 |
| |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Pay increase FIFA raises World Cup payments by 51 percentPosted: Tuesday December 18, 2001 4:00 PM
ZURICH (Reuters) -- All 32 finalists taking part in next year's World Cup will benefit from a 51 percent increase in FIFA payouts compared to the 1998 World Cup finals in France. Michel Zen-Ruffinen, the general secretary of the world organizing body FIFA, said after an extraordinary meeting of the FIFA Executive Committee, that the increase, sought by many finalists, would also include the introduction of an incentive for the teams that are successful as the rate of match fees increases through the tournament. In the past it has been a flat rate fee for each team for each match played, a situation that caused fears among many of the finalists for the 2002 finals, to be co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, that the fees would be inadequate to cover their costs. Zen-Ruffinen also explained that each finalist would travel to Korea on business class air tickets, a move approved at Tuesday's meeting. The executive committee also agreed to allocate 13 million Swiss francs for increased security measures. The overall budget for the World Cup has increased by 68 million Swiss francs. Much of the increase is made up of increased payments to the teams with those playing in the first round now guaranteed 1.5 million Swiss francs per match. These fees paid to the participants increase on a sliding scale up to 2.5 million Swiss francs for the winners and 2.25 millions for the losing finalists. For the World Cup winners, the total money to be gained is 12.4 million Swiss francs -- a 70 percent increase on France '98 and, as FIFA explained, a great incentive to make progress in the tournament. "Like two World Cups" A payment to each of the World Cup finalists of one million Swiss francs was approved by the Executive Committee at its meeting in Busan, Korea, on November 30. In effect, the new plan approved on Tuesday means that a team's progress in the tournament will see it earn 1.5 million Swiss francs for each first round game, 1.6 million Swiss francs for each second round game, 1.8 million for the quarterfinals, two million Swiss francs for the semifinals and the third-fourth playoff and 2.25 and 2.5 million for the losing finalists and the winners respectively. FIFA president Sepp Blatter said that they had faced a problem because of the high costs of staging a tournament that, he said, was equivalent to two normal World Cup finals with 20 stadia, two international media centers and two international broadcasting centers -- double the requirements and costs of France'98. "The 32 teams are the actors and they make available the funds for the progress of all the associations in FIFA," said Blatter, outlining the background to the committee's World Cup decisions taken during a four-and-a-half hour meeting which also considered several other more controversial topics. These touched on a proposal to create a code of conduct for all Executive Committee members following controversies in the Caribbean, in relation to Jack Warner and the allocation of the television rights and other allegations of conflicts of interest involving Chuck Blazer of the United States. The meeting also resolved that the Executive Committee should be far more "hands on" with the FIFA Finance Committee and would move towards that by holding a special one-day consideration of a financial report at a meeting to be organized early next year.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
