Ownership & Funding

Why this page exists

People who read about football have good reason to be wary. A great deal of what presents itself as football coverage is something else wearing a newsroom’s clothes: channels run by agencies to move a market, previews written to deliver traffic to a bookmaker, ranking tables ordered by whoever paid most, and enthusiasm quietly underwritten by a club’s commercial department. A reader’s only protection is disclosure, and disclosure is worth something only when it is specific. This page says who owns FOOTBALL INSTANT, where the money comes from and what that money is not permitted to buy.

Ownership

FOOTBALL INSTANT belongs to one independent operator, who funds it, edits it and runs it. There is no media group above it, no chain and no network. There are no outside investors, no parent company and no shareholder or partner beyond the people producing the site. No part of it is owned by FIFA, UEFA, any confederation, any national association, any league or any club, by any player agency, intermediary or representation business, by any broadcaster, rights holder or data supplier, by any betting or gambling company, or by any fund holding a position in a club or a competition. No government body, political organisation or trade association holds any stake. Should any of that change, this page will change first, and conspicuously.

The operator’s name, company registration, governing jurisdiction and street address are not printed here, because details of that kind are harvested and reused by people impersonating publications to their readers. Anyone with a genuine need for them, whether to serve legal papers, to verify us for a transparency body or to vet us as an advertiser, can write to support@futbolalinstante.com and will receive them in writing. Because the owner and the person running the site are the same, there is no proprietor to please and nobody else to blame. If FOOTBALL INSTANT publishes something it should not have, the owner published it.

No money from football, and none from betting

We receive no payment, grant, sponsorship, equipment, hospitality, travel or other consideration from FIFA, UEFA, any confederation, any association, any league or any club in exchange for anything. We hold no media rights, we are nobody’s official partner, we run no club channel and we produce no content for any organisation we cover. We receive nothing from player agencies or intermediaries, and no coverage of a player, a move or a valuation is ever paid for in any form.

Separately and just as firmly: we take no money from the betting industry. No bookmaker sponsorship, no affiliate commission, no revenue share, no paid tips, no odds feeds sold as content. A football publication funded by gambling has an interest in what its readers do with its reporting, and this one intends to have none. Our advertise page records the same rule from the buyer’s side.

Where the money comes from

• Display advertising. Advertisement units on the site’s pages are filled by a third-party advertising network which sells the space, serves the creative, measures it and passes us a share of the proceeds. That share is almost the whole of our revenue. What advertisers get is an audience, not an opinion: none is told what is coming, none is shown a draft, none has any lever on a story, and buying advertising has never shielded anyone from critical coverage here.
• Sponsored content, when present. Paid material, labelled as such and kept visibly and verbally apart from journalism, produced under our editorial standards and never written by the people who report the news. A piece without the label is not sponsored; there is no third category on this site.
• Nothing else. No affiliate shop, no affiliate links, no paid links, no paid placements inside stories, no paywall and no reader payments. Any gap between advertising income and costs is met by the operator personally. If the mix ever changes, this page changes before the first new payment arrives.

What the money cannot buy

• Coverage. What we cover is chosen on news value by the editorial side and by nobody else.
• Silence. No payment, made or merely hinted at, kills a story or blunts one, and that includes payment offered by a club, an agency or a sponsor.
• Corrections or removals. The record is repaired under our corrections policy on the evidence and on nothing else.
• A verdict, a ranking or a place in any list. None of it is for sale in any form.
• Reader data. We do not sell it, as our privacy policy states.
• An early look at editorial copy. No advertiser, sponsor or subject sees a story before it is published.

What we refuse

We turn away advertising that would compromise the publication or harm the people reading it: gambling and betting creative of every kind, including odds, free bet offers and tipster services; anything that mimics a club, a league or an official announcement; ticket resale of doubtful legality; fan tokens and speculative instruments sold on club affiliation; and any deal whose real product is influence, such as a guaranteed editorial mention for a fee. The full list is on our advertise page. We also refuse investment from inside the sport we cover, on the principle that a publication funded by its subject becomes that subject’s newsletter. We hold no grants at present. We would consider a grant from a body supporting independent journalism, provided the funder had no say in coverage and the grant was disclosed on this page.

Contributors and conflicts

The operator pays the writers and editors. Freelancers are paid per piece at a rate agreed before the work begins. Nobody writing for us is paid by anyone they write about, and before taking a story every contributor tells an editor about any connection to its subject, including past employment at a club, league or agency, family connections, holdings and consultancy work. Nobody here holds a position in a club or a football business, works for an agency, or bets on the sport. Where a story touches a commercial relationship of ours, the story discloses it in the text. Disclosure is the minimum rather than a substitute for independence, and the whole arrangement is built so that there is seldom anything to disclose.

What we will disclose, and questions

If FOOTBALL INSTANT changes hands, if an outside investor buys in, if we accept a grant, if we take money from any club, league, federation, agency or betting company, if we begin selling advertising directly or add affiliate links, or if any new kind of revenue appears, this page will record it with dates. Anyone wondering whether a commercial relationship sits behind a piece of coverage can ask at support@futbolalinstante.com and will get a straight answer. A reader left wondering in silence costs us more than any advertiser pays.