Dark Money is the Evil Next Step in Street Football!

It's to no-one's surprise that the everyday Street Footballer is not the most tech-savvy person in the room, typically they're the least so. This can and honestly should put into context the lack of growth in Street Football as a global sport in general to date. Believe me, I'm not talking about all Street Footballers, we do have some tech enthusiasts among us, it's more that they're only now in the position to make a difference.

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The Breakdown

ISFA, The new leading global Street Football federation (International Street Football Association), has a team of mostly young and up-and-coming board members ready to take the sport to the next level. They have executed awesome events in 2024 with major names in Football, and they have an extensive plan for 2025 which mimics the ranking and tournament style of the global Tennis tour with; Challenger, Masters, & World Series level events, all carrying their own rewards in ranking points and sometimes a small prize pool. These tournaments and events are scheduled and planned to be in all corners of the globe truly spreading the sport.

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However, this comes with a major drawback which to their credit ISFA themselves are trying to solve this problem, unfortunately they probably don't realise the solution may not be as ethical as they hoped. I'm sure you guessed it by now, the pre-existing finances of athletes makes a major difference in your success in this sport. Whether you like it or not, the highest ranked players in every sport are the ones who receive all the brand deals, exterior opportunities, and largest payouts. So when it comes to a world tour style ranking system, the wealthiest individuals who can afford to travel to the most events, will be ranked the highest. Let's compare a regular Bolivian with a regular Englishman, who will have access to more base funding in theory? In 99.9% of occasions it will be the Englishman, meaning he can travel to more events than the Bolivian, this also doesn't cover the fact that the tournament spread also heavily favour Europe, which is right on the Englishman's doorstep, meaning not only can he travel to more events due to his pre-existing financial upper-hand, he can also do it much cheaper, which will widen the gap over time until you only have the privileged few ranking highly and receiving all of the external funding an opportunity.

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I want to point out that this isn't by any stretch of the imagination an attack on ISFA and their system, because this is by far the best format for the pro global expansion era of this sport, and I believe they're on the correct pathway for Street Football. It is however a healthy pointer at an issue that needs solving, but I also do come with a solution.

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How is this sport funded?

At the moment Street Football is completely self funded, which plays into my above point, and in the future after a successful 2025 it will probably be sponsor/investor aided. This still won't solve the issue though. Even if the initial cash inflow of 2026 (if that comes to fruition) is equally split between all major countries and teams involved, it won't be enough to close the gap to compete. The unfortunate solution that is proven in other sports to close the gap is Online Betting/Gambling/Casino's which are then linked to the sport. I know what you're thinking, and yes I agree with you. There is however, no way to argue with proven results, no matter how heated you are about the situation.

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Example 1: X1 Brasil

Let's look at X1 Brasil. I've written about them and highlighted how awesome of a concept they were, however in order to make the system financially viable, X1 had to be deeply entrenched in online sports betting. So much so that when this link was forced to break by Brazilian congress, the league had to fold due to it not being a financially viable league anymore. The grassroots gambling is what allowed the teams (who were gambling companies themselves) to pay their players. They essentially took money from the gambling addicted supporters and fed it into their own pockets and some of it back to the athletes and sport. Evil, yes, but it worked. Sometimes in business there's no room for morals and ethics.

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Example 2: CSGO/Esports

There's no denying that Esports is an ultra cool and almost futuristic look into the coming generations of sports, but what you probably didn't know is that most Esports orgs/teams struggle to make a profit, with most being deeply in the negative. CSGO, being one of the most popular Esports titles also is not immune to this problem, however a solution was found. Most if not all Tier 1 and Tier 2 CSGO pro-teams are sponsored by CSGO online casino's and CSGO betting sites. The whole scene knows it's a bad thing, but when a single sponsor can promise $5 million a year to your business, I guarantee you'll look the other way, as now you can pay for a better team, win more prize money, pay your employees a higher wage (which you probably won’t do), and take home more for yourself. Some CSGO teams such as Faze Clan also ran their own CSGO casinos to fund team investments and to raise capital to purchase league franchise spots. If online betting/casino's was to leave CSGO, all of Tier 2 would fold, along with a chunk of Tier 1, if not all of it, hence Valve (the owner of CSGO) has not banned the practice, they themselves know the Evil practice is holding up their game and Esport.

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My Point

I know you don't like it, but results don't care about your feelings. For Street Football to hold up for years to come, a financial incentive for the casual fan or gambling addict needs to be generated to fund money back into the teams in Street Football, whether that be through the teams setting up these systems themselves, or through a pre-established online casino sponsoring their local team. Otherwise yes, this sport will turn into the one thing it doesn't want to be, a rich white man's sport. Let's let ISFA decide which path to take.