Following UEFA’s assertion that football is not FIFA’s to sell, FIFA’s legal department has produced documentation establishing its ownership of the sport. The documentation has been reviewed by property lawyers in three jurisdictions. It does not do what FIFA hoped it would do.
The chain of title begins in 1863, when the Laws of the Game were drafted in a room above the Freemasons’ Tavern in London by eleven men who did not register anything, file anything, or apparently consider that anyone would later need to know who owned what. FIFA was founded in 1904. The intervening forty-one years are undocumented.
“There is a gap,” said a Swiss commercial lawyer who reviewed the file. “A significant gap. During that period, football was owned by nobody, or by everybody, or possibly by the tavern. The file does not say.”
FIFA’s position is that it has held football continuously since 1904, has maintained it, invested in it, and that no other party has come forward to claim it. This argument is known in property law as adverse possession, and is more commonly used to settle disputes over garden fences.
“Adverse possession requires open, continuous, and uninterrupted use without the true owner’s objection,” the lawyer said. “FIFA has certainly been open about it. Whether the true owner has objected depends on whether you consider four billion people shouting at their televisions to constitute a formal objection. That is untested.”
A second document in the file describes the asset being valued. It reads: “FOOTBALL, one (1).” No dimensions are given. No description follows. A handwritten note in the margin, unsigned, reads: “check if this is the ball or the sport.”
The valuation is $20 billion. The question of what exactly is being valued has been marked for follow-up.
FIFA declined to comment on the gap, saying only that the documentation was “comprehensive” and that anyone with a competing claim to football was welcome to submit it through the appropriate channels.
Eleven men in a pub in 1863 could not be reached.