The FIFA World Cup will influence Brazilian domestic and international politics, the ongoing crisis at FIFA and the wider future of sporting mega-events, writes author David Goldblatt in an exclusive piece for Play the Game.

There are only a few days to go before the Brazil World Cup begins. Will the streets be safe? Will there be protest and violence again? After mass demonstrations marked the Confederations Cup last year, the fragile security and violence situation means that no one knows what to expect during the biggest football event in the world.

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Though the World Cup has brought some positive change to Brazil, the 14 billion USD investments fail to deliver opportunities for long-term development, American scholar and activist Christopher Gaffney writes.

The World Cup in Brazil is not only challenged by the risk of civil unrest. Violence in and around football stadiums is notorious in South American football. The tournament’s immediate success will partly depend on the ability to curb the violent fans, but the problems go deeper, writes Javier Szlifman.

Thomas Bach has taken the first steps in his Olympic Agenda 2020, his reform strategy for the ’new’ IOC, by setting up 14 working groups to come up with the roadmap for the movement’s future.

In a two-day conference on ‘sport and prison’, experts will discuss the effects of sport in prisons, and present the results of a survey about sport programme management in European prisons.

More than two thirds of the Polish voters in Krakow have voted against hosting the 2022 Olympic Winter Games.