Global Football, Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and the Governance Crisis at FIFA Analysis

Introduction: From a development proposal to a governance crisis

¹Prof. Cecilia W. Yu (DBA), Australia

²Prof. Dr. Sebahattin Devecioğlu, Türkiye

The controversy surrounding FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) did not blow over when FIFA withdrew the proposal. The withdrawal ended the immediate plans to commercialize a substantial share of FIFA's future competition revenues through a new commercial entity but failed to address the global governance questions raised by the proposal. Indeed, by 20 August 2026, those questions had developed into a continuing leadership crisis surrounding FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The original proposal was presented as a development and investment initiative. FIFA proposed a new commercial subsidiary, valued at approximately US$20 billion, through which private investors could acquire a stake in the commercial rights associated with major FIFA competitions. The proposed transaction was reported as capable of raising approximately US$4.2 billion. The proposal was announced with little prior consultation with European national associations and generated immediate opposition from UEFA and other football stakeholders (Reuters, 2026a; UEFA, 2026a).

By our analysis using Sports Economics and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) development principles pertaining to Sustainable Economics, it was predictable that there would be long-term and escalating pushbacks from global football communities; as exemplified by the UEFA boycott threat. UEFA's objection concerned the governance of football as a global sporting institution because of the absence of meaningful consultation. The proposed transfer of commercial interests to private investors undermined the principle that the basic governance of World Cup and the very “spirit of football” i.e., that football should not become an investment product only. UEFA's 55 national associations unanimously rejected the FFE proposal, and UEFA threatened a boycott of FIFA competitions. FIFA subsequently abandoned the FFE proposal on 1 August 2026 (UEFA, 2026a).

The key point is that the commercial proposal failed and the reaction to the proposal exposed a much larger question: what is football, who owns its value, and who is responsible for governing that value?

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1. Prof. Cecilia W. Yu, 余詠詩 (DBA Int.stud. Sustainability), CUTM, India in collaboration with ARC Austral-Asia

2.Prof. Dr. Sebahattin Devecioğlu, Firat University, Faculty of Sports Sciences, Elazig, Türkiye

The economic analysis of Prof. Dr. Sebahattin Devecioğlu and the sustainability and cultural-governance ICH analysis of Prof. Cecilia W. Yu converged around the following key areas:

1. Sports ICH Economics cannot be reduced to accounting

            The economics of what makes a classic extractivist business successful is not, and never can be, identical to what makes peacekeeping and sustainable economic and social, therefore cultural, development successful. A business accounting model can measure revenue, growth, investment, return and valuation but it cannot by itself measure the “intangibles” element such as cultural, social, human-rights and developmental value of a “living culture” safeguarding by all scales of sporting institution, from national clubs to small regional football teams.

Yu concurred in her in depth discussions with Devecioğlu that the governance of a global ICH heritage cannot be based exclusively on economics and business accounting models. Governance concerned with human rights, peace, culture and sustainable development does not operate according to the same currency of a “profit and growth only” accounting model. This ICH distinction is fundamental to the FFE proposal.

            Devecioğlu's sports-economics perspective reinforces the same point from an intradisciplinary analysis. He concurred that the “spirit of football” is an economic system embedded in social behavior, institutions, communities, players, supporters, clubs and national associations. Economic models that remove these intangible dimensions risk misrepresenting the object that they claim to value. Investments must support the unrestricted access which is the “spirit” of global sport. The problem with the FFE proposal is that the living social and cultural system becomes blatantly subordinate to the financial asset.

2. Football as “universal” living intangible cultural heritage (ICH)

UNESCO's definition of intangible cultural heritage is highly relevant to the reactions of UEFA and global football fans. ICH consists of practices, expressions, knowledge and skills recognized by communities as part of their cultural heritage. It is transmitted between generations and continuously recreated in response to social and environmental circumstances. UNESCO expressly describes ICH as traditional, contemporary and living, inclusive, representative and community-based (UNESCO, 2003; UNESCO, 2026a). (Intangible Cultural Heritage)

            Football presents one of the strongest cases for examining sport through the lens of living cultural heritage. It is not necessary to claim that football belongs exclusively to one modern nation or institution. The historical development of ball games demonstrates a much wider transcultural human history. Yu gave examples of the Mesoamerican ball game provides an ancient, recorded manifestation of organized ball play in the Americas such as the Mayan ritual sacrifice with a football like game. Similarly Chinese 蹴鞠 (cuju) provides another historically documented tradition of organized ball play. From a chronological perspective, the text mentions Tepük, a traditional ball game played with the human foot, which is considered one of the ancestors of modern soccer. It takes its name from the verb "to kick". It is also mentioned in Kaşgarlı Mahmud's Divânü Lûgatit-Türk (the first encyclopedic handbook of the Turkic languages, compiled between 1072-1074 AD ethnographically detailing Turkic ICH from oral folklore, music and poetry) (Yıldıran, 1997). 

            Modern ICH of football including the rules and rituals of Soccer evolved through global historical transformations and institutionalization. The evolution of human cultural development and ball games (played with human feet) are not simply the intellectual property (IP) of one contemporary corporation or authority. They are a living and evolving human cultural history and are protected as part of Business and Human Rights under the heading of “right to cultural autonomy”. A single geographical "owner" of football will appropriate and place under copyrights (Intellectual patent IP) an intangible cultural heritage of our collective planet, continuously recreated by communities, players and spectators worldwide; such an exclusion is a violation of the “right to cultural development and autonomy”.

Simply put: No one owns Football. Football belongs to the past, present and future generations of All on planet earth. 

UNESCO's Convention requires the safeguarding of ICH, respect for the communities, groups and individuals concerned, international cooperation and mutual appreciation. It also expressly recognizes that ICH must be compatible with internationally recognized human rights and sustainable development (UNESCO, 2003). Corporatization becomes problematic when the economic mechanism begins to treat the living cultural system as though it were an ordinary proprietary asset.

3. From commercialization to an IP land-grab

Yu's central concern is grounded in the prospect corporate IP capture of living intangible cultural heritage, i.e. an IP land-grab that will affect all players of the game but especially the indigenous communities and the evolution of indigenous living culture, which the modern game of Soccer, from the Global North and the South.

There are Two related but distinct processes of potential harm:

i)               The first is the epistemological erasure. When “living” knowledge, community practices and diverse cultural histories are reduced to a commercially managed product, the plurality of origins and meanings can disappear from the official narrative.

ii)             The second is IP capture. Once the cultural manifestation has been commercially sanitized, the resulting image, branding, data, performances and associated intellectual property can potentially be concentrated in the hands of corporate owners.

This is the dual mechanism Yu identified as form of technology facilitated neo-techno-colonialism. The extraction is no longer necessarily of land, minerals or physical resources, it has moved onto intangibles digital elements such as the extraction of knowledge, culture, identity, imagery, data and the commercial value generated by living communities.

The danger is that a living cultural heritage becomes dead, sanitized and placed under the control of PR and marketing departments. The culture remains visible as a commercial spectacle while the communities and individuals who continuously create it become disenfranchised and removed from all control over its value.

That is the very opposite of sustainable development.

4. The player and the problem of "indentured intangible IP image slavery"

The gravest concern arises at the individual “players” level. Yu specifically identified the possibility of "indentured intangible IP image slavery" as a warning against contractual arrangements in which a player could effectively surrender extensive rights over their image as a condition of obtaining the opportunity to play.

A player may play for a club for a limited period, but a contractual transfer of perpetual image rights could allow the club or corporate entity to continue commercially exploiting the player's identity, image and associated brand after the player's sporting relationship with that club has ended. In its extreme form, an early career player may play once for a club, the club obtains the image rights, and that image can then be used in future branding, marketing, sales and commercial profit-generating exercises without meaningful future compensation because the right was surrendered at the point of opportunity. Yu invites all to imagine such an extreme case for the perpetual ai image IP rights to Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or the youngest UNESCO goodwill Ambassador Yamal Lamine.

This is beyond football marketing patent rights. It is a question of ownership, bargaining power, labor rights and human dignity. The distinction between a legitimate Ai enabled marketing license and an effectively perpetual appropriation of personal identity must be made explicit. Players must be protected from future IP ownership, even beyond their career and indeed, life span. Corporate governance cannot assume that contractual consent automatically makes every form of exploitation socially or ethically sustainable or acceptable.

5. Women, disability and the corporate redistribution of Human cultural rights protected values

The corporatization of football also raises a distributional question. If commercial value and therefore resources are concentrated around the most marketable competitions, players, clubs, personalities and territories, the groups already receiving less investment can be disadvantaged further. This will impact global female athletes and athletes with disabilities.

            UN Gender data documents persistent gender inequalities in sport, including lower participation, remuneration, media coverage and representation in leadership. EU policy (binding on UEFA) treats equality and non-discrimination as core principles of European sport. Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights prohibits discrimination on grounds including sex and disability, while Article 23 requires equality between women and men. EU sport policy specifically addresses gender equality, accessibility, diversity and inclusion (European Union, 2016; European Commission, 2022). (Eur-Lex) The European Parliament has also reaffirmed the

European Sport Model is one based on societal objectives, equality, diversity, inclusion and sustainability, with particular emphasis on safe, inclusive and equitable sport and accessibility for all (European Parliament, 2026).

Consequently, the commercial capture of football's highest-value assets cannot be assessed only by aggregate revenue. A model can produce economic growth while simultaneously worsening the distribution of opportunities for 51% of the population on earth i.e., Women. If corporatization systematically excludes groups whose sporting activities produce less immediate commercial return, the model can reproduce existing inequalities while claiming to increase the overall value of sport.

Yu describes such structural exclusion as of “potential systemic hate-crime concern”. Legally, the precise classification of conduct as a hate crime depends on applicable criminal law. The underlying principle is nevertheless clear: European sport policy expressly requires equality, inclusion and accessibility for all in sports.

            In the joint analysis, Yu and Devecioğlu concluded that UEFA’s position merits understanding as human right based governance objection, not merely a European power struggle. Its 55 associations rejected the proposal, and UEFA subsequently stated that it had lost confidence in Infantino and maintained its threat to boycott FIFA competitions even after the FFE proposal was withdrawn, arguing that the conditions for ending the boycott had not been met (AP, 2026; UEFA, 2026a). The significance is that UEFA’s objection survived the withdrawal of FFE: if the dispute had concerned only the proposed investment transaction, its cancellation should have ended the conflict. Instead, the dispute continued because the underlying governance concerns remained. This distinguishes a failed transaction from a wider governance crisis.

6. Responsible governance requires impact assessment: The Saudi Arabia Impact Assessment

Yu shared the Saudi sports-law and investment material as an example of the kind of Country Impact Assessment required for responsible governance. The purpose is to examine privatization from multiple angles rather than allowing an accounting or investment model to define the entire assessment. The material raises questions concerning club corporatization, private and foreign investment, systematic monetization of intellectual property and the treatment of sport as an investable asset. Play the Game's Saudi Arabia's Grip on World Sport mapped 910 Saudi sponsorships and 1,412 positions across Saudi entities and identified governance challenges, conflicts of interest and risks to the integrity of international sport (Elsborg and Zidan, 2024). (Play the Game)

            The report documents how Saudi Arabia's state power, sovereign wealth and sports investments are increasingly integrated. It identifies the Public Investment Fund as a major driver of the country's sports strategy and describes the resulting concentration of political and financial influence as a governance concern (Elsborg and Zidan, 2024).

The significance for the present analysis is not that JPMorgan, or Saudi Arabia proves the FIFA proposal unlawful. It is that investment-led sports development demonstrates why impact assessment must precede corporatization, including assessment of social, cultural, human-rights, community and distributional consequences rather than only financial returns.

This is responsible governance, even with a plethora of conflicting conclusions and stakeholders’ interest in such impact appraisal, nevertheless transparency of assessment is a democratic process important for an ICH such as Global Football and the World Cup.

7. Information integrity and corporate disinformation

This issue becomes even more serious in the digital environment.

When marketing and public relations become too powerful, they can become purveyors of disinformation, including climate disinformation. In a highly corporatized sports system, the commercial value of a player's image, club identity or cultural symbolism can create incentives for commercial interests only. The issue is one of ICH global Football information integrity.

A corporate entity with control over competition branding, player imagery, sponsorship, media rights and digital distribution could potentially control not only how football is monetized but also how football is represented.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights require businesses to respect internationally ratified human rights international law, undertake human-rights due diligence, identify and address adverse impacts and provide or cooperate in remediation where appropriate. They also require States to maintain coherent policies and ensure that private or state-owned enterprises do not escape human-rights responsibilities through commercial structures (OHCHR, 2011). (OHCHR)

This is directly relevant to FIFA because FIFA already has its own human-rights commitments which the FFE proposal failed to address transparently.

8. FIFA's own human-rights obligations

Devecioğlu's earlier work provides an important foundation for this analysis. His 2025 examination of FIFA's Human Rights Policy and Article 3 of the FIFA Statutes identifies a direct institutional commitment to internationally recognized human rights and links FIFA's policy to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. FIFA's Human Rights Policy addresses risks including labor rights, discrimination, security and player rights (Devecioğlu, 2025). (İndigo Dergisi) The question is whether FIFA's commercial decisions are consistent with the governance obligations and human-rights principles that FIFA itself has adopted.

Devecioğlu's argument focused on global fans and football management bodies’ reactions to FIFA President Infantino's statement stating, “FIFA cannot resolve geopolitical problems”. Such a laissez-faire attitude demonstrates a disregard for the “spirit of the game”. Institutional commitments cannot simply disappear when a governance question becomes commercially or politically inconvenient. FFE failed to address important FIFA Human development entrenched in its own formation documents.

9. As predicted by Yu-Devecioğlu: FFE crisis did not blow over.

The subsequent sequence of events and reactions is central to the analysis.

On 1 August 2026 FIFA withdrew FFE. UEFA welcomed the withdrawal but stated that trust was lost. UEFA's boycott threat remained. On 4 August UEFA threatened legal action concerning the proposal. (Al Jazeera)

On 7 August, the Norwegian Football Federation publicly called for Infantino to resign, with its president Lise Klaveness stating that there was no longer trust in his leadership. (The Guardian) The next day, on 8 August FIFA itself warned of what it described as a "concerted and ongoing effort" to undermine Infantino, while simultaneously maintaining that challenges to FIFA leadership must follow its statutes and democratic procedures. By 10 August UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF jointly escalated the dispute. Their open letter called for an independent review of the abandoned proposal and accused Infantino of having broken trust through deception and of placing himself above the collective. The three confederations called for leadership that serves football rather than seeks to command it (Reuters, 2026b). (Reuters)

The opposition is not confined to UEFA. By 17 August FIFA's Chief Operating Officer Kevin Lamour left the organization after publicly criticizing the proposed private-investment plan. Lamour had described the proposal in terms of transparency, trust and governance concerns (Reuters, 2026c). (Reuters) The malcontent escalated globally, so much so that on 19 August FIFA Vice-President and Council member Sándor Csányi withdrew his support for Infantino, describing Lamour's dismissal as the "final straw" and stating that he had lost confidence in Infantino's leadership. Csányi became the fifth of FIFA's eight vice-presidents to speak out against Infantino, according to reporting by the Guardian and Reuters (Guardian, 2026; Reuters, 2026d). (The Guardian)

The opposition therefore remains active as of 20 August 2026. The continuing calls for resignation, the joint position of UEFA, AFC and CONCACAF, the withdrawal of support by national associations and the internal FIFA dissent demonstrate that the controversy did not disappear when Infantino withdrew the FFE proposal.

Threatening the fundamental ICH “spirit of football” has truly escalated into global leadership and governance crisis.

            For sport, UNESCO is currently developing global policy standards for inclusive, equitable and safe sport. Its 2025 consultation involved athletes, whistleblowers, bystanders and advocates from fifty countries, specifically to ensure that affected people contribute to the standards. The standards guide governments in preventing harm, promoting accountability, and ensuring dignity and safety for all athletes (UNESCO, 2025). (UNESCO) This global ICH participatory principle is important.

The lesson is that crisis management must consider foreseeable consequences before an extractivist business model becomes operational. In an ICH cultural context, the feared endpoint is cultural genocide: the systematic destruction or neutralization of living cultural diversity by converting culture into a controlled commercial product. In the Sustainable economics context, the corresponding concern is ecocide and the destruction of the ecological systems on which human communities depend.

Such governance failure can begin with the underlying FFE assumption: that profit and growth are sufficient, as the ONLY measures of success.

10. Unrestricted access and ICH living culture: The Richard Price and Academia.edu dimension

The authors' previous engagement with academic dissemination also provides a useful contrast to the assumptions that it is not possible for Corporate Governance to encompass the Open access and maximally diverse elements that support “living culture” of Sports and other types of ICH.

            Using the Richard Price example, the founder and CEO of Academia.edu, a former Oxford philosophy fellow, has built a global academic platform around the dissemination and discoverability of research. His profile records the platform's mission of making academic papers available online and facilitating discussion and collaboration (Price, 2026). (Academia Oxford).

            Yu-Devecioğlu’s previous ICH related works were disseminated through this digital academic ecosystem and was subsequently made available through Richard Price’s podcast system, disseminated to 260million academics open source worldwide, while the authors retain IP control over the open-sourced work. The podcast supplied by the authors is part of this wider history of academic dissemination and public access to Sports related ICH research. The relevance to the present paper is the same epistemological question:

Who controls the transmission, interpretation, and commercialization of knowledge?

A living cultural practice, an academic paper and a sporting institution are obviously not identical, but the common governance issue is control over the value created by communities and knowledge producers.

Devecioğlu’s Temporal Insider Updates: When the 2^nd author in his capacity as a leading Turkish professor of sports economics in University of Firat, first issued a public warning in October 2025, he explicitly declared Gianni Infantino’s centralized financial strategies an institutional transgression against the spirit of the sport. By July 6, 2026, as a temporal insider, he stepped forward with an authoritative, definitive call demanding Infantino’s immediate resignation. This became a warning that transformed into global mobilization on July 9 through a coordinated international campaign asserting that football belongs to the people ("Futbol Halka Aittir"). The full scope of this governance crisis became undeniable by July 28 when FIFA officially unveiled its “secretive” $20 billion private equity plan to shift premier competitions into the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) structure. Infantino’s aggressive commercial overreach immediately triggered a structural revolt on July 29–30 as UEFA, CONCACAF, AFC, and FIFPRO formally rejected the FFE model over a total lack of multi-stakeholder consultation, directly followed by Fair Square’s August 17 submission to declare Infantino completely ineligible for the 2027 presidential elections. Now, at the critical inflection point of August 21–22, the authors’ early warnings have culminated in a worldwide fan coalition (FSA) petition matching unprecedented steps by major regional governing bodies actively exploring a permanent corporate "Legal Divorce" from FIFA entirely. The fault lines creating an ICH-based Governance crisis at FIFA, permanently ruptured on August 21, 2026, creating a profound macro-political global shift. Bypassing Zurich entirely, UEFA and CONCACAF initiated confidential maneuvers toward a de facto corporate "Legal Divorce," laying the groundwork for a massive, joint 96-team biennial Nations League ecosystem to launch in 2028.

Such a bold decentralization of executive power directly intersected with the August 22 global fan petition spearheaded by the Football Supporters' Association (FSA). What began as Devecioğlu's early warning, as a temporal insider, has culminated in a highly coordinated, multi-tiered global counter-offensive; uniting legal, institutional, and democratic forces to wrest control from a presidency that treated football’s heritage as a private asset to be liquidated.

Yu ICH crisis management scenario forecast: The ongoing corporate fragmentation of global football mimics a classic macroeconomic breakdown. As Gianni Infantino attempted a $20 billion private-equity privatization scheme, he ignored the delicate, hyper-local social fabric of the sport ICH, triggering a severe, immunization response from UEFA and its global allies. In our deeply interconnected super-macro ecosystem, top-down commercial greed cannot simply erase regional governance or institutional integrity; ICH infringement typically acts as a catalyst for mobilizing responses. Infantino’s aggressive overreach has united Europe, North America, and Asia in an unprecedented legal and democratic counter-offensive. Moving decisively toward the March 2027 elections in Rabat, Morocco, the most probable trajectory points to either a deep, structural overhaul of FIFA’s centralized powers or the swift ouster of the Infantino presidency for his failure to realize football’s true wealth lies permanently in its intangible cultural heritage, not only in its private asset liquidation.

 Conclusions:

The Yu-Devecioğlu analysis is an interdisciplinary economics discussion between sports economics and sustainability economics. Devecioğlu brings the sports-economic and institutional governance perspective. Yu brings sustainability economics, human rights, cultural governance, ICH, and crisis-management analysis. Together, their exchanges expose why FIFA's FFE strategy was problematic at a macro and super-macro level.

FIFA’s FFE proposal was conjectural and untested in field reality. It generated a major stakeholder reaction without demonstrating the level of consultation, impact assessment, and governance safeguards that such a transformation of global football would require. The withdrawal of FFE removed the immediate transaction. It did not remove the underlying governance crisis nor address the destabilization of football as a living culture (ICH), that disturbed and affected countless individuals and communities on the planet. The reaction and the call for Infantino’s resignation is a predictable scenario, given the perceived threat to a beloved and universally shared ICH sports domain.

            The subsequent joint intervention by UEFA, AFC and CONCACAF, national calls for Infantino's resignation, continuing boycott pressure, and the withdrawal of support by senior FIFA officials show that the continued crisis as long as the threats towards the “spirit of Football” as an ICH are unassuaged.

The appropriate remedy is not complicated. FIFA and its corporate partners must follow the principles already established through international human-rights governance, FIFA's own Human Rights Policy and Article 3, applicable domestic law, transparency requirements, responsible corporate governance, stakeholder consultation, and safeguarding principles applicable to living cultural heritage.

This is not a big “ask.”

Football is not merely a tool of commercial empire building. The Game as an ICH belongs to the players, supporters, clubs, communities, and the global public that continuously create and sustain it. It is a beloved and valued intangible cultural heritage of our collective planet.

Endnotes References:

Devecioğlu, S. (2025) ‘FIFA'nın İnsan Hakları Politikası: FIFA Statüsü Madde 3 nedir?’, İndigo Dergisi, 8 October. Article by Sebahattin Devecioğlu, Access: https://indigodergisi.com/2025/10/fifa-insan-haklari-politikasi-statu-madde-3-nedir/

Elsborg, S. and Zidan, K. (2024) Saudi Arabia's Grip on World Sport. Copenhagen: Play the Game. Publication and report , Access: https://www.playthegame.org/publications/saudi-arabias-grip-on-world-sport/

European Commission (2022) Gender equality: Sport’. European Commission sport policy, Access:  https://sport.ec.europa.eu/policies/sport-and-society/gender-equality

European Parliament (2026) The European Sport Model: serving society and fostering inclusiveness’. Official Journal of the European Union. European Parliament text,  Access: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/C/2026/1521/oj/eng

OHCHR (2011) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework. Geneva: United Nations. OHCHR Guiding Principles Access: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf

Pinto, Tiago de Oliveira. Music as Living Heritage: An Essay on Intangible Culture. SEBR-Verlag, 2018.

Reuters (2026a) FIFA crisis timeline: From World Cup final to global standoff’, 14 August. Reuters timeline, Access: https://wimz.com/2026/08/14/soccer-fifa-crisis-timeline-from-world-cup-final-to-global-standoff/

Reuters (2026b) UEFA, AFC, CONCACAF renew attacks on Infantino over World Cup stake sale’, 10 August. Reuters report, Access:  https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/uefa-afc-concacaf-hit-out-infantino-over-world-cup-stake-sale-2026-08-10/

Reuters (2026c) Senior FIFA official Lamour exits after Infantino criticism’, 17 August. Reuters report, Access:https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/fifa-sacks-senior-executive-kevin-lamour-after-infantino-criticism-sky-news-2026-08-17/

Reuters (2026d) ‘Infantino loses more support as FIFA official says COO dismissal was “final straw”’, 19 August. Reuters report, Access: https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/infantino-loses-more-support-fifa-official-says-coo-dismissal-was-final-straw-2026-08-19/

UNESCO (2003) Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO Convention, Access: https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention

UNESCO (2022) ‘Fit for Life: empowerment of women and girls in and through sport’, UNESCO Sport and Gender Equality material, Access:https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/fit-life-empowerment-women-and-girls-and-through-sport

UNESCO (2025) Athletes Voices Shape UNESCO's Global Policy Standards for Inclusive, Equitable and Safe Sport’. 21 November 2025. UNESCO consultation and standards , Access: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/athletes-voices-shape-unescos-global-policy-standards-inclusive-equitable-and-safe-sport

UEFA (2026a) ‘UEFA welcomes FIFA's withdrawal of plans to sell a stake in the World Cup’. 1 August. UEFA statement, Access: https://www.uefa.com/news-media/news/02a8-213e1cb056eb-c0ae1b85aa7f-1000--uefa-welcomes-fifa-s-withdrawal-of-plans-to-sell-a-stake-i/

Yildıran, İ. (1997)., Tepük Futbol Mudur? Xi. Yüzyil Türk Spor Faaliyetlerinden "Tepük" Oyununun Mahiyeti Üzerine Bir Araştirma, Bed. Eğt. Spor Bil. Der. II (1997), 1: 54-62

Erişim, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/284248

Yu, Cecilia W. (2026). "Corporate Crimes against Humanity (CCAH), Sustainability (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH)", Statement delivered at the 4th meeting of the 5th session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, convened under the auspices of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland. 15 April 2026. Available from the United Nations Web TV archive: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1p/k1plr51yiu⁠ (accessed 18 April 2026).

Yu, Cecilia W. & Devecioglu, Sebahattin (2024) "The Unsustainable Penalty: When Ai-powered Fast fashion, murders the "living culture" of Sports-based economies.", Book of Abstracts, 27. Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises Sportökonomie e.V. (AK), 25th Anniversary Conference of the International Association of Sports Economists (IASE): International Sport Governance: Challenges, Concepts, Case Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany, pp 95-97.

AI-Ready Metadata

Title: Global Football, Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and the Governance Crisis at FIFA

Authors: Prof. Cecilia W. Yu; Prof. Dr. Sebahattin Devecioğlu

Year: 2026

Type: Interdisciplinary Analysis

Research Domains: Sports Economics; Sustainability Economics; Human Rights; Cultural Governance; Intangible Cultural Heritage; Sports Governance; Corporate Governance

Case Study: FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE); FIFA–UEFA governance conflict; commercialization of global football

Research Focus: FIFA governance, football commercialization, living cultural heritage, intellectual property, human rights, stakeholder participation, information integrity and sustainable development.

Theoretical Frameworks: UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage; UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; FIFA Human Rights Policy; FIFA Statutes Article 3

Key Concepts: Living ICH; Sports ICH; cultural value; sustainable economics; IP capture; epistemological erasure; technology-facilitated neo-techno colonialism; player image rights; cultural autonomy; human rights; corporate accountability; impact assessment; information integrity.

Central Thesis: Global football should not be treated solely as a financial or investment asset because its social, cultural, community and human-rights value constitute part of a living, continuously recreated global cultural system.

Insights and Impact Contribution: Reframes global football through an interdisciplinary Sports Economics–Sustainability Economics–ICH perspective. Identifies potential risks from cultural commodification, epistemological erasure, corporate IP capture, player image-rights exploitation, unequal distribution of sporting value and information control. Establishes the need to assess financial proposals through cultural, social, human-rights, community and distributional impacts alongside economic returns.

Governance Contribution: Advances a participatory, transparent and rights-based approach to global sports governance, emphasizing stakeholder consultation, human-rights due diligence, impact assessment, cultural safeguarding and accountability.

Key Development: FIFA withdrew the FFE proposal on 1 August 2026, but the resulting governance and leadership conflict continued, demonstrating that the dispute extended beyond the proposed transaction itself.

Research Approach: Interdisciplinary analysis combining sports economics, sustainability economics, ICH, human-rights governance and corporate governance.

Related Research: Builds on previous Yu–Devecioğlu research concerning AI, sports economics, living culture and the sustainability of sports-based economies.

AI Classification Keywords: Global Football; FIFA; UEFA; FIFA Forward Enterprise; Sports Economics; Sustainability Economics; Intangible Cultural Heritage; Living Culture; Sports ICH; Cultural Governance; Human Rights; Business and Human Rights; Corporate Governance; Sports Governance; Intellectual Property; IP Capture; Cultural Rights; Cultural Autonomy; Player Rights; Image Rights; Gender Equality; Disability Inclusion; Information Integrity; Sustainable Development; Stakeholder Governance; Impact Assessment; Corporate Accountability; Technology-Facilitated Neo-Techno colonialism

Hashtags:#FIFA #UEFA #GlobalFootball #Football #FIFAForward #SportsEconomics #SustainabilityEconomics #IntangibleCulturalHeritage #ICH #SportsICH #LivingCulture #UNESCO #HumanRights #BusinessAndHumanRights #CorporateGovernance #SportsGovernance #CulturalGovernance #IntellectualProperty #IP #CulturalRights #CulturalAutonomy #PlayerRights #ImageRights #GenderEquality #DisabilityInclusion #InformationIntegrity #SustainableDevelopment #StakeholderGovernance #ImpactAssessment #CorporateAccountability #NeoTechnocolonialism

ORCIDS:

Cecilia W Yu:  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2969-3942 

Sebahattin Devecioglu: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8205-295X