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Gianni Infantino tried to sell off a piece of the World Cup to private equity. The World Cup, it turns out, did not want to be sold.
The FIFA president’s ambitious plan to create a new commercial entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises, or FFE, collapsed on July 31 after just two days of public life. The proposal aimed to raise approximately $4.2 billion by selling a 20-21% stake in the entity to private investors, with Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital identified as the lead investor. The total revenue target was a staggering $20 billion. Now, instead of celebrating a financial masterstroke, Infantino is fending off calls for his resignation.
The deal that died in 48 hours
FFE would have managed the commercial rights to the World Cup, essentially packaging football’s crown jewel into a private equity-friendly structure. To sweeten the pot, each of FIFA’s 211 member associations was promised an immediate $20 million payout. That’s over $4 billion in cash dangled in front of national federations, many of which operate on shoestring budgets. The math was designed to make voting “yes” the path of least resistance, with a mid-September deadline to lock things down.
UEFA, European football’s governing body and FIFA’s most powerful regional bloc, led the opposition. Its 55 member nations voted to boycott FIFA events in response to the proposal. CONCACAF, the confederation covering North and Central America, also pushed back. Infantino scrapped FFE on July 31.
Why this matters beyond football
FIFA oversees the sport for 211 nations. Selling a fifth of the World Cup’s commercial engine to a private equity consortium raises fundamentally different governance questions than a PE firm buying a football club. Smaller federations were essentially being asked to trade long-term commercial sovereignty for a one-time check, while larger federations with robust domestic leagues, particularly those in Europe, saw the arrangement as tilted against their interests.
Infantino’s leadership under fire
UEFA has publicly cited a “loss of confidence” in Infantino and called for a full review of his leadership. UK politician Andy Burnham and Spanish federation president Javier Tebas have both called for Infantino to step down. Tebas runs one of the world’s most commercially successful football leagues, and his opposition carries weight within European football circles.
Just weeks before the FFE debacle, Infantino appeared to have a clear runway toward securing a fourth term as FIFA president. That narrative has now been replaced by one of overreach and institutional backlash.
UEFA’s boycott threat gives it significant leverage, since a World Cup without European nations isn’t really a World Cup. But FIFA’s voting structure gives considerable power to smaller federations in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, many of which might have been receptive to that $20 million payout — with projected long-term gains from the FFE plan potentially reaching $86 million per association by 2038.
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