Infantino Drops World Cup Stake Sale After UEFA Revolt

The deadline was set for September 19. It was supposed to hold for seven weeks. It did not hold for three days.

Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, announced on Friday evening, July 31, that the plan to sell a stake in world football’s commercial rights had been dropped. The project was called FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, and it collapsed in a week that saw three confederations, one presidential adviser and finally the president himself line up against it.

What was actually on the table

FFE was designed as a separate company that would run the whole of FIFA’s commercial business: the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup. It was valued at 20 billion dollars. Private investors were offered roughly 20 percent of it, which would have raised 4.2 billion dollars for FIFA.

The anchor investor was to be Thrive Eternal, the fund founded by Joshua Kushner, younger brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. Within days that detail became the main argument of everyone demanding that the proposal never reach a vote.

The offer to the member associations was specific:

• 20 million dollars paid immediately on acceptance
• the current distribution stands at 10 million dollars per association across a four-year cycle
• projections pointed to growth of 22 to 24 million dollars a year by the 2034-2038 cycle

The arithmetic, though, worked against Zurich. FIFA has 211 member associations and the proposal needed at least 106 votes. UEFA has 55 members. CONCACAF has 41 associations, of which 35 are FIFA members with a vote. That is 90 votes lined up against the plan before anyone in Asia had said a word.

The boycott that settled it

On Thursday, July 30, two days after FIFA presented the proposal, all 55 UEFA members unanimously backed a boycott of every competition run by FIFA at an emergency meeting. This was not a threat to argue. It was a threat not to turn up. The first chance to act on it would have been the Women’s World Cup play-off matches in October.

UEFA said the same day:

The World Cup is not for sale. This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football.

Others joined by the end of the week. The Asian confederation, AFC, said it had not been consulted before the plan went public, and CONCACAF pressed for answers on the transparency of the whole arrangement. Then the man pushing the proposal from inside walked away: Carlos Cordeiro, former president of US Soccer, a former Goldman Sachs banker and senior adviser to Infantino, resigned.

Infantino’s retreat landed on Friday night.

Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.

FIFA went further in its statement, saying nobody is selling football and that this is not something the organisation would ever consider, while adding that it respects the opinions and concerns raised in public.

Why did it break in three days?

Because football has run this drill before. In April 2021 the Super League was announced on a Sunday evening and was effectively gone by Wednesday, once supporters and associations hit it at the same time. The same mechanism worked here, except this time the target was FIFA’s own proposal rather than twelve clubs.

The second reason is the calendar. The deadline for FIFA presidential candidates falls on November 18, and the election is on March 19, 2027 in Rabat. The 90 votes that killed FFE are not enough to win that election, but they are more than enough to take it away from someone. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president, FIFA vice-president Victor Montagliani and AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa are already being named as possible challengers.

What comes next

The first date is October and the women’s play-offs, now without the threat that half the field stays home. The second is November 18, when it becomes clear whether Infantino has come out of this week only without a project, or also without a clear road to a third full term.

The World Cup final was played on July 19 at MetLife Stadium. Twelve days later, with that same trophy as the centrepiece of the offer, the FIFA president was left without the plan he had presented himself. In the boardroom that is called withdrawing a proposal. In the dressing room it goes by another name.