Horst Dassler was not a soccer player, coach, or association president. Nevertheless, the son of Adidas founder Adi Dassler is among the men who have decisively changed modern world football. Dassler understood earlier than many others that the real power in football does not only originate on the field, but where sponsors, television rights, associations, and personal contacts come together.
From this realization, a business model emerged that made football rich. FIFA, the world governing body of football, became one of the most powerful organizations in sports through sponsors, marketing rights, and global tournaments. At the same time, a system grew in which personal relationships, covert agreements, and later also bribery payments played a central role.
Dassler did not invent corruption in world football alone. But the Adidas heir helped build the structures in which corruption could later thrive for years.
Anyone who wants to understand the history of FIFA corruption will find the Netflix documentary FIFA Uncovered already over. The trailer shows how closely soccer, power, and global politics have become intertwined.
FIFA was founded as the world governing body for football rules
FIFA was founded in Paris in 1904. The name stands for „Fédération Internationale de Football Association,“ meaning International Football Federation. In the beginning, it wasn't about billions, sponsorship packages, or worldwide television rights. Football was becoming increasingly popular in several countries, and matches between national teams needed common rules.
Over the course of the 20th century, this association of regulations evolved into a power center for international sports. Today, FIFA's influence extends far beyond sports, as it decides on football's most important product: the World Cup. For fans, a World Cup is a tournament full of emotions, goals, and national stories. For FIFA, it is above all their most valuable asset.
The Soccer World Cup became the most important advertising space in sports
A soccer World Cup not only brings in money through ticket sales. The much larger value lies in the rights surrounding the tournament. Television stations pay to be allowed to broadcast matches. Companies pay to be official sponsors. Businesses pay to be allowed to use the World Cup logos, names, and images.
These rights are called marketing rights. They determine who is allowed to earn money from a tournament: through television footage, advertising, sponsorship, fan merchandise, official products, or exclusive partnerships. Whoever controls these rights controls access to enormous revenues.
Horst Dassler recognized this earlier than many others. While many were primarily thinking about players, clubs, and stadiums, Dassler saw the larger machine behind it: football generates attention like almost nothing else, and this attention can be sold.
Horst Dassler relied on athletes, brands, and officials
Horst Dassler grew up in the world of Adidas. Adidas sold sports shoes, jerseys, and equipment. But Dassler didn't think like an ordinary salesman. He didn't just want to place Adidas in sports stores. He wanted to place Adidas where decisions were made in international sports.
His method was already evident at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Adidas provided shoes to successful athletes. When athletes won with Adidas shoes, the whole world saw the brand. Sporting success became advertising, and advertising became influence.
In football, this idea became particularly powerful. A single star can make a brand famous. But an association can open up entire tournaments to a brand. That's why officials became almost more important to Adidas than individual players. Officials decide on rules, tournaments, contracts, rights, and money. Those who were close to them got closer to power.
João Havelange opened FIFA up to sponsors
A key figure in this story was João Havelange, the Brazilian sports official who was president of FIFA from 1974 to 1998. Havelange wanted to make FIFA bigger. Above all, he promised countries outside of Europe more influence, more support, and more tournaments.
That was politically clever, but expensive. Whoever involves more countries, offers more programs, and organizes more tournaments needs revenue. This is exactly where Dassler fit perfectly into Havelange's project. The Adidas manager could bring sponsors, connect international companies to soccer, and make the world association interesting for businesses.
A new triangle was formed: FIFA owned the World Cup, sponsors brought the money, and marketers like Dassler organized access. This triangle made FIFA rich.
Adidas gained proximity to FIFA and benefited from the new football business
For Adidas, proximity to FIFA was enormously valuable. When Adidas was visible at World Cups, the whole world saw the brand. When Adidas was connected to officials, the company could benefit from the growth of football in the long term.
This was also attractive for FIFA. International sponsors brought money, professionalism, and worldwide attention. The Soccer World Cup was no longer just organized as a tournament, but as a global product. For major brands, it became a stage. For FIFA, it became a source of revenue. For marketers, it became a business.
The problem wasn't that soccer generated money. The problem was how this money system was organized. Many decisions weren't made transparently, but through personal contacts. Those who had access were at an advantage. Those not in the network were left out.
ISL turned sports rights into an international business.
In 1982, Horst Dassler founded the company ISL. The abbreviation stands for International Sport and Leisure. In German, this roughly means: International Sport and Leisure. ISL was a sports marketing company.
The company did not field a team, organize a league, or play any games. ISL traded in rights. It brought together sports federations, sponsors, television broadcasters, and licensees. Those who wanted to advertise at major sporting events could gain access through such companies.
The business model was simple: An association, like FIFA, owns the rights to a tournament. ISL takes over the marketing of these rights or buys certain packages. ISL then resells these rights to sponsors and media. This transformed a soccer tournament into a package of advertising, television, logos, and licenses.
ISL thus became a hub between sports and money. This exact position made the company powerful. Anyone positioned between an organization and its sponsors not only sees where money flows but can also influence who gets access.
The new football business brought money, but too little control.
The model had a bright side. FIFA became more professional. World Cups became bigger. Sponsors funded programs, tournaments, and international presence. Football became more global and economically stronger.
But as the rights became more valuable, the people who decided on them became more important. As the sums grew larger, so did the temptation to influence decisions. And the more opaque the structures were, the harder control became.
FIFA is not a state or a parliament. Nevertheless, it decides on events that affect countries, cities, companies, and millions of fans. When such an organization controls huge financial flows, it needs strong transparency. That is exactly what was lacking for a long time.
Personal proximity to officials became a corruption risk
Sponsorship is not automatically corruption. If a company openly pays money and openly receives advertising in return, that is normal business. It becomes problematic when money flows secretly, when officials profit personally, or when decisions are no longer understandable.
Corruption doesn't just begin with a suitcase full of money. It often starts earlier: with favors, dependencies, exclusive access, personal loyalties, and a lack of oversight. When an official knows that a certain marketer can provide them with advantages, a risk arises. When a company knows that proximity to officials facilitates contracts, that also creates a risk.
This exact risk later became visible in the ISL complex. On the surface, it was about sports marketing. Internally, it revealed a system of hidden payments.
The ISL scandal brought hidden payments to light
ISL collapsed in 2001. Afterwards, it came to light how much money had changed hands behind the scenes. Swiss proceedings found that ISL had paid a total of 138 million Swiss francs in bribes to sports officials between 1989 and 1999.
In this case, bribery means: A person secretly receives money to influence a decision or favor someone. In sports, this can involve marketing rights, votes, contracts, or political support within an association.
138 million Swiss francs turned suspicion into a system. It wasn't about individual gifts or private favors, but about a way of doing business where personal payments became part of the power structure.
The 2013 FIFA Ethics Report, among other things, dealt with payments to João Havelange, the former FIFA president from Brazil, Ricardo Teixeira, the former head of the Brazilian Football Confederation, and Nicolás Leoz, the former president of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL). This made it clear: parts of the leadership of world football had been permeated by covert payments for years.
Horst Dassler's model continued to be influential after his death.
Horst Dassler died in 1987. Many of the later documented ISL payments concerned years after his death. Therefore, it would be wrong to attribute every later payment personally to him.
But Dassler's importance doesn't lie in the fact that he personally controlled every later payment. His importance lies in the fact that he organized modern sport as a network of associations, sponsors, rights, and personal relationships. This model made soccer richer. But it also made it more susceptible to abuse.
Where rights are highly valued and decisions are made in small circles, a power field emerges that can foster corruption. With this, Dassler didn't just build a company. He helped create a new order for world sports.
Sepp Blatter's career began close to Dassler's network
Sepp Blatter, the Swiss football official and later FIFA president, also belongs in this story. Blatter joined FIFA in 1975. According to current research, his entry into the organization was at the initiative of Horst Dassler. His first office was reportedly located in an Adidas branch in Landersheim, Alsace.
This is a strong detail because it shows the close relationship between Adidas and FIFA. Blatter later became Secretary General of FIFA and its president from 1998 to 2015. He shaped FIFA for decades.
There is no clear evidence that Dassler „bought“ Blatter. But Blatter's rise shows how closely Adidas, Dassler, and FIFA were connected at the time. Therefore, the later FIFA leadership did not emerge in a world that was clearly separated from corporations and marketers.
FIFA became increasingly powerful through sponsors and television rights.
Dassler's co-shaped business model permanently changed world football. World Cups became global media events. Sponsors paid large sums. Television rights became increasingly valuable. FIFA became financially stronger and politically more powerful.
However, wealth does not automatically bring better control. On the contrary, the more money involved in a system, the more important rules, transparency, and independent oversight become. This is precisely where FIFA suffered for years.
FIFA managed a product that moved people worldwide. Its tournaments held enormous political and economic significance for host countries. At the same time, it awarded rights that were worth millions to companies. However, many of these decisions remained difficult for the public to understand.
The 2015 FIFA investigations made the crisis visible worldwide.
The major public scandal broke in 2015. The US Department of Justice released a comprehensive indictment against FIFA officials and sports marketing managers. The charges involved fraud, money laundering, and bribery. According to the US Department of Justice, over more than 150 million dollars in bribes and illicit payments were demanded or accepted over many years.Fox Sports)
In 2015, several football officials were arrested in Zurich. The images of their arrests went around the world. Suddenly, corruption in world football was no longer a specialized topic for sports journalists, but global news.
Shortly thereafter, Sepp Blatter, the then FIFA president from Switzerland, announced his resignation. Blatter was not indicted in this US proceeding. Nevertheless, the case showed that the FIFA crisis was not purely an image problem. It was a structural problem.
The US investigations did not directly concern Horst Dassler, who had been dead for decades at that time. But they showed how enduring the basic pattern was: sports rights, marketing companies, officials, and clandestine payments. The FIFA corruption of 2015 did not fall out of the sky. It encountered a system that had learned over decades how to turn football rights into money and how to organize decisions within closed networks.
Long before the 2015 FIFA crisis became globally visible, investigative journalists had already reported on the world governing body's dark structures.
The 2006 World Cup also cast German football into the shadow of the FIFA system.
The story doesn't just concern FIFA headquarters or officials from South America. The 2006 German World Cup was also legally reviewed years later.
The focus was on a payment of 6.7 million euros. The money flowed from the German World Cup organizing committee to FIFA in 2005. Later, this payment was linked to a loan from Robert Louis-Dreyfus, the then Adidas CEO, to Franz Beckenbauer, the former German football star and head of the German World Cup bid.
A loan is borrowed money. In this case, the flow of money was politically and legally explosive because it went through FIFA structures and was later allegedly handled incorrectly for tax purposes.
The Frankfurt Regional Court imposed a fine on the DFB, the German Football Association, in 2025 for tax evasion. The DFB appealed the decision. This means that the association challenged the verdict, and the case was not yet finally concluded after this ruling.
A direct vote-buying for the 2006 World Cup was not proven in court. But the case showed a familiar pattern again: Adidas money, FIFA channels, unclear payments, and a late legal review.
The 2006 World Cup affair in particular makes it clear why Horst Dassler's story does not simply end with his death. Even decades later, elements reminiscent of the old system continued to surface: an Adidas CEO, a soccer star with political power, FIFA channels, unclear payments, and an association that had to answer in court.
Blatter and Platini were acquitted, but the Qatar complex intensified distrust
Another case involved Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president from Switzerland, and Michel Platini, the former French soccer star and former president of the European football association UEFA.
In 2011, FIFA paid Platini two million Swiss francs. Blatter and Platini explained that this was a belated payment for previous consulting work. The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office viewed this as a potential criminal case. In the end, Blatter and Platini were acquitted. The first acquittal came in 2022, followed by another acquittal on appeal in 2025. In August 2025, the acquittal became final because the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office decided not to file a further appeal.
Blatter and Platini were not convicted in this proceeding. They were acquitted. Nevertheless, the case belongs in history because it shows how great the distrust had become regarding financial flows in world football.
Qatar, PSG, and TV rights fueled the mistrust
This mistrust was further exacerbated by the Qatar scandal. In 2010, as UEFA president and a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, Platini voted in favor of awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Before the vote, he attended a luncheon at the Élysée Palace, which was also attended by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president at the time, and Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the crown prince at the time and current emir of Qatar. Platini later said he had not been influenced and had voted for Qatar for reasons of sports policy. At the same time, The Guardian reported that Platini understood that Sarkozy supported a Qatari takeover of Paris Saint-Germain and a World Cup in Qatar. (The Guardian)
Shortly after the World Cup was awarded, French soccer was indeed heavily influenced by Qatari money. Qatar Sports Investments, a Qatari investor with ties to a sovereign wealth fund, purchased Paris Saint-Germain, the major Parisian soccer club, in 2011. PSG was subsequently bolstered with enormous sums of money and built into a top European club. The Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera—and later beIN Sports—also made a major foray into French soccer broadcasting rights; according to The Guardian, the broadcaster purchased rights to Ligue 1, thereby significantly increasing TV revenue for French soccer. (The Guardian)
This does not prove that there was any direct quid pro quo for Platini’s vote. But it does show why the Qatar scandal was so explosive: the World Cup bid, French politics, a high-ranking UEFA official, a sovereign wealth fund, a major club, and TV rights were all closely intertwined, both in terms of timing and economics. It is precisely these kinds of entanglements that are the reason why world soccer continues to be viewed with suspicion to this day.
FIFA promised reforms, but remained difficult to oversee
In the wake of the scandals, FIFA promised reforms: new rules, greater oversight, new ethics structures, and greater transparency. Such reforms were necessary because the world governing body was under immense pressure after 2015.
But the fundamental question remained: Who controls an organization that itself controls so much?
FIFA makes decisions regarding World Cups, rights, financial flows, and rules. It collaborates with countries, corporations, television networks, and national associations. At the same time, it is neither a state, nor a parliament, nor a public authority. This unique position makes it difficult to oversee.
That is precisely why the problem goes beyond individual people. It’s not just about Havelange, Blatter, Platini, Dassler, or other names. It’s about a structure that wields a great deal of power and has long lacked transparency.
Horst Dassler's legacy is a soccer business built on money, connections, and influence
The story of Horst Dassler is so compelling because it doesn't end with Adidas. It tells the story of how modern soccer became what it is today: a global business in which emotions, brands, countries, television networks, and associations are all intertwined.
Dassler recognized the value of this business early on. The Adidas heir saw that soccer sells more than just games. Soccer sells a sense of belonging, national pride, heroes, images, and attention. Whoever can channel that attention can sell it to sponsors.
This realization made FIFA rich. But with the money came dependencies. With the dependencies came personal networks. And with the networks came the risk that decisions would no longer be made transparently and under proper oversight.
The real scandal, therefore, lies not only in individual bribery payments. The bigger scandal lies in a system in which a few people were able to make decisions about very valuable rights, while the public was mostly just watching the game.
Modern football grew on the pitch and behind closed doors.
Horst Dassler did not single-handedly make FIFA corrupt. That phrasing would be too simplistic and too harsh. But Dassler helped turn football into a business that became particularly susceptible to corruption.
Dassler brought together sponsors, rights, marketing, and personal contacts. For him, a global tournament was not just a sporting event, but a product. Officials became key figures because they decided on access, which was worth millions to companies.
This is how he shaped modern football more than many fans realize. When you watch a World Cup today, you're not just watching sports. You are also seeing the result of a business model that grew in the 1970s and 1980s.
The uncomfortable punchline is: Modern football was not just built by great players, legendary games, and passionate fans. It was also built by sponsors, rights holders, association officials, and backroom deals.
