My speech: corruption within sports
Hello my name is Cillian Soden and today I am here to discuss the topic of corruption within sports. (Slide show begin) In the United States of America the biggest corruption within sports is in college athletics and this will be my main topic. The NCAA run all college sports and are a non profit organisation, that accumulate a fewbillion dollars every year. Their money comes from the live television broadcasting all over the world of basketball and football, their stadiums that sell out for almost every single game and tuition fees for sports. They claim to be a non profit organisation but the coaches of these sporting teams salaries start at 2 million dollars and can get as high as 10 million per year, doesn't this seem like too much? These student athletes that work everyday in training and in the classroom, that then perform in front of thousands of people live and with millions watching behind a TV screen and get paid nothing. Every year there are debates on whether or not these players should be paid and when it is taken to the courts the NCAA have very high powered and expensive lawyers to defend their cases. The NCAA have power over all college sports and the ability to cancel any game or suspend/expel any player or coach. This power is used almost as a scare tactic so college corporations often don't look into the NCAA because they are worried that they may lose their players which will lose them money if less people go to their sporting events. Which then ultimately will impact the NCAA which they know and that's why this situation is so corrupt. As a nonprofit organisation the NCAA do not have to pay corporate income tax. Corporate income tax is a direct tax on an organisations income or capital which is their profits. The NCAA cannot have excess money at the end of a year to be a non profit organisation and they must pay their workers, owners and coaches so much money to sustain this non tax paying situation, which is why the salaries are so high. Don't you agree that this is something that needs to be sorted out? Corruption in sports within the world isn't only within American College sports, a major case was in 2015 involving FIFA. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association was investigated by the FBI and the IRS-CI near the end of May in 2015. Astonishingly, a company that has so much money still wrongs their way around taxation which included wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering. The sports marketing executives that claimed only to be marketing people when paying taxes were also holders of media and marketing rights for high profile international qualifications including the Americas' FIFA World Cup qualifying tournaments and showpiece tournaments CONCACAF Gold Cup and Copa América. They avoided paying millions of Euors each and were finally convicted on November 19th, 2015. Thank you very much for listening to my speech today, I hope we can influence a change and that people will choose to do the right thing.