As FIFA "faces pressure to reform in the wake of a global corruption scandal," several current and former media execs are "raising questions about the transparency of the bidding process" for U.S. radio broadcasting rights to the World Cup, according to Mica Rosenberg of REUTERS. In particular, these execs point to the "apparent two-decade lock on U.S. Spanish-language radio rights" held by Miami-based broadcaster Futbol de Primera. The company was co-founded by Andres Cantor, who "famously introduced" U.S. football fans to the Latin American style of yelling "Gooooooal!" One former CEO of a rival broadcaster, Joaquin Blaya, said that in '00 then-FIFA President Sepp Blatter told him "he had a deal for the next two World Cups" in South Korea/Japan (2002) and Germany (2006), but "the contracts instead went to Cantor's Futbol de Primera for a lower price." Since then, other Spanish-language radio broadcasters, including GLR Networks and ESPN Deportes, have been interested in the rights but "see no way they can prise them away from Futbol de Primera," according to people familiar with the companies' thinking. Cantor "declined to comment." His business partner, Alejandro Gutman, said in an interview that Futbol de Primera "won the radio deals fairly through a competitive bidding process vetted by FIFA's lawyers," but he declined to give details about the other bids. FIFA critics "are pushing for more transparency." A radio network exec familiar with bidding for football broadcast rights said, "It's all closed doors. You never see contracts. Even if you want to go for the rights, you are basically told the deals have already been done." Former FIFA Independent Governance Committee member Michael Hershman said that because radio deals are "usually smaller than television contracts they have received less scrutiny over the years" (REUTERS, 2/17).
