FIFA Scraps World Cup Investment Sale After UEFA Says It Has 'Lost Confidence' in Infantino

FIFA killed its own World Cup investment scheme this weekend, five days after it leaked and blew up in Gianni Infantino's face.

The plan, first reported by the Times of London, would have created a new vehicle called FIFA Forward Enterprise to hold commercial rights to the World Cup. FIFA planned to sell a minority stake to outside investors, reportedly including a group led by Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to the Guardian. FIFA said the deal would generate $10 billion in extra funding for its 211 member associations.

Most of FIFA's own leadership didn't see it coming. The Guardian reported that even members of the FIFA Council, the organization's central decision-making body, had no idea the plan was in the works before it leaked. Infantino himself was reportedly caught off guard by the timing, forced to announce a plan FIFA wanted to unveil more quietly.

Then came the sales pitch. The Guardian reported it had obtained the JP Morgan deck built for FIFA, laying out how the new entity would chase "third party sources of capital and debt financing" and prioritize "high yield" partnerships. That's Wall Street language for a governing body that's supposed to be a not-for-profit steward of the sport, not a leveraged investment fund.

FIFA is sitting on more than $2 billion in reserves, according to the BBC, and is projected to post roughly $15 billion in revenue tied to this summer's World Cup. Nobody has explained why an organization that flush needed private investors offering member federations an extra $40 million apiece if they signed on by September 19.

UEFA wasn't buying it. Europe's governing body called an emergency meeting of its 55 members and came out swinging, calling the scheme built on "secret schemes" and "shabby" process, according to the BBC. UEFA's members voted unanimously to boycott all FIFA tournaments should the plan go ahead. CONCACAF and the AFC also pushed back, with the AFC urging FIFA to "undertake an urgent review of its governance and decision-making framework." The UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, and the English FA publicly attacked the plan, per the Guardian.

Infantino's response, posted to his own Instagram, was that FIFA Forward Enterprise was just a proposal going through a "democratic consultation process" and would "unlock previously uncaptured economic value" across men's, women's, and youth football. He insisted there would be no change to the plan or its deadlines. That held for about 48 hours.

Then FIFA folded and confirmed the plan was being withdrawn, according to both the BBC and the Guardian. Infantino admitted the project "has created divisions of a nature that are no longer of the interest of the objective," and said the proposal "will not proceed." UEFA's statement afterward went further than a policy disagreement. "The current FIFA leadership has not only lost UEFA's confidence but also that of many other members of the football family," the statement read, according to the BBC, adding a pointed reminder that Infantino promised trust and transparency when he was first elected in 2016.

The comparison writers keep reaching for is the European Super League collapse of 2021, when 12 top clubs tried to break away into their own competition and got run out of town within 48 hours amid fan revolt. Former England defender Gary Neville called that scheme "pure greed" at the time, and the BBC noted Infantino's plan actually survived two days longer before it, too, got scrapped.

This wasn't a breakaway league challenging FIFA. This was FIFA's own president blindsiding his own governing council, his own regional confederations, and apparently his own vice presidents and senior advisers, according to the BBC, none of whom reportedly had a chance to ask questions before the plan became public. One of Infantino's most senior aides, former Goldman Sachs banker Carlos Cordeiro, resigned shortly after the collapse, citing "unequivocal" opposition to the deal, according to the Guardian.

A not-for-profit organization sitting on billions in reserves trying to quietly sell commercial rights to Trump-adjacent private investors without telling its own board is the kind of governance failure that should worry anyone who cares about how international sports money actually gets managed. UEFA didn't mince words about it, and neither did England's FA or Burnham, who upgraded his criticism afterward and called Infantino "the wrong man" to lead FIFA, per the Guardian.

According to the Guardian, by the weekend Infantino faced more pressure than at any point since the fall of disgraced former FIFA president Sepp Blatter in 2015. Whether that translates into a formal leadership challenge, or whether Infantino rides this out the way he's ridden out prior controversies, is the open question heading into FIFA's next council meeting.