I spoke with @politiken.dk about Infantino’s salary, which has more than tripled since 2016 and reached around USD 6m in 2025, plus undisclosed benefits. With comments from @julesboykoff.bsky.social on FIFA’s patronage system. Free read via link👇 www.linkedin.com/posts/stanis...

FIFA President Gianni Infantino tries to conjure a highly confected photo-op with Israel FA vice-president, but Palestine FA President Jibril Rajoub denies him his spectacle, using the stage to remind the world that "We are suffering."

FIFA President Infantino just tried to force the representative of Palestine to stand with Israel and take a picture at the 76th FIFA Congress Palestine refused instead shouting out "We are suffering" FIFA is a sick organization and the World Cup should be boycotted by everyone

Hundreds of millions wasted on cops and capitalist spectacle while community members go without housing and food. Anti-FIFA rally in Vancouver now.

Protesters from an anti-FIFA coalition said a displacement of homeless people had already begun, citing street sweeps, restrictions on tents and the loss of belongings.

#LA28: It’s a no-build Olympics! Also LA28:

NOlympics Coalition Partner South Central Run Club understood they were being used for community washing and refused to partner with LA28. Here's the founder's explanation of why:

"Inglewood, California, shows how mega-events often don’t benefit local businesses" 2026worldcupwatch.org

One universality across the globe seems to be if you look up the history of any cool cultural practice or local attraction on Wikipedia it’s always like “this was common until (government) moved to modernize ahead of the (year) Olympics”

Es darf heute gesungen werden: #NOlympia-Rap »Olympiadas en la luna the olympics on the moon les jeux sur la lune aber niemals niemals wieder in #BERLIN« 🎶 #NOlympia #1Mai

0 people should ever be surprised that the Olympics will send you into debt.

1. The police never have enough money, according to them. 2. “Mutual aid” being the term to describe officers going elsewhere to police people is so nasty. 3. ACAB.

Exactly this. HIs argument is tough to take at face value as large events always rely on "mutual aid" from other law enforcement agencies... JUST LIKE WHEN LAPD WENT TO PARIS IN 2024! Also as the councilmembers note, the feds are in charge of all the venues, which should free them up quite a bit!

LAPD Chief McDonnell is whining he doesn't have enough officers for the Olympics, nor the budget to hire them. But not mentioned in his whining is the mutual aid from outside agencies plus federal agencies for security. Here's how the CA Post wrote about it:

The "no-cost Olympics" is a myth. It cost $30k to send three LAPD SWAT officers to Paris and London for 2028 Olympic Games "research travel." It's one of many trips made by the department and city officials over the years in the lead-up to the Olympics. All paid with city money!

Ahead of the 2028 Olympics, sex work has garnered more attention and surveillance. For @lapublicpress.bsky.social I spoke to one of the few sex worker-led mutual aid orgs that fills an important service gap that neither charity nor government services can meet. lapublicpress.org/2026/04/la-s...

LA city budget: cops: $84 trillion dollars lawsuits for cops: $100 trillion dollars housing: -$12 all electeds: why is homelessness a crisis in LA?

Stadiums and arenas are ground zero for implementing and normalizing new surveillance technologies. Angelenos should read this and know that this surveillance is here too.

🚨 Sportswash alert 🚨 JPMorgan Chase is in talks with the International Olympic Committee to sponsor the 2028 LA Olympics. Like all sportswashers, the bank aims to use the Games to distract from its environmental and social harm. Here's a reminder. 🧵 1/6

AND that same man (Casey Wasserman) is behind bringing the Olympics to LA, an event that is being used as an excuse to displace tenants near stadiums (so they can build hotels near venues), violate unhoused people, and increase ICE/DHS/police presence in Black/Latino neighborhoods in LA. He's awful!

I love that both the World Cup and the LA Olympics are shaping up to be disasters, and I encourage everyone worldwide to contribute to that effort.

A bit late, but maybe significant? Chair Gene Sykes says the USPOC has "actively engaged and listened to our stakeholders" regarding Casey Wasserman's leadership and "also shared our concerns directly with ⁠the LA28 board, which is responsible for determining who serves as its chair"

You’ll never believe this but it looks like LA28 has also not finalized its deal with the state

The World Cup is quietly in chaos, and the first game is less than two months away. Across U.S. host cities, officials are confronting problems ranging from funding gaps and labor strife to security concerns and spiraling costs. Our story (w/ @ryrivard.bsky.social): www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

www.zukunftsrat.de/hamburgs-oly... Danke. @nolympiaberlin.bsky.social @nolympiamuenchen.bsky.social @nolympicsla.bsky.social

Trump's word means very little. Plus, a sneaky ICE workaround is already in place: 3 World Cup host cities—Miami, Dallas, & Houston—have 287(g) agreements with the Trump admin, empowering local police to conduct immigration enforcement (& to get reimbursed for the salaries+benefits of officers).

The message of an overturned charge for protesting isn't "the law was on your side the whole time," it's that the law can't save you from the cops even when it's clear you're in the right

Goes without saying: this is a feature, not a bug By the time they throw out your case, you've been brutalized by cops. You spent hours or possibly days in jail. Your family had to scrape together bail money. You miss work to go to court. You spend months terrified of months or years in jail

New Jersey’s NJ Transit is currently planning to charge more than $100 for return rail tickets from New York’s Pennsylvania Station to MetLife Stadium for FIFA World Cup games. The 18-mile rail journey ordinarily costs $12.90 for a return ticket. 📝 @adamcrafton.bsky.social 🔗 nyti.ms/3QaZJwX

I got a slot to buy tickets for the '28 Olympics. My family is all there, so we thought it would be great to go down for them. Oh. my. god. The prices of these tickets. Closing Ceremonies? $5k Handball? $400 Track and Field? $1,400 I'm out.

So interesting this exploded after she fired Casey Wasserman, scion to a Mafia entertainment family blazing his own path as a Ghislaine Maxwell confederate and Olympics booster. It's like Chinatown but stupid.

With just over two months until the World Cup begins, the hotel industry doesn’t see the promised economic boon on the horizon.

Reminder: If FIFA weren't an organized crime ring, they would have removed the US's status as World Cup host already.

The “human rights strategy” for LA28 is like 20 pages of total content with like a page and a half on the risks for unhoused communities caused by LA28 and their main recommendation for people facing discriminatory displacement is to call Trump’s HUD directly. Unbelievable.

Remember! The Olympics 🕺🏻 are not 💃🏻 for you! 🤗

Commentary: LA28's first Olympics ticket drop flops, leaving locals locked out of events in their own backyards

Sports Mega-Event Grifters Gonna Grift

New (seriously): FIFA has now created an extra ticket category to sell "front" row World Cup seats for double the price of Category 1 tickets — which supposedly could’ve yielded “front” row seats when bought months ago. Fans feel deceived. More @theathletic.com: www.nytimes.com/athletic/718...

New: World Cup ticket buyers accuse FIFA of “misleading” them. Altered categories, seat maps that failed to disclose hospitality sections — "it's hard not to feel scammed," one fan told me. Full story free to read @theathletic.com:

Free to read: Trump’s White House must sign govt guarantees for FIFA to proceed with U.S. bid for Women’s World Cup in 2031 But White House wants to use its leverage for soccer to change a policy: its regulations on transgender players www.nytimes.com/athletic/717...

Finished @julesboykoff.bsky.social’s book, Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics. Most Olympics have out-of-control costs (all now), & don’t bring benefits promised. Barcelona is oft touted as a positive outlier, and it is in many ways, tho not 100%. library.olympics.com/CNOSPA/doc/S...

"We are 10 weeks out from the biggest World Cup in history & we don’t know if every country will be there, if supporters from every country will be allowed in, how they will be treated when they get there...It would be weirder if we weren’t fearful," writes @danielstorey85.bsky.social

LA used to have a handful of JCDecaux self-cleaning toilets, with a plan to install up to 150 public bathrooms, until our overconfident leaders decided we could handle this shit by ourselves. Unfortunately, we can't. Since 2022, LA has built 14 free-standing toilets. They are all currently closed

Blessings to LAist for staying on this very overdue agreement. Pretty wild that LA28 is selling tickets to an event and doesn't have a final deal in place with the host city!

You could pay more than $5,000 for a single ticket to the 2028 L.A. Olympics Opening Ceremony. (TV Director Alberto Belli posted an online shopping cart for what it would have cost him to take a family of four to the Opening Ceremony: $10,418). www.latimes.com/california/n...

Imagine buying a 2028 Olympics ticket for $2,100, and then getting smacked with a $505 service fee on top... Well, guess what? That's happening.

LA28's overdue human rights strategy *magically* appeared in a council file this week, although it's dated December 19, 2025. If it actually was submitted in December why is the file only now being made public? Anyway, here's the strategy (will analyze soon): cityclerk.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2...

LA residents were promised an ‘affordable’ Olympics. In reality, tickets have cost more than $5,000

Already happening in preparation for the World Cup: “a Real-Time Crime Center on the third floor of the Police Administration Building — combining live camera feeds, license plate readers and advanced analytics into a single command hub where officers can monitor the city around the clock.”