AN ORGANISATION LOBBYING FIFA for a fairer World Cup gained widespread publicity by apparently “hacking” the tournament’s official website.
Visitors to www.fifa-brazil-2014.com were greeted by the #SambaHack, which showed FIFA President Sepp Blatter dancing to a Samba beat beneath the message “We want a fair World Cup.”
But while the page was designed to closely resemble FIFA’s own site, a spokesperson for the world footballing authority confirmed that the URL was not related to the organisation. The tournament’s official website is at www.fifa.com/worldcup.
The campaign is linked to Solidar Switzerland, a social justice group which is lobbying to improve conditions ahead of the World Cup kick-off next summer.
News of Solidar’s “hack” spread throughout social media on Sunday and Monday and at the time of writing, a site ticker showed almost 250,000 “supporters”. The domain was registered on 6 June through DomainsByProxy, an US-based company which specialises in private registrations.
YouTube Credit: solidarsolidar
A spokesperson for FIFA told TheScore.ie: “We can confirm that the URL which you mention is and never was owned by FIFA. Therefore please understand that we do not wish to comment any further.”
As part of their campaign, organisers met with Blatter in Zurich today and presented him with a petition with 28,000 signatures.
“”The Football World Cup in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014 is scheduled to be the biggest football celebration of all time,” Solidar said in statement on their website. “But not everyone will benefit from this celebration. On the contrary.
“Evictions, human rights violations and exploitation are overshadowing preparations for the world championship. The people affected are those already living in poverty.”
– Additional reporting by AFP
