alt Hacker NewsThe Qatar World Cup tournament was obviously such a thing. The place had the money to build all the stadiums, but has never qualified legitimately and is a tiny country. Thousands of people died building those stadiums in Qatar.
Plus there is advertising all over the players' clothing, the pitch, the pitchside hoardings etc. There is high rent advertising in every break. Even more so since theze silly hydration breaks.
I mean, of course you're right about all of that. (The Qatar world cup was more for 'sportswashing' than extracting profit, although FIFA itself still made plenty of money. And, the hydration breaks will hopefully be a thing of a the past, because it was so obvious what they were really for. But I'm not betting on that.)
It just sucks that everything good and sacred in the world (soccer and everything else) is being squeezed and shittified for profit. So if FIFA is prevented from converting from a non-profit with the nominal purpose of being a steward of the game for its own stake into a fully explicit for-profit capitalistic enterprise, then I'll take the victory. Even if the current system is far from perfect.