Instead, Farrell focused on the long and painful relationship between the Argentinian company headed by Burzaco, Torneos y Competencias, and the Fox unit they had joint ventured with to control the football rights. What began as bribes to a number of South American football officials, by 2011 expanded to nearly a dozen men threatening to cancel lucrative contracts for the famous Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana tournaments. – capital was sold for much less than market value – if they hadn’t taken their annual bribe.
Burzaco said in 2010 he told López about bribes at a beachfront hotel in Florida, where the two had gone to watch the Super Bowl. Burzaco testified that he told López a second time during a meeting at Fox’s corporate headquarters in midtown Manhattan later that year. In 2012, after Martínez took over the unit’s Latin American operations, Burzaco said he offered him bribes for coffee at the Dean & DeLuca cafe in Rockefeller Center.
One of the main recipients of the bribe was Grondona, who at the time was serving as FIFA vice president, chairman of the football organization’s financial committee and president of the Argentine football association. According to Burzaco’s testimony, when FIFA in October 2011 opened the bidding for the English rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, López contacted him to tell him that Fox had planned to bid. López, Burzaco said, then asked him to contact Grondona “to let him know that any help is welcome.”
Burzaco, eager to help its main trading partner, which helped keep Torneos insolvency by hiring it to produce sports content across Latin America, did as he requested. . Grondona, he recalls, said he would do what he could but it would be difficult because FIFA was under close scrutiny following a controversial vote a year earlier to hand Russia the right to host the World Cup. (in 2018) and Qatar. Despite that, Grondona soon relayed the news that the rights were as good as Fox’s.
“Mr. López was very excited,” Burzaco recalled in the stands, saying that López called it “his best achievement at Fox.” According to Burzaco, several other Fox officials, including Chase Carey, were lining up to take over the company at the time, and Fox Corp president Rupert Murdoch himself expressed joy at winning the award.
As for Grondona, he summoned Burzaco to a private meeting in Buenos Aires shortly after giving Fox the right to host the World Cup.
“’Look, Alejandro, I helped you and Fox with this,’” Burzaco recalls him saying. “’But this is the last time I do it for free.’”
Grondona, who had been one of the main targets of the Justice Department investigation, died of an aortic aneurysm in July 2014. Seven months later, FIFA announced that Fox had awarded the right to host the 2026 World Cup, too. This time, ESPN wasn’t even allowed to bid.
