Alibaba's sponsorship, along with Dalian Wanda Group's earlier pledge may pave the way for China to host the World Cup.
Alibaba Group, China's e-commerce giant is planning to run to become FIFA's sponsor, a Bloomberg report said, quoting unnamed sources.
According to the report, this is the second Chinese company to become an affiliate to the football body after Premiere Xi Jinping made China's success in football one of the key focuses for businesses. One of the primary reasons for this is for China to get a chance to host the FIFA World Cup in the future.
FIFA is also known to have been working on tweaking the rules to allow the World Cup to be hosted on the same continent one after the other. With the current rules, the 2022 World Cup being hosted by Qatar means that China cannot host the World Cup till 2030 atleast, the report said.
Dalian Wanda Group Co signed up as a FIFA sponsor earlier this year. At the time, Wanda Group's Founder and CEO, who's also touted as China's Warren Buffet, Wang Jianlin, had predicted that another Chinese company would join the list of FIFA sponsors soon.
According to the report, one of the many Alibaba subsidiaries could become the sponsor. Alibaba Sports has been in touch with FIFA, the report said, quoting a China-based spokesperson.
If the deal comes through, Alibaba (or its subsidiary) will join Dalian Wanda Group, Adidas AG, Coca-Cola Co, Gazprom, Hyundai Motor and Visa Inc as a sponsor.
The FIFA World Cup has been mired with controversies since the run up to the world cup in Brazil when many cases and incidents of corruption and human rights' violations came to the shore. Now, the story continues with the next host Qatar.
Since then, FIFA has found it difficult to get sponsors.
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