By Paul Nicholson
October 2 – The International Football Arena will celebrate the 15th edition of its Zurich meeting October 28-29. The invitation-only event has grown into an important discussion forum as well as a key networking event for leaders in football from across the game’s different disciplines and geographies. IFA founder Marcel Schmid says the event at FIFA House this year will be looking forward and predicting the next 15 years for the football business .
“I want to look ahead to the next 15 years and predict the future a little bit, for players, (football) culture, stadia, leagues, media and marketing. We have lined up an outstanding group of names who are the world leaders in their areas,” said Schmid.
So far Schmid has over 25 speakers lined up, including an opening address from FIFA president Sepp Blatter. Moderators will be former BBC head of Sports News Mihir Bose and Darren Tullet of BeInSport,
The full list of topics and speakers will be released shortly but already confirmed speakers include Andrea Agnelli of Juventus, Ivan bravo of the Aspire Academy, Carsten Schmidt of Sky Germany, Henning Stiegenroth of Deutsche Telecom, and Martin Wagner of TEAM Marketing.
The second day of the conference will look more specifically at the future of mega sports events. Obviously a hot topic considering the debate that will be taking place this week at FIFA House with the meeting of the Executive Committee.
“This is a topic of cultural, political and economic, as well as sporting importance. It is not just about Brazil but really has a wide-ranging influence over events from Sochi to Qatar… The issues around what happens around the stadia and in the country and whether the sponsors will continue their support need to be looked at. As well as the considerations of the local public, for example in Switzerland there was a referendum were the people voted against hosting the Winter Olympic Games. These are big issues,” says Schmid.
The promise is for a debate that you would perhaps not expect to see in FIFA House, and according to Schmid FIFA is encouraging this debate.
Writer Simon Kuyper has neatly summed up the attendance at IFA on the event website. “IFA means to me gathering a small group of people with a disproportionally large amount of power.”
Registrations for IFA Zurich are now open and applications can be made at http://www.internationalfootball.com/user/event-registration. There is a limit to the number of participants.
Insideworldfootball is a media partner of IFA. For more information on IFA go to http://www.internationalfootball.com.
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