[GirlySports]

Fake news or not fake news I'm going to take UEFA's side on this.


I know it's easy to look at the fines and laugh about how "UEFA cares more about sponsorship than racism," but I don't think it is that simple.

If UEFA tripled the fines against various countries' FAs for their fans' racist actions, would it really make any difference? It's not the FAs doing the racist chanting. And how much extra money do these FAs have?

But the fine against a player for f-ing up sponsorship contracts is likely to actually have an effect. And the fine has to be bigger because the money being paid by the ambush marketer is more. I don't know how much Bendtner was paid to publicize the other company's logo, but that company paid his fine for him. So he still came out ahead, as did the company.

In the end money talks. Whether there are racist fans in the stands or not doesn't effect whether the event exists or if there is a worldwide tv audience or not. Advertising and marketing does. Most of us old enough in Canada remember where there was hardly any World Cup or Euro soccer on tv and if there was, the commentator sounded like he was on the moon.