Do Football Consumers Care About Sport Governance? An Analysis of Social Media Responses to the Recent FIFA Scandal

Hölzen Martin, Meier Henk Erik

Abstract

Given the fact that the governing body of world football, FIFA, has managed to survive major failures in sports governance, this paper addresses the role of football consumers as potential principals. By characterizing FIFA as a ‘political machine' and using ‘digital trace data' from Twitter to analyze responses to the most recent FIFA corruption scandal, this paper introduces a new methodological approach to the realm of research on sports governance. Key events of FIFA's corruption scandal trigger significant activities, but the attention is ephemeral as it decreases over time. In addition, there is little evidence that the corruption scandal has a detrimental effect on FIFA's legitimacy among users. Ultimately, online activism striving to change FIFA's governance seems to have only rudimentarily developed and is sparsely popular among individual football fans. The paper casts further doubts on the ability of football consumers to act as effective principals in football governance.