Published on June 18, 2026 at 6 a.m. by Darin W. White  

A 10-part World Cup guide to the business of global football from Samford University's Sports Industry Program.

The largest sporting event in the history of the world is pulsing right here in the United States. The FIFA World Cup final will be watched by more people than any single sporting event ever staged. And for most Americans, it will raise a question they did not know they had:

How does all of this actually work?

That is what this series is about.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to break down the business of global football in 10 posts. How the sport is governed. How clubs make money. How players move between countries. What a transfer fee is. Why there is no draft. How a team can get relegated out of its own league. And why the 2026 World Cup might change American sports forever.

This is the kind of content we teach every day in the Sports Industry Program at Samford University. One of the most common things I hear from adults when they learn about our program is, "I wish something like this existed when I was in college." So consider this your chance to sit in on the class. Think of it as dipping your toe into the world of global football business. My hope is that by the time the World Cup is over, you will not just enjoy the games more. You will understand the machine behind them.

Let's start at the top.

How Global Football Is Governed

The governance structure of global football is unlike anything in American sports. There is no NFL equivalent. There is no single commissioner. Instead, the entire sport is organized through a layered system that connects every country, every league, and every player on the planet.

FIFA (the International Federation of Association Football, based in Zurich, Switzerland) sits at the top. FIFA does not run any league. It does not own any team. What FIFA does is set the rules of the game, organize the World Cup, and oversee six continental confederations that manage football in their respective regions:

UEFA (Europe) CONMEBOL (South America) CONCACAF (North America, Central America, Caribbean) CAF (Africa) AFC (Asia) OFC (Oceania)

Each confederation runs its own massive competitions. UEFA runs the Champions League and the European Championship. CONMEBOL runs the Copa America. CONCACAF runs the Gold Cup. These are multi-million-dollar events in their own right.

Here is something most Americans do not realize: the Confederations are not subsidiaries of FIFA. FIFA is an independent entity. Each confederation is an independent entity. And each national federation within those confederations is an independent entity. They are not divisions of a parent company. They are sovereign organizations that choose to work together.

That distinction matters enormously from a business standpoint, because it means that nothing happens without cooperation. There is no CEO who can simply dictate a decision down the chain. FIFA sets broad guidelines, but each confederation implements them in its own way.

A perfect example: World Cup qualifying. The way a team qualifies for the World Cup in Europe (UEFA) looks completely different from how it works in South America (CONMEBOL), which in turn looks completely different from how it works in North America (CONCACAF). Same World Cup. Same FIFA. Completely different paths to get there, because each confederation designs its own qualifying process. This kind of decentralized independence would be unthinkable in the NFL or NBA, and it is one of the things that makes the business of global football so fascinating.

Now here is where it gets interesting for Americans. The United States falls under CONCACAF. And within CONCACAF, the U.S. Soccer Federation is our national federation. U.S. Soccer oversees three things:

Professional Leagues: MLS, NWSL, USL

Youth and Amateur: US Club Soccer, US Youth Soccer, AYSO

National Teams: USMNT, USWNT, and youth national teams

So when you watch the U.S. Men's National Team take the field this summer, understand that they exist within a governance structure that goes FIFA at the top, CONCACAF in the middle, and U.S. Soccer at the national level.

Every country in the World Cup has this same structure. England's Football Association answers to UEFA. Brazil's CBF answers to CONMEBOL. Japan's JFA answers to AFC. It is a global system that connects 211 national federations across six continents back to one organization in Zurich.

And this is just the governance layer. We have not even gotten into how clubs make money, how players move between countries, or how a team can literally get kicked out of its own league for finishing last.

That is all coming.

About the author: Darin W. White, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of the Sports Industry Program and Center for Sports Analytics at Samford’s Brock School of Business. He is also a Hall of Fame college soccer coach who won a national championship and has spent a lifetime falling deeper in love with the beautiful game.

 
Located in the Homewood suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford enrolls 6,324 students from 44 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Ranked among U.S. News & World Report’s 35 Most Beautiful College Campuses, Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and boasts one of the highest scores in the nation for its 97% Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.