smaller countries that would represent an enormous increase in revenues. But many are now realising that once the investors are inside the tent their demands for more competitions, more teams in them, more commercials, more “hydration breaks” would be harder to resist. The game would be marching to their commercial tune rather than a sporting one.

News publishers have already seen what can happen when an initial cash boost turns into a longer-term millstone. A number of publishers did deals with Apple when they launched their Apple News+ subscription product in 2019. Some have reported decent advertising returns and see it as part of the pathway to subscription. However, the main beneficiary of this has undoubtedly been Apple, which has built what is likely to be the world’s second biggest news subscription (it doesn’t publicly disclose figures) despite producing no content themselves. From the distance of seven years, the deal feels lopsided and I know some publishers are reconsidering their part in it.

There is also the issue of preserving the exclusivity of your product. The World Cup remains the most popular sporting event on the planet partly because it takes place only every four years. Its regularity and rarity are part of its power: if you’re a football fan, you can measure your life by World Cups. Infantino has already added a club version and apparently has plans for more.

Publishers, in their deals with AI companies or Apple or whoever, need to be aware of a similar dilution effect when their content is available on platforms other than their own. I have seen this in my own news consumption: while I might decry Apple News Plus for its effect on the industry, as a consumer it’s unbeatable. I get The Times, the Telegraph, the WSJ, the Washington Post, the Australian, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York, Rolling Stone and many, many more, all for the half the price of just one of the direct subscriptions (£12.99 a month compared with £26 for The Times).

Thomas Baekdal, the media commentator and consultant, made a similar point this week on LinkedIn in talking about his latest report on what makes people pay for journalism: “Across most countries [surveyed in the Reuters Digital News Report] ‘exclusive journalism’ that isn’t available elsewhere was the number one factor,” he wrote. “Think about this the next time someone talks about licensing content to AI. The single biggest threat to your future revenue potential is to not have anything unique to offer.”

This is a point worth making over and over again. There are some good reasons to do deals with AI companies but publishers must be aware that they are diluting their offer by doing so. So they must already be thinking about how to develop ameliorating products or services. In other words, you will need more than journalism to make people come to your products rather than those of the AI giants.

The Masters golf tournament is perhaps a better sporting model for publishers to follow. They guard their IP jealously, restricting the amount of TV coverage of the event, ensuring commentators use their nomenclature (for example, calling the fans “patrons”) and also not selling merchandise outside their grounds in Augusta. They are probably “leaving money on the table” but they have built an event that feels exclusive, will never suffer from overexposure and always leaves people wanting more.

Infantino has also given us a textbook lesson in bad stakeholder management. It’s another reminder that nobody likes surprises and that if you’re going to propose something radical, you need to seed it with people over time so that when you actually put it forward people have already accepted and internalised the change. Ideally, they might even think it was their idea. Sadly, I think Infantino has spent just a little bit too much time in the company of a man whose attitude towards his stakeholders is that they are mostly “losers” who can be ignored.

The threat to boycott the World Cup by Uefa is also something to note. Just the day before it was announced, commentators were hosing down the idea that its member nations might take this “nuclear option”. But they did, unanimously, and gave us all a lesson in the power of collective action. News publishers should not forget that their content is hugely valued by AI providers and they might think of taking such action.

I say “might think” but it’s probably “might have thought” as that ship seems to have sailed with all the individual deals being signed by the biggest publishers. But it is never too late to stand up for yourself.

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