FIFA president Gianni Infantino abandons proposed World Cup equity sale to Joshua Kushner-led group, but the plan may still take him down

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FIFA gives up on private equity sale after major confederation pushback, but it could still hurt Infantino

A rising trend in the sports world over the past decade-plus has been private equity investment. We've seen that with individual teams and with media outlets, and we've seen the idea floated by college conferences like the old Pac-12, although that particular one amounted to nothing in the end. But while most of the private equity investments in sports have come with at least some backlash, it's been rare to see it on the level of what's played out with FIFA and the World Cup this week, leading to the organization (and president Gianni Infantino, who has held that role since 2016 and was reportedly the key mover behind this proposal) giving up on their planned sale Friday night.

To recap this week's wild developments, news of the "FIFA Forward Enterprises" proposal (creating a new company that would be majority-controlled by FIFA, but with a large 21 percent minority stake sold to private equity interests led by Joshua Kushner's Thrive Eternal) began to be reported by media outlets Tuesday, leading to the governing body putting out a release detailing the plan that night. The plan indicated that this sale alone would be expected to bring in up to $4.2 billion U.S., with another equal amount expected to be created by the launch of the separate FFE division and its exclusive focus on monetizing top-tier competitions. The plan was to put this to a vote by all FIFA member organizations by September 19; if it passed, FIFA's development funding to member organizations would skyrocket, with the organizations who approved the FFE proposal receiving $40 million a year in funding from 2027-30 (up from the current $8 million), while those who didn't would still get $20 million a year over that period, with more funding still planned in the following years.

However, there was major opposition to this right from the start. That backlash came from fans, media figures, politicians (including UK prime minister Andy Burnham, with "football does not belong to investors"), and perhaps most critically, the regional confederation governing bodies within FIFA. UEFA, the European governing body, came out with the strongest initial statement Tuesday (including "the soul and governance of football are not assets to trade"), and after a member meeting Thursday, vowed that their member nations were prepared to boycott the World Cup and other FIFA competitions until this plan was scrapped. CONCACAF (North and Central America) and the AFC (Asia) followed with massively critical statements, although not the specific boycott threat. And Friday, Infantino senior advisor Carlos Cordeiro (the former U.S. Soccer president) resigned (saying "Let me be clear: I had no involvement in this proposal, and I oppose it unequivocally. It is a bad deal for FIFA's Member Associations, a bad deal for football, and a bad deal for the long-term future of the game."), while FIFA COO Kevin Lamour came out with an amazingly candid and critical statement to Graham Dunbar of The Associated Press that blasted Infantino for this:

After that, FIFA eventually backed off the plan Friday night. Infantino said in a statement "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. Our purpose has always been — and will always be — to unite and improve. As a result, this proposal will not proceed." But this still could be something that has long-lasting consequences for him.

Several things went wrong with this project right from the start. As mentioned, bringing private equity into sports always comes with some controversy, but there are particular cases where it can make sense if immediate funding can help unlock major growth. However, FIFA already has boatloads of money. And it was far from clear where the extra revenues to make this investment worth it for the investors would come from. World Cup tickets are already priced sky-high, media rights are already drawing huge amounts, and FIFA is already getting pretty much whatever it wants from local governments and stadiums). That makes it difficult to see where there's much room for further revenue growth on this scale. Maybe the main World Cup could be expanded further, maybe other tournaments such as the Women's World Cup, Club World Cup, and youth World Cups could be expanded further and/or promoted more, but FIFA could do all that without private equity, and none of that seems likely to provide this amount of money.

Also, much of the private equity funding under this proposal was earmarked to just go to federations. That could be valuable for developing the grassroots game, and it might provide some limited help to national teams (especially from federations with funding challenges). But while that might offer some improvements to the overall quality of play at top international events, it seems unlikely that would generate much more ticket sales or media rights revenue than what FIFA would get otherwise.

Another area where the numbers deserved major scrutiny was the claim that FFE's creation alone would provide $4.2 billion in value, equal to the equity investment. If that was the case, why would FIFA not just create their own, fully-held version of FFE specifically focused on major tournaments?). And having Kushner (the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner) tied to this didn't help either, especially with the recent controversies around Trump at the World Cup.

However, perhaps the largest problem with this plan from an optics standpoint was the offering of much more money to federations that voted for it. Yes, there's a long history of FIFA decisions being made by votes that seem to accompany large payouts to smaller nations, and with each of FIFA's members counted equally in membership-wide votes, there's been logic to that approach for many FIFA officials. But the quid pro quo has rarely been as explicit as this. And that's a big part of what led to the strength of the language in the condemnations of this, and to the eventual abandonment of the plan.

For Infantino himself, the failure of this plan won't necessarily lead to his exit. But it certainly could. At the very least, it's led to a lot of calls for his head. And it could lead to the opposition against him solidifying more in the weeks to come. At any rate, this whole plan worked out very badly for him, including with its high centralization, failed attempt at secrecy, seemingly-flawed premise, and dramatic miscalculation of public reaction. And while this isn't his first misstep at the FIFA helm, it might be the most significant one.