Play the Game

🎙️ New episode of the Play the Game Podcast!

How did sport become part of Donald Trump’s political machine?

In this episode, Stanis Elsborg speaks with investigative journalist Karim Zidan about Trump’s long and increasingly political relationship with sport.

For decades, Trump has used boxing, professional wrestling, golf, mixed martial arts, and football to build his brand, cultivate power, and place himself at the centre of the spectacle.

Karim Zidan explains how sport has become part of Trump’s political infrastructure – a space where strength, masculinity, nationalism, loyalty, grievance, and entertainment are turned into political power.

The conversation looks at:
🥊 Trump’s relationship with combat sports, from boxing and WWE to the UFC
🏟️ The network of sports executives, athletes, influencers, and political operators around him
🌎 The 2026 FIFA World Cup and Trump’s America First project
📰 What this means for journalism and the way we understand sport as a political arena

Karim Zidan is an investigative journalist covering sport, politics, power, and human rights. He is also the author of the forthcoming book 'The Ultimate Strongmen', which examines how mixed martial arts has become a powerful tool for political agendas, propaganda, and control.

🎧 Listen to the Play the Game Podcast in your podcast app of choice.

Link in comments 👇

When Mexico's league owners suspended promotion and relegation in 2020, they protected their own investments - and hollowed out the lower divisions in the process ⚽️💰

As the country co-hosts the 2026 World Cup, alongside the United States and Canada, a new Play the Game investigation by Alan Amper Ajzen reveals how this "Dead Zone" turned the bottom tiers into fertile ground for match-fixing, illegal betting, and money laundering🚨

All enabled by weak regulation and a federation that governs the very clubs that own it.

🗨️ Drawing on an exclusive interview with award-winning Mexican journalist Óscar Balmen, who specialises in covering organised crime, the piece exposes what's really at stake domestically, beneath the spectacle of the World Cup:

👉 No relegation, no consequences
In 2020, Liga MX owners suspended promotion and relegation for up to six years, replacing sporting stakes with steep financial fines. As a result, lower-division teams lost both their incentive to compete and their financial value.

👉 A regulator that regulates itself
The Mexican Football Association (FMF) has historically been owned by the very clubs it oversees, blurring the line between regulator and regulated and concentrating power among a shrinking group of owners.

👉 Low wages, easy targets
Second and third-division players earning low wages have been offered large sums per fixed match; one former Liga MX Femenil player describes being approached by a tipster over in-game corners.

👉 Match-fixing is escalating across every tier
Since late 2024, more than five major investigations have surfaced, players have been suspended for a combined 57 years, and reports include abductions and beatings of players who refused bribes.

👉 The law hasn't caught up
Mexico has yet to criminalise match manipulation, leaving the federation to police itself while a proposed penal-code reform stalls in committee.

Read the full investigation (link in the comments 👇)

IOC lifts restrictions on Belarus despite ongoing repression of athletes ⚠️

🔎A recent Deutsche Welle investigation into the disappearance of Belarusian sports activist Anatol Kotau has brought renewed attention to the suffering of those athletes who oppose the regime.

In a comment for Play the Game, Jens Sejer Andersen asks if the IOC has dealt with this situation before it recently lifted its restrictions on Belarus 🤔

Anatol Kotau – a former secretary general of the Belarusian Olympic Committee who later joined the opposition – disappeared in August 2025. The investigation points to a possible abduction involving Belarusian and Russian intelligence services. His whereabouts remain unknown.

However, despite continued persecution of athletes and sports officials, both in Belarus and in exile, the IOC decided in May 2026 to lift its restrictions, restore payments, and declare the Belarusian NOC compliant with the Olympic Charter.

Some of the questions that need to be raised are:

👉 Did the IOC raise Kotau’s disappearance and the oppression of athletes in its talks with the Belarusian NOC?

👉 Or did the IOC, in its eagerness to include Belarus as a step towards getting Russia back on the Olympic stage, betray the Belarusian athletes?

Read the full comment by Jens Sejer Andersen (link in the comments)👇

Who holds sport to account❓🤔

Today, Play the Game launches the Play the Game Journalism Fund – a new initiative to support independent journalism that investigates power, governance, integrity, and accountability in international sport✍🏼

“Much of what we know about the darker sides of international sport does not stem from official transparency. We owe it to journalism,” says Stanis Elsborg, head of Play the Game.

“Investigative journalists have played a crucial role in bringing corruption, doping systems, abuse, and governance failures in sport to public attention. With this fund, we want to help create better conditions for the next important stories to be told.”🗨️

Through public support, the new fund will finance original, investigative, and analytical journalism on critical issues in international sport.

The fund is based on a simple principle: all donations will be used to pay those who write the stories. Donations will not fund Play the Game staff salaries or internal working hours☝🏼

👉🏼 The aim is simple: to help important stories get told – especially the stories that are too complex, too risky, or too underfunded to emerge on their own.

Read more about the fund and how to support it via the links in the comments👇🏼

🎙️ New episode of the Play the Game Podcast

Mexico is hosting only 13 of the 104 matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

But that does not mean the local impact is small.

In this episode, urban anthropologist Monika Streule takes us to Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara, where World Cup-related stadium projects, infrastructure upgrades, and urban development are colliding with local struggles over water, land, housing, public space, and environmental protection.

In Mexico City, residents near the Azteca Stadium continue to resist projects they fear will increase water scarcity, displacement, and gentrification.

In Monterrey, the build-up to the World Cup has intersected with long-running conflicts over public land, air pollution, water access, and the protection of rivers.

And in Guadalajara, the Akron Stadium and its surroundings near La Primavera forest raise questions about urban expansion, wildfire risks, pressure on water resources, and the limits of sustainability branding.

This is a story about football and what happens to host cities – and to the people who live there – when a sporting event of the magnitude of the FIFA World Cup arrives?

🎧 Listen to the Play the Game Podcast in your podcast app of choice.

Link in comments 👇

🎙️ First week of the Play the Game Podcast – and three episodes are now out!

The podcast brings you voices, stories, and debates about the people, power, and politics shaping sport.

In our first week, you can listen to:

🎧 The Qatar 2022 whistleblower: Abdullah Ibhais on prison, pressure, and media control
🎧 FIFA’s betting expansion raises integrity fears ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup
🎧 Jules Boykoff: Sportswashing, the FIFA 2026 World Cup, and the 2028 Olympic Games

Thank you to everyone who has listened, shared, and supported the podcast so far.

More episodes are coming soon.

🎧 Listen now in your podcast app of choice. Link in comments👇

🎙️ New episode of the Play the Game Podcast!

Today, the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off 🌎

For millions of fans, it will be a celebration of football, drama, beauty, and emotion.

But behind the spectacle lies another story.

A story about power, money, political prestige, and who gets to use sport - and for what purpose.

In the third episode of the Play the Game Podcast, you can hear Jules Boykoff speak about sportswashing, the FIFA 2026 World Cup, and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Boykoff is a political scientist, author, former professional football player, and one of the most critical voices on the politics of sport and mega-events.

In this episode, he turns his attention to FIFA, Donald Trump, and the political and commercial machinery surrounding the 2026 World Cup.

And his analysis does not stop with football. Two years after the World Cup, the Olympic Games will come to Los Angeles - raising many of the same questions about power, profit, public money, policing, displacement, and political image-making.

The episode also comes as Boykoff releases his new book: Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine.

🎧 Listen to the Play the Game Podcast in your podcast app of choice.

Link in comments 👇

🎙️ New episode: Is FIFA moving into the betting industry faster than it can protect the integrity of football?

Ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, FIFA is deepening its relationship with betting operators, prediction markets, data companies, and streaming rights.

And just last night, on June 9, FIFA announced Kraken as an official crypto exchange supporter of the tournament.

This episode looks at how FIFA’s commercial partnerships are bringing thousands of matches closer to betting markets, why sports integrity experts are concerned about prediction markets ahead of the 2026 World Cup, and whether football’s systems of protection and accountability can keep up.

This is a story about money, governance, betting, and the integrity of football – from the biggest World Cup ever staged to some of the smallest leagues in the game.

The episode explores:
⚽ FIFA’s growing ties to betting operators
📊 Prediction markets and new integrity risks
🌍 Offshore betting and weak regulation
💻 FIFA+ streams used on betting websites
🚨 Match-fixing concerns in low-level football
🏆 Integrity risks ahead of the 2026 World Cup

At the centre is a simple question:

Who protects the game when commercial opportunities moves faster than regulation?

The story is written by journalist Steve Menary for Play the Game and narrated by Stanis Elsborg.

🎧 Listen now in your podcast app of choice. Links in comment👇

🎙️“Silence is sport’s worst enemy!”

That is the message from Qatar 2022 whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais, the former media manager for Qatar’s World Cup organising committee.

In the opening episode of the Play the Game Podcast, Stanis Elsborg speaks with Abdullah Ibhais in an exclusive interview about the latest developments in his case.

After travelling to Norway to speak publicly about FIFA, Qatar, and the 2022 World Cup, Ibhais says he was stopped at the airport on his return to Jordan, questioned, and had his passport confiscated.

The episode also features Ibhais’ powerful presentation from Play the Game 2025, where he describes Qatar’s media strategy in the years leading up to the tournament – a strategy he sums up as:

🗣️“Deflect, discredit, and deny.”

This is the story of an insider turned whistleblower – a story about prison, pressure, media control, FIFA, migrant workers, and the global politics behind Qatar 2022.

🎧Listen now in your podcast app of choice. Link in comments👇