FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali bin al-Hussein said that he "wants an investigation into how the U.S. television rights for the 2026 World Cup were awarded to Fox without a tender process or any discussion with the FIFA executive committee," according to ESPN. FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke said FIFA "did what it had to do'' to prevent any possible legal action from the broadcaster in relation to the '22 rights after the Qatar World Cup was moved to the winter. Last month, FIFA presidential challenger Michael van Praag labeled the decision to hand the 2026 World Cup rights in North America to Fox without a bidding process as "very strange." Prince Ali said that "large sums of money for football had potentially been lost." He said, "I'm looking into the details of it. And trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. I wasn't a member of those committees, but in my opinion, it's the wrong way of going about things. We're not talking about small sums of money. We're talking about huge sums of money that are potentially being wasted and not spent on future generations and not getting the best deal possible for FIFA" (
ESPN, 4/6).
