On the Witness Stand at the FIFA Bribery Trial with John Skipper

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

It's interesting testifying.

I had not been subpoenaed before.

Same.

My experience with the FBI is mostly reading the newspaper, so I didn't understand how this was going to work.

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So one of the things I love about working for Metal Arc, John Skipper,

my boss, head of Metalark Media, is that I get to ask questions that I don't think other employees would ever get to ask of their bosses.

And so I want to begin this episode, which I've been really dying to do with you.

Thank you for being here.

I'm happy to be here.

With this question.

Do you remember where you were when you got subpoenaed by federal prosecutors?

What I remember

is that my son Clay called me and said, gee, Dad, the FBI came to your door.

They left you a subpoena.

Are you in trouble?

I did not know whether I was in trouble or not.

Of course, I was not.

No, John was not in trouble.

Just want to clarify that year.

But he was becoming this character in a global multi-year legal drama that was centered around the biggest international sports organization on the entire planet, an organization known as FIFA.

Even by FIFA standards, these are extraordinary developments.

At the behest of the U.S.

Attorney General, seven senior FIFA officials arrested at the crack of dawn concerning allegations of fraud, racketeering, and money laundering.

This is the result of a three-year-long FBI investigation of what's being called a rampant and deep-rooted corruption involving more than $150 million in bribes to the people who run the world's most popular and lucrative sport, soccer.

A government witness in the FIFA corruption trial reportedly said that Fox Sports and several other broadcast networks paid bribes to FIFA for soccer broadcasting rights.

They were expected to uphold the rules that keep soccer honest and to protect the integrity of the game.

Instead, they corrupted the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and to enrich themselves.

Now, John specifically got subpoenaed in February 2023 for a trial that was unfolding in the Eastern District of New York titled The United States of America versus Full Playgroup Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez.

Full Playgroup is this Argentine sports marketing firm.

Lopez and Martinez are two defendants who had worked for Fox as television executives.

And government prosecutors were alleging that FIFA, which runs the World Cup, had awarded Fox its TV broadcast rights due to some form of bribery and corruption.

And John just happened to be a television executive at ESPN competing against Lopez and Martinez

during those very same rights negotiations,

which is why the feds were now quite literally knocking on his door.

They were trying to decide whether the behavior of the defendants was in fact

illegal

in their interactions with FIFA for the acquiring of World Cup rights for Fox for the rights in the 18, which was in Russia

and the 22 World Cup, which was in Qatar.

I was simply asked by the prosecution to

come speak to them so that they may depose me and understand whether I might

know anything that would be helpful to their case.

So it was not scary.

It was the talk of the building.

All the

door people, all the porters.

I imagine word gets out why exactly the FBI was by to see me.

I think I was here in this office.

My son called me to tell me that the FBI was looking for me.

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All right, so before I bring you into this courtroom where John Skipper will be taking the witness stand and discussing the very secret business behind the 2018 and 2022 World Cups,

we first need to go back almost about 20 years ago, all the way back to 2005, actually, when John Skipper was ESPN's executive vice president of content.

Because this was the year when John personally attempted to start doing business with the infamous president of FIFA, a man named Sepp Blatter.

In 2005, I

had the great privilege of being put in charge of the

production and programming of all the ESPN media.

One of the first things I said I wanted to do was to acquire the World Cup rights.

The World Cup rights had never been purchased by ESPN.

FIFA decided, oh, we're going to sell the rights in 2010 and 2014, and it's time for somebody in the United States to pay for them.

At some point, a predecessor of mine at ESPN had decided we're not going to bid.

It's not worth having.

I believed it was the most popular sport in the world.

I believed it belonged on ESPN in the United States, that ESPN could grow it the best.

And I ask George Bodenheimer, who was the president, permission to fly to Switzerland because Dick Eversoll,

this is, I did not, nobody called and told me this, but I do believe it to be the case that Dick Eversall had shaken hands with Seth Blatter.

This is Dick Eversall, the legendary head of NBC Sports.

The legendary head of NBC Sports, who apparently believed that shaking Set Blatter's hand actually had some meaning other than your chance to get a little bit of sort of Swiss perspiration on you.

Sepp returned to his executive committee and said, good news, we're going to get paid for

the World Cup rights in 10 and 14.

NBC would like to do a deal with us.

I don't know what it was for.

opportunity that I had was that Major League Soccer had always tied its rights deals to the rights deals to get the U.S.

rights to the World Cup.

So it was the World Cup holder, rights holder, must also do an MLS deal.

And Dick Eversall was not interested in doing an MLS deal.

At ESPN, we were a rights holder for Major League Soccer.

I believed in that.

I believed in what Don Garber was doing.

So I conspired.

I had dinner with Don Garber at the Shunley Palace.

Commissioner of MLS.

Commissioner of MLS.

Shunley Palace, an institution in New York.

On the original one on the Upper West Side.

That's right.

I think if I got the job on something like October 10th, October 11th or 12th, I was conspiring with Don Garber in Shunley Palace for how I was going to get George Budenheimer's permission,

Bob Iger's permission to fly to Zurich,

go to their headquarters, which were in Zug,

ZUG at the time, and try to undo the NBC handshake with set bladder.

The other co-conspirator in this is a colorful character named Chuck Blazer.

A man.

Very odd guy.

He looked like Zeus.

Probably weighed 320 pounds.

When you met with Chuck, you went to some fancy private club that he belonged to.

He had a condominium in the same building.

He had parrots in cages.

These parrots would sit on his shoulder when you were having meetings with him.

This is the same man I had read who had an apartment, or rather, excuse me, he did not have an apartment alone at Trump Tower.

His cats had an apartment at Trump Tower.

And I believe I was in that apartment with Chuck.

Don Garber introduced me to him.

He was the head of CONCACAF, so

the federation that manages the soccer in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean.

But Set Blatter, I believe by the governance, such as it is of FIFA, had to confer with the regional head of whatever region there was on the selling of those rights.

So Chuck Blazer, who was not a retiring, shy kind of guy, apparently was the one guy willing to look at Sepp Bladder and go, no, you cannot sell those rights to NBC without the recommendation of the local head of CONCAF and a vote of the executive committee.

So Don, Chuck, and I knew that we had the opportunity to break this deal up.

I flew to Zug.

I met with

Nicholas Erickson, who was in charge of selling the media rights.

I believe I convinced them fairly quickly that ESPN was a better home for those rights.

And this is the director of TV, Nicholas Erickson, at the time for FIFA.

Yes.

FIFA wanted to have the Women's World Cup on the same place.

MLS wanted to have an MLS deal with whoever the World Cup

holders were.

They also wanted you to do the under-21 tournament, the under-17 tournament.

All the qualifiers.

We had ESPN.

We had seven, eight, nine, ten.

I don't know how many networks.

We said we'll put them all on.

That was our great advantage.

And I am pretty sure that I asked Nicholas Erickson what it would take for us to win the bid.

Probably had some advice from Chuck as well.

That number was $100 million.

And

it was a little like the sort of Austin Powers thing, right?

It was $100 million.

$100 billion.

And you could have the rights for the World Cup in 2010 in South Africa and 2014 in Brazil.

We paid $100 million, $40 for South Africa and $60 for Brazil.

I do not know if we bid the most money.

I never

knew what

NBC had bid, but we won.

And ESPN kept winning because it was airing the 2010 World Cup out of South Africa, airing those games across ABC and Univision as well, and all sorts of records immediately got broken.

More than 24 million Americans watched Spain beat the Netherlands in the final.

the largest audience for a soccer game in American history.

The World Cup overall was the most viewed World Cup ever on English language television.

And so it was pretty good timing, John thought, that the very next year, this is 2011 now,

bidding for the fateful 2018 and 2022 World Cups would begin.

Nobody has produced a better World Cup than we did in 10 and 14.

Those two World Cups clearly put the event on the map in the United States.

The rating skyrocketed.

We did all the games.

The world began to understand why this is the most interesting quadrennial sport eating event in the world.

So I certainly expected to walk in and be able to renew those rights.

I had more marketing resources than any other company.

We had plenty of channels to put these on.

We'd done it twice.

We had good relationships with Jerome Valk and Nicholas Erickson.

This is the Secretary General of FIFA, Jerome Valk.

Yes.

I never spent much time with

Mr.

Blatter.

He's a little, you know, Mr.

Blatter, you had to be really important.

I was once in a suite with Set Blatter and Bill Clinton.

Oh, wow.

And they both were about to leave, and the security patrols for the two entities began to have a slight disagreement about who got to leave first and take precedence.

President Clinton won because he actually is in charge of an important country.

Set bladder, and it's one of the characteristics that you feel when you spend time with FIFA.

They think they're an independent

geographical entity.

I don't know if they think they're a country.

A nation state.

A nation state.

They do think they're a nation state of sort.

I had an agreement,

which you can have.

And by the way, I could have not lived up to my part of the agreement.

They certainly did not live up to theirs.

And that agreement is, if you will let me know what the high bid is, I will top it.

And I'm the best broadcaster to do this.

Our ESPN is the best broadcaster to do that.

So we're going to get a deal, right?

Yes, we are.

We're going to get a deal.

And I was told that.

And we were bidding with Univision, with Sandy Brown.

And he was also present when told, yes, you're going to get an opportunity, assuming you're prepared to pay the most money to renew your deal,

and we'll live happily ever after.

You're the incumbents.

We're the incumbents.

We arrive at a lunch on the day the bids are to be put in, only to be told by, by the way, Jerome Valk didn't even have the courage to look me in the face and tell me.

I said, Jerome, I'm just making sure that the deal that you and I agreed on is still in effect.

And Jerome looked at Nicholas Erickson and said, Nicholas,

please tell John what we're going to have to do here.

Would not even say it himself.

He had poor Nicholas Erickson, his understudy, who had to say to me, John, we have had so much scrutiny

that we have to play this by the book.

Meaning that the verbal agreement, that understanding that you guys had had, it was going to be superseded by the most straightforward by the book proceeding because of the scrutiny.

Just going to open the envelopes and whoever has the high bid.

We raised our bid.

We did not raise it enough.

I do not know if we had the high bid.

I don't think we did, but we certainly were prepared to.

And they chose not to take the high bid because in a moment of conscience, which might be a singular event in the history of this organization, they decided we're going to have to play this one by the book.

But just to be clear, extra clear here, what you went into this negotiation saying, as you had previously, and we've talked about this before on the show,

you wanted to pay the most.

I wanted to win.

You wanted to win this.

Whatever it was, plus one is what you were willing to pay.

Yes.

And so what you were noticing quite inevitably was that you didn't get a chance to up your bid again.

We did not.

Now, I I want to say there was a second round of bidding.

We could have bid three times as much as the other person.

I don't want the other person bid, so I could not have calculated it.

But theoretically, would they have awarded it to us?

I'll never know.

What I know is they wanted to award it to Fox.

So, as the person who was controlling the purse strings on behalf of ESPN for how much you wanted to put in, and this was your passion project,

what was your emotional reaction to learning that you were now shut out of the bid and you would not get the World Cup?

I was

disappointed, but I was also angry.

We didn't lose many bids at ESPN.

When we did, I was always disappointed.

This is the only time I ever felt like, it's funny, I was not out foxed here

in the sense that you would use little F.

I was out foxed with a big F.

And by the way, big F to them too.

But so I was angry.

Do you remember now how you heard or where you were when you heard?

Yeah, I remember exactly.

I was asleep.

And I'd only been asleep, I think, about an hour

because

I was with Scott Gugliamino.

Oddly enough, we ran into Eric Shanks, who's a good guy.

Who was one of the heads of Fox Sports?

Yep, that night at a bar.

I have no idea what he knew.

If he knew what was going to happen, he didn't betray it.

We had friendly conversation.

We sort of chortled as we left going, yeah, we got this because we thought with the new bid, we had the high bid.

We thought we were going to win.

Scott Gugliamino called me.

I was in a bit of a haze.

That's most I'll say about it.

We'd been out quite late.

And

I was shocked.

And it took me quite a while to get anyone to be willing to talk to me.

Jerome Valk

avoided me.

Nicholas Erickson avoided me.

They didn't have much to say.

I do remember crossing the Tribur Bridge because while I had been flying home from Switzerland, Jerome Valk had called.

And I do recall raising my voice to him and expressing my displeasure as I'm crossing over the Triburg Bridge to go back into Manhattan.

He had nothing to say.

I guess I give him credit for actually getting on the phone with me,

but I doubt he ever wanted to talk to me again, and I never wanted to talk to him again and never did.

If I never see him again,

it will be one of the things that goes into a positive column.

Yes, the Triborough Bridge, in this case, faring you across a Rubicon.

It was taking me across the East Rubicon.

And,

you know, at that point, I knew we weren't going to have the World Cup.

It's the greatest disappointment in a rights deal.

And, of course, the disappointment is because I love the sport.

I love what we did with it.

But it's also because, you know, I'd like to compete on a fair playing field.

Look, we knew we were dealing with a corrupt organization.

FIFA is a corrupt organization.

FIFA regards themselves almost as outside the law.

I do think they're arrogant.

It's not clear

what jurisdiction they happen to exist in.

But they transcend borders and they sell people the thing that people across the planet want the most.

Yes.

And I do remember when

FIFA announced, I think at some point they had somewhere north of $1 billion, slightly south of $2 billion in the bank.

That is a hellaciously excellent financial position for what I believe is a non-profit.

But by the way, just doing my research here, approximately 70% of its

5.7 billion in total revenues between 2011 and 2014 was because of the sale of TV and marketing rights, in this case, just specific to the 2014 World Cup, just as a matter of example as to how much the TV rights are the business of this nonprofit.

They are worth a lot of money.

Also, I never, I remember at some point, Jerome Valk complaining that because of all his legal issues, he was going to, I think, have to sell his yacht.

And it's a really interesting nonprofit where there are executive members who are able to buy a yacht, travel privately, have multiple homes

at a non-profit.

Why this is a non-profit, I don't know.

Wait, you expect FIFA executives to go yachtless, John?

Yeah, no, you barbarian?

i know i know given what they're doing for the world and they're just trying to protect the world's greatest game but somehow they managed to live very well

So as shocking as it was for John Skipper to get the news that Fox had beaten ESPN for the rights to the 2018 World Cup, which would go to Russia, and the 2022 World Cup, which would go to Qatar,

you should know also that after John heard the news that day, that was 2011, things really started getting wild.

Because FIFA would proceed to get hit and hit and hit with this unprecedented slate of corruption allegations and charges.

Like the time a whistleblower alleged that Qatar bribed FIFA to get its World Cup.

I witnessed witnessed

basically $1.5 million being offered to three EXCO members in exchange for them to vote for the Qatar 2022 bid.

Or how Chuck Blazer, that big-bearded dude with all the parrots, how he pled guilty to corruption charges and became a government informant himself.

Charles Blazer has already pleaded guilty in the case, according to U.S.

officials, and reportedly wore an undercover wire to record the conversations of fellow soccer officials.

And all of it led to 2015.

U.S.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch decided to take on FIFA directly.

In short, these individuals, through these organizations, engaged in bribery to decide who would televise games, where the games would be held, and who would run the organization overseeing organized soccer worldwide.

And by June 2015, it was alleged that Jerome Valk, this is John's old buddy, let's remember, Jerome Valk was was party to an alleged bribe to another former FIFA executive, this time in relation to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

And all of this, when combined, led to Seth Blatter doing something that had been unthinkable for decades.

FIFA president Seth Blatter has resigned his position.

Blatter said FIFA needs deep restructuring.

That is why I'm going to put my presidency to a special elective Congress to succeed me.

And amid all of this, amid the the U.S.

Department of Justice criminally charging dozens of people, alleging $150 million in bribes and payoffs, the feds trained their sights back on the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

And this now brings us back to the United States of America versus full playgroup Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez,

the defendants who had been working for Fox.

So So those names I mentioned in this, in the trial that you testified at, right?

So Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez, I want to clarify who those men are because I think it helps illustrate the dynamic that we're trying to describe.

Hernan Lopez is the former CEO of Fox International Channels.

Carlos Martinez is the head of Fox's Latin American affiliates at the time.

And the Full Play Group is one of these sports marketing firms.

And I think you need to explain where a sports marketing firm gets involved in the chain of command slash custody here.

Well, it's interesting.

Again, mostly in the U.S., most of the major leagues, particularly the professional ones, do their own negotiating.

So you're talking directly to the commissioner, Roger Goodell, Adam Silver, et al.

Right.

It is the case in lots of Latin America and lots of Europe that the rights holder will have a in-go-between,

somebody who will buy the rights from them and then resell them to somebody else.

So Fair Play was

an in-between agency, a marketing agency for Fox.

So they were trying to acquire the rights

on Fox's behalf.

Now,

I certainly am not in a position to know exactly what happened, though

I'll tell you what that I believe that

someone

from

Fox in Europe believed it would be an excellent idea to use these fellows from Latin America to help them figure out advantageous ways in which they could acquire

the rights.

I cannot

definitively suggest that I know firsthand that anybody did such a thing.

What the U.S.

case suggested was that these gentlemen paid money

to officials at FIFA in order to obtain advantages in acquiring the rights to the World Cups in 1822.

So I just want to clarify then that the whole benefit, seemingly, the foremost upside of having a middleman marketing agency, quotes around all of that, is because if there needs to be a bribe

Just in case.

Just hypothetically.

Hypothetically.

You, Fox proper, you're not the entity doing said bribing.

There's the other person that has some disconnect officially from you.

Once again, hypothetically.

Hypothetically.

But I am going to suggest, you know, there is something called Occam's Razor, which is that sometimes the best explanation is the one that's the most obvious.

It is certainly hypothetically possible.

that someone wanted plausible deniability that they ever we did I didn't give a bribe.

I didn't talk to anybody about money.

I don't know what these guys were doing.

They don't even work for Fox proper.

They work for fair play.

I don't know what they're doing.

Okay.

I want to bring us on the block of the Eastern District Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York.

Yes.

Because you've described that you got the rights in 2010, 2014.

I personally happened to go write a bunch of stories for eastman.com in Brazil in 2014.

I was there for five weeks.

A wonderful experience.

This stands in contrast to your experience trying to get the rights in 2018 and 2022.

You get brought into this,

and forgive me if I don't have the accounting on this correct, but I believe it's because you did an episode of the sporting class.

I believe that somebody from the FBI heard me discussing my suspicions that we were not in an entirely transparent, above-the-board bidding process.

And of course, that's what they wanted to prove.

John, I want to start with you and what you made of the fact that these numbers and these figures were revealed in a public forum in a court of law in New York.

A FIFA executive named Julio Grandova said if Fox puts up 400 million, it will win.

You know, it sort of, to me, sort of vindicates the idea all along that we were not involved in a fair process.

Do you hear the hurt in John's voice?

It just makes me laugh to think about an FBI agent listening to David Sampson.

But

the framing of this was, and I'll just read it from, I believe, the New York Times, the new trial has the potential for a dramatic twist.

Revelations about the involvement of one of FIFA's most important media partners, Fox Corporation, in a secretive scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes to enhance its position in international soccer and to seize the sport's biggest broadcasting prize, the rights of the World Cup itself, from a rival network.

Enter

you, the rival network.

Into the trial.

Into the trial.

And I should point out, the New York Times also makes this clear.

Quote,

you entered over howls of protest from defense lawyers.

They were clearly not interested in having me testify.

And so I just want to put you on the block as you are walking towards the courthouse, having been effectively

subpoenaed by the federal government to serve as a witness in this trial, because I went and looked

for photography of you on the block, and we found this.

For people who can't see you on,

because they're listening to the podcast instead of watching on the YouTube or DraftKings network channels,

I don't know if I've seen a person who's happier, who's smilier about

walking in to a deposition, to to a trial.

No, no,

I was a willing witness.

I do not, by the way, have any

enough personal knowledge of

Carlos

or the second defendant.

Yes, Hernande Lopez and Carlos Martinez.

I do not have enough.

I had spoken to Mr.

Martinez on the phone before.

I'm not sure I'd ever spoken to Carlos before.

I have no personal animosity against these guys.

Did I believe strongly that it was a less than straightforward bidding process that I was involved in when I went to acquire the World Cup rights in 18 to 22?

It was far from straightforward.

And I was,

it's interesting testifying.

I had not been subpoenaed before.

Same.

My experience with the FBI is mostly reading the newspaper.

So I didn't understand how this was going to work.

There were behind the scenes battles between the defense attorneys and the prosecuting attorneys over what I could be asked.

They want to keep you in the dark.

I think for actual good reasons of justice.

They do not want to tell you what they're trying to do.

They do not want to lead you on.

They will not talk to you about the judge rules on what they can even expose.

So I learned very little about what they were actually up to.

Now, as a government witness, did you have a knowledge of what the government would want to ask, specific or general?

Yeah, well, we met twice.

And what they don't do, it's interesting, what they don't do is say, okay, now here's what we're going to do.

They just simply ask you, okay, tell me about this, tell me about that.

You actually kind of have to try to figure out, well, what are they getting at?

The prosecution just wanted me to

create in the jurors' minds, oh, something weird was going down, but they did not say, okay, here's what we need.

Can we get you to say this?

They weren't producing you.

No, they were not producing me.

I relate to that now as my attempt to produce you has been minimal.

Well, you do guys.

It's not an easy task.

It is.

I respect the United States government more than I ever had after doing this.

Yes.

I'm a

hard guy to corral.

So they, of course, want me to be credible.

I think I was credible.

I had pressed the case that we were the best broadcaster.

Nobody disagreed, including Jerome Valk told me directly, as did Nicholas Erickson, it's the greatest World Cup production in the history of the World Cup.

We love what you did.

We'd love to be your partner again.

I said, great.

And I'm not even going to make you give it to me for less money.

I'll pay more money than anyone else.

I think the testimony was

not positive for the defendants.

You're saying this stuff now in a courtroom in front of a judge and attorneys and a jury.

And how does that all go?

I think it all goes fine.

The defense has done a good job of narrowing what I can speak about.

I have a smart attorney advising me.

He advises me to keep my answer short.

Just answer the question.

Don't speculate.

Don't tell, don't make any assumptions.

I think a couple of times I actually asked, may I, you know, may I,

may I speculate a little bit, tell you what I think happened.

The prosecutors objected a couple of times, but I think.

When you started ranting about

well, I didn't rant.

No, no, I didn't rant.

Look,

it's literally not appropriate.

It's not my job.

My job is to get up and tell the prosecutors what the

factual answers to what they're asking me.

Did I have the temptation?

Did part of me want to go?

You want to get these takes off real quick.

Yeah, did part of me want to go, look,

I know that some motherfuckers gave some money to somebody.

I don't know who they are.

You can't really do that.

So I do think the prosecution's strategy was

tell the facts, tell them quickly, and that's what I did.

Now, I should point out that the prosecution's star witness is this guy named Alejandro Brazako, and he is the former chief executive of the Argentine sports marketing firm Torneos.

He had pleaded guilty in that previous trial that I talked about before.

This is 2017 now, that the first trial.

And he decided since then to cooperate with the government.

And what he was claiming

like a guilty conviction, too,

convinced you that a little bit of state's evidence might,

it's like salve on a wound.

Yeah, I, uh, he now has an interest in justice, and he is claiming that, uh, again, the defendants in the trial that you testified in, Lopez and Martinez, helped cover up $3.7 million in bribes by using a phony contract with a firm partially owned by Fox.

So that answers, allegedly, the question of like, well, how much money was changing hands behind the scenes scenes that John Skipper was not providing to grease those wheels?

Apparently, it was almost $4 million.

How much time are you actually on the stand for?

I don't think I was on.

I was on for probably 20, 25 minutes.

I don't think they saw any place to go, right?

I didn't really have a smoking gun where I could say, oh, yeah, I saw envelopes exchanged or I know what happened.

All I could do is place some doubt in the jurors' minds.

Wait a minute, this guy seems to have had a sort of an agreement.

The agreement seems to have fallen apart.

I'm assuming that when the prosecution summed up, they were like, you saw the president of ESPN.

He told a pretty credible story about an agreement he had.

Didn't seem to be inappropriate.

Seems to make sense.

And we would just like to suggest to you that perhaps something happened that threw that deal askew.

And that's why, along with a bunch of other stuff, which I didn't hear, these two gentlemen, you should think about finding them guilty.

As for what happened to the defendants themselves, the gentlemen, as John called them, in this trial, Carlos Martinez got acquitted.

But Hernan Lopez, the former head of Fox International Channels, and Full Play Group, the Argentine's horse marketing company, they were both found guilty of honest services wire fraud and money laundering as part of the FIFA bribery scheme.

But then, months later, another kind of shocking thing happened because there was a totally unrelated Supreme Court decision which ruled that, quote, federal law governing honest services wire fraud did not cover foreign commercial bribery, end quote.

Now, that's a bunch of legalese, obviously, basically means that Hernan Lopez and Full Playgroup's convictions got thrown out just a few months ago in September.

And federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, yes, plan to appeal that reversal, but for now, Lopez has avoided a possible sentence of up to 40 years in prison, as well as millions of dollars in penalties.

All of which are the micro in a larger big picture takeaway that I still need to talk about with John.

What seems to be most suspicious to me as a layperson is that you wanted to pay the most money to an entity that was in the business of making the most money.

Yep.

And they said,

not interested.

Well, to be fair,

I was willing to pay the most money officially.

right

it's a key distinction that you're drawing now that I think about it and none of the money that I paid

or that ESPN paid I should just be clear yes none of the money that ESPN was going to pay was going to go anywhere other than into the general FIFA coffers Possibly there were some voters who went, well, if you take the money Fox is going to put in the coffers and you're going to take the check they just gave me, that's a higher bid.

And by the way, people knew that the Walt Disney Company would not participate in that,

just would not.

I do believe it is the case.

Something, there were 23 executive committee members.

I could be off by one or two, but something on the order of 14 of those 23 voters was at some point subpoenaed,

deposed, arrested,

forced to resign.

There is every reason to be suspicious that I may not have had the high total amount of money at stake to do this.

I simply was only paying for what it was legal to pay for.

And so I'm just curious now about your sensory memory of where you were when you heard the outcome of this trial.

Do you recall that with any clarity?

I think I read it in the paper, I think.

Didn't make me jump up and down.

I don't know these two guys well enough to wish them to go to jail.

If Sepp Bladder had been on trial and

had been found guilty and was going to spend a little time in what my dad used to refer to as the Husgal,

I'm not quite sure what that means.

I know I do know

the jail.

I'm not sure if they have have a Zoosgau in Switzerland.

I'm not sure.

But

do I wish that he had suffered more repercussions for what was clearly his

inappropriate behavior?

I do.

I think he managed to figure out how to slide away to one of the many pleasure homes that he probably has and try to enjoy the rest of his life, though I think he'll always be disappointed that he was ousted at FIFA.

And

I have a hard time working up much empathy.

Well, I should say that beyond the nickname I've heard you use for Sepp Blatter, which is

Septic Bladder.

Septic Bladder, which is a poetic one.

What was your sense of how much the head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, cared about his

primacy, his supremacy as the eighth head of this august organization?

Well, I have a memory of the new headquarters of FIFA, which is actually in a windowless underground bunker-like,

which feels very weird.

It felt like being at Spectre in an early James Bond movie.

But there were seven portraits of the seven presidents before Seth Blatter.

There was...

a place that clearly was intended when he retired for his portrait.

And I'll never forget thinking, there's no ninth place.

So Seth has built a

specter-like office, a huge, beautiful office outside of Zurich.

He has made sure he has his spot in the pantheon of great leaders at FIFA.

I don't know where

Johnny Infantino's portrait is going to go, though I may have missed something.

There may be a whole new wall where he's the first one.

I'm not positive.

He's distinguished himself by peerless behavior either.

Well, so Johnny Bentino, the successor, the formal successor to Set Bladder, the ninth head of FIFA, when you look ahead, John, right?

So spoiler alert, FIFA is operating quite richly.

I'm looking at the latest figures that we have, and it seems like FIFA reserves are estimated at about

$3.97 billion,

according to them.

Close to $4 billion, which you need in the bank as a nonprofit, just in case.

In case there's a yacht or a giant space laser that someone just needs to sort of acquire

with great speed.

But when you look ahead now to 2026, 2034, how do you, as specifically this person in this story, see

the future of the World Cup?

The World Cup's future is very bright.

It's great, though

I don't see a return to a logical bidding process where you create a special event in a location that people

can navigate, right?

Germany, Great World Cup, because it's a small country.

You can drive from Dortmund to Stuttgart to Berlin to Nuremberg and see games.

They seem

to want to make it harder and harder to actually go to a geographically navigable place

that's not mostly just about the money they're going to pay.

I guess Saudi Arabia is pretty navigable.

But last time I checked, it's pretty damn hot in the summer as well.

Last time I checked, it's not one of the great football nations of the world, though they're trying to buy their way into that.

But at least they have a strong record of human rights.

Yeah, there is that.

There is that.

We can all be proud that we'll get back to some place where homosexuality is illegal.

That's right.

And

journalists may or may not have been bone-sawed at the authority of the most powerful people in the country, but that's 2034.

And it's not even breaking new ground.

I'm not sure.

Look, at some point, it needs to go back to England.

It's the home of the sport.

There are lots of great stadiums.

You could drive to every one of them.

It would be a great World Cup.

I forget what 30 is.

It's in.

So, main hosts, Morocco, Portugal, Spain.

Honorary hosts, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay.

So, kind of complicated.

That's happening in 2030 after Canada, Mexico, the U.S.

gets it in 2026, of course.

And then in 34, they seem to be setting this up for Saudi Arabia to get it because we need to get back to the Middle East.

A key demo.

The key demo is money.

So, that's my question at the end here: is that do you see

any

change on the horizon for how FIFA operates?

No.

No,

I don't.

It's marginally better because Seth Blatter is an impresario of corruption

and

but it's not better.

They are not

growing,

amplifying the beauty of the sport.

They pay lip service to the women's game, right?

Still,

they don't seem to care about human rights.

Fox, with no bidding process, was awarded the 26th World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, but primarily in the United States, which still the 94 World Cup was the most profitable World Cup Cup in the history of the World Cup.

It's set up not to be governed for the good of the game.

It's set up to be governed mostly for the benefit of the people who

exist in this extra legal entity that may be like Sparta.

It's a nation state.

So what did they say to you at the trial when it was time for you to

go home, to leave the stand and exit the courtroom.

The judge said you're excused.

I got up, I looked around,

nobody shook my hand.

There's no applause, there's no receiving line.

There were very few people there, a few reporters.

Well, on that note, John Skipper,

you are excused.

Thank you.

Nice to be with you.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.