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FIFA had to step in a long time ago to make it harder for clubs to keep players from national assignments. But the biggest difference is that there is a lot of money in football, it is part of the reason America keeps working on establishing it. Table tennis is a broke sport and the culture of automatic funding is not there.Bad comparison, but it proves the point exactly.
FIFA World Cup is once every 4 years. Continental Cups (UEFA European Championships for example) as well, so that is one international championship every 2 years.
The calendars are the same for every player in the World, so planning is easy.
None of it is mandatory. Your team calls you up. If you refuse, your national association might get angry, but that's it. FIFA is not even involved. They just recieve a entry list of players from the national Association.
The differences:
ITTF already had a yearly World Cup. That is what was in 'the contract'. It wasnt mandatory, just like in football.
ITTF WTT then added 5-20 events per year. Mandatory. Money and ranking penalties if you refuse.
Its more like ITTF is your employer and then said: I know you signed up for one world cup per year, but now there are 20 events per year and you need to travel to all of them. No income for you buddy, only costs. Yes FIFA added a dumb Nations League as well, but players do get paid there.
Do you think people from many developing countries can afford to fly over the world? That is why the racism card is pulled. If you are poor, you will never get a good ranking. That is always the case, but much worse now. The point penalties alone will keep your ranking down. Olympic entries are based on these points I believe (might be wrong), so I guess also say goodbye to ever being an Olympian.
The employer comparison is even worse, because employers pay their workers, like Tony said. It's work for pay. In this construction there is only work, no pay. Instead there's punishment. Either go, lose money on travel and accommodation and missed income, or don't go and lose money on penalties and penalty ranking points. Awesome.
Quadri knows that if they hurt his ranking (which they are doing with the zero point penalties), his performance bonuses in many of his contracts will take a massive hit as well as his attractiveness to many sponsors. So a better balance has to be found somewhere.
The issue in part is that organization capture is a big deal everywhere. WTT came out of nowhere (not quite nowhere, but you need to be a follower of ITTF history and politics and maybe know the players to understand the evolution). The WTT is hoping that public funding of sports is enough to give them income. This model only works for the short term and in non-market economies, in the long term, it is unsustainable. A serious individual would look for a more sustainable even if scaled back growth and expense model for table tennis, even if it was to make hardbat tournaments more lucrative etc. Without Chinese backing, the current model would die easily. Even with it, it isn't entirely clear it has a future. But in the short term, the people who are running things get *some money* that they might not get doing something else and get to visit countries and make great connections.