Global Citizen is stepping into the global spotlight as the charity behind the first-ever half-time show at a World Cup final.
The show, curated by Coldplay frontman and longtime Global Citizen supporter Chris Martin, will feature Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Justin Bieber.
The event is exactly the kind of glitzy spectacle the advocacy group has become known for, perhaps more so than its stated aim of ending extreme poverty.
Global Citizen grew out of the Global Poverty Project and staged its first major concert in Central Park in September 2012, featuring Neil Young, the Foo Fighters, and John Legend.
That debut show was timed to coincide with the UN General Assembly in New York, seeking donation and policy commitments from world leaders attending the summit.
Most of the 60,000 attendees received free tickets in exchange for completing advocacy actions through the Global Citizen platform, a model the charity has repeated worldwide.
Since then, the organisation has staged shows in cities including Mumbai, Johannesburg, Paris, Lagos, London, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, and Seoul, featuring artists such as Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Ed Sheeran.
Global Citizen claims it has secured $49bn in funding commitments to tackle poverty and protect the environment, though it does not distribute money directly itself.
Its collaboration with Fifa on the World Cup final half-time show forms part of a joint campaign aimed at raising $100m for education and football opportunities for children worldwide.
However, the charity’s large-scale events are expensive to mount, with around 60 to 70 per cent of revenues spent on staging, producing, and organising its festivals.
Its most recent accounts, for 2024, reported a $3m loss on revenues of $45m, despite artists typically performing for free at its events.
Questions have also been raised about whether Global Citizen can legitimately claim credit for all the funding it says it has secured through its advocacy work.
Some governments, including those in the Netherlands and Sweden, have denied that Global Citizen’s work was behind specific pledges they made, which a charity spokesperson has contested.
Professor Brian Mittendorf, a non-profit financing expert at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, raised the issue plainly in 2021, asking: “The central question is whether the feel-good nature of the Global Citizen approach has been effective at raising and directing funds toward global poverty and health that would not have been available otherwise.”
He continued: “Or has it instead created a mistaken sense of scale and accomplishment that could breed complacency in the face of dire needs?”
Global Citizen’s links to Fifa run deeper than the current World Cup partnership, with mining billionaire Patrice Motsepe playing a significant connecting role.
At a 2018 Global Citizen concert at FNB Stadium marking the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, Motsepe pledged $250m from his family foundation towards land reform and agricultural development for black communities in South Africa.
Motsepe is president of the African football confederation CAF and is widely regarded as one of the most likely successors to Fifa president Gianni Infantino.
The Motsepe Foundation has been a partner of Global Citizen for eight years, with Motsepe and his wife Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe appearing regularly as speakers at the charity’s biggest events.
One geopolitics watcher summed up the relationship between the 63-year-old and the organisation by saying: “It is easy to understand how they can help one another.”