FIFA Walked Into the Bermuda Triangle — And Doesn’t Know It

There's a dynamic that destroys organizations caught between competing powers. FIFA just walked into it. Here's the framework for what's unfolding—and what it takes to navigate out.

In October 2025 I wrote a memo about FIFA and the World Cup that began with: World Order is changing — a cycle that repeats every 80–100 years, triggering disruption, conflict, even war, until new systems emerge. In this environment, FIFA can do something Coca-Cola, the Olympics, and even the United Nations can’t: become the brand that embodies the future we want to live in. No other organization unites more people emotionally, across more countries. FIFA is uniquely a source of belonging, stability, and identity — if it wholly embraces being “the biggest club on the planet,” it stands to become the quintessential brand of our lifetime. The opportunity? Hundreds of millions in revenue, brand dominance, and countless lives changed. The key: understanding how rapid change and conflict impact behavior, then translating those insights into commercial strategies that drive revenue and engagement from new and existing customers. Four months later, FIFA has squandered that opportunity — and walked directly into a geopolitical trap it doesn’t seem to understand. The Bermuda Triangle There’s a dynamic I call The Bermuda Triangle — sometimes the Crossfire Economy — that explains what organizations must navigate to succeed in contested environments. The triangle has three points: Suppression and retaliation by governments The crosshairs of opposition and activist groups Threats or active attempts to harm officials and stakeholders FIFA has failed to navigate two of the three points. On point one: Rather than face potential suppression or retaliation from the host government, FIFA sought alignment — and got captured instead. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has visited the White House eight times, opened a FIFA office in Trump Tower, awarded Trump a hastily-created “FIFA Peace Prize” after he was denied the Nobel, and appointed Ivanka Trump to a FIFA education board. Infantino publicly called Trump “a really close friend.” This isn’t operational cooperation. This is institutional capture — and it’s worse than suppression, because FIFA has surrendered its independence while believing it secured favor. On point two: That capture triggered exactly what you’d expect. Over 155,000 Dutch citizens signed a petition demanding their national team boycott. Nearly half of Germans support withdrawal if Trump annexes Greenland. Twenty-three UK MPs from four parties signed a motion to expel the U.S. from international competitions. Human rights organizations have filed formal ethics complaints. I have it from a high-level official that major protests are being planned for the tournament. FIFA is now squarely in the crosshairs. On point three: At the moment, no credible threats against FIFA officials or stakeholders have emerged. But the historical pattern is clear — when the first two points activate, the third follows if the trajectory isn’t corrected. This Is Not a PR Crisis Here’s what FIFA’s leadership apparently fails to understand: this is not a communications problem. This is conflict dynamics associated with changing geopolitical order. FIFA is caught between the two competing dominant systems that the world is actively choosing between — democracy or autocracy. By visibly aligning with one side while claiming political neutrality, FIFA has achieved the worst possible outcome: alienating democratic stakeholders while creating dependency on a single administration’s favor. FIFA insiders have told media there is “deep embarrassment” within the organization over the Peace Prize decision. Others describe the mood as “sailing rudderless into geopolitical storms.” These quotes reveal an organization that doesn’t understand the larger context of what’s unfolding worldwide. They’re making choices as if this were a normal business environment where you cultivate relationships with whoever is in power. But the world isn’t normal. Systems are competing. Alliances are being forced. And every visible choice signals which future you believe in. In my work, I see this pattern repeatedly: executives in business and organizations convince themselves that transactional politics — winning favor with those in power — is the best strategy for success. It’s not. It too often results in damaged reputations, eroded customer loyalty, and a direct impact on the bottom line. What’s needed, especially in FIFA’s case, is strategic integration of methods for dealing with complexity and conflict, and, at a minimum, a gray-zone way of operating. Traditional business strategy and transactional politics typically fail to rise above competing frameworks, triggering blowback and opposition. The Behavioral Shift FIFA Is Missing Here’s what conflict dynamics tell us about how people behave during periods of systemic change: they seek belonging, stability, and identity. When the world feels uncertain, people don’t retreat — they reach for connection. They want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to know where they stand and who stands with them. This is the commercial opportunity FIFA is squandering. The fans organizing boycotts aren’t rejecting football — they’re demonstrating how deeply they care about what the World Cup represents. The 155,000 Dutch petition signers, the German supporters debating withdrawal, the excluded Haitian fans watching their nation’s first World Cup qualification from afar — these are people with intense emotional investment looking for a home. They’re customers signaling exactly what they want to buy: inclusion, recognition, the feeling that this tournament belongs to them. Instead of reading this as a crisis to manage, FIFA should read it as demand to capture. Every protest is market research. Every boycott petition is a segment identifying itself. The question isn’t how to silence critics — it’s how to convert their passion into engagement and affiliation. That’s where the commercial value lives. The Commercial Strategy FIFA’s path forward requires recognizing what it actually is: the steward of humanity’s largest shared cultural space. Not neutral — that ship has sailed. But positioned above the conflict, where football becomes common ground rather than contested territory. This means concrete action: reinstate the human rights advisory board, dissolved in 2021. Guarantee supporter allocations at accessible prices. Publicly advocate for excluded fans from Iran, Haiti, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire — nations whose citizens qualified for the World Cup but cannot attend due to travel bans. Most importantly, it means pivoting from “sport and politics are separate” (a claim nobody believes) to “football is where we meet despite our differences.” That’s a position that allows operational cooperation with governments without institutional capture, and engagement with critics without capitulation. But here’s the commercial insight: each of these actions isn’t reputation management — it’s customer acquisition and retention. Accessible ticket pricing isn’t charity; it’s market expansion. Entry-tier tickets put first-time World Cup attendees into the ecosystem — fans who buy merchandise, subscribe to FIFA+, attend future tournaments, and bring their children into the sport. The lifetime value of a new fan acquired through accessibility dwarfs the marginal revenue from dynamic pricing, which extracts the maximum dollars from existing customers while alienating everyone else. Advocacy for excluded fans isn’t politics; it’s brand positioning. When FIFA publicly champions the right of Haitian fans to witness their nation’s historic qualification, it signals to billions of supporters worldwide that this organization fights for them. That signal converts into commercial loyalty — the kind that survives controversy, transcends individual tournaments, and compounds over decades. Engagement wit…