Ex FIFA council member Dodd criticizes Infantino's threat of blackout for WWC

"Should the offers continue not to be fair, we will be forced not to broadcast the FIFA Women's World Cup into the 'big five' European countries," said FIFA President Gianni Infantino at a recent World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva. Infantino described recent offers to buy the broadcasting rights of the Women's World Cup from UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and France as both "disappointing" and a "slap in the face".

Insistent that it is FIFA's "moral and legal obligation not to undersell" this summer's women's tournament and that it was its "duty to promote and invest in women's sport", the president called "on all players, fans, football officials, presidents, prime ministers, politicians and journalists all over the world to join us and support this call for a fair remuneration of women's football. Women deserve it, as simple as that," he explained.

According to FIFA's most senior member, European broadcasters had offered in the region of $1m-$10m for the rights, which he compared- perhaps unfairly given the circumstances- to the $100m-$200m offers received for the men's 2022 edition in Qatar.

Kick-off times and the time difference have been quoted as some of the main issues which are deterring European Broadcasters from offering significant sums of money, something which Infantino did indeed recognize. "Maybe, because it is in Australia and New Zealand, it's not played on prime time in Europe, but still, it is played at 9am or 10am, so it is quite a reasonable time," he said.

Dodd exposes FIFA 'hypocrisy'

Former FIFA council member Moya Dodd called attention to FIFA's hypocrisy with regards to its stance on TV rights, given their historical undervaluation of the women's game.

"It's a bit rich to scold broadcasters for underpaying because if you look at the history, FIFA itself never put any value on the women's rights," she said.

"Effectively, the industry was trained to pay big money for the men's World Cup and treat the women's equivalent as worthless. At the same time, the women were told they didn't deserve prize money or equal pay because they didn't bring the revenues.

"It's actually quite outrageous. For FIFA to now say that all women's revenues will go straight into women's football overlooks the fact that the value of the women's rights have until now been used to inflate the value of men's football," she concluded.

Former Australia international Dodd did also say that the recent decision to separate the women's TV rights- they had previously been bundled together with the men's at a broadcasting level- was the right one from an economic perspective. It means that more revenue should be generated for the women's game and the players themselves.