In the arena of global sport, where commerce and tradition have long wrestled for dominance, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has retreated from an ambitious plan to open the World Cup's commercial rights to private equity investment. The proposal — which would have created a new commercial entity with minority stakes sold to outside investors — collapsed under the weight of a rare, unified resistance from continental federations who argued that football's most sacred tournament is not a commodity to be traded. The episode reveals both the limits of concentrated executive power within internati
FIFA chief Infantino scraps World Cup privatization plan after global backlash
The World Cup is not for sale.
Mark
Why did Infantino think this would work? He's run FIFA for years without this kind of unified pushback.
Mimi
He may have underestimated how visceral the reaction would be to the idea of private equity owning a piece of the World Cup itself. It's one thing to sell broadcasting rights; it's another to hand over equity stakes to investors whose only interest is return on capital.
Mark
The Thrive Capital connection—was that the real problem, or just a convenient target?
Mimi
It became a symbol of the problem. The Kushner link made it easy for critics to frame this as FIFA selling out to Trump-adjacent money. But the deeper issue was that Infantino was trying to lock in a commercial structure without genuinely consulting the federations who actually run the sport.
Mark
Cordeiro and Lamour both turned on him. That's unusual for senior staff.
Mimi
It suggests the plan was unpopular even inside FIFA's own leadership. When your COO is calling you out for deceiving your own staff, you've lost the room entirely. That's not just external pressure—that's internal collapse.
Mark
Does this actually change anything about how FIFA operates, or is it just a tactical retreat?
Mimi
It's a retreat for now. But it signals that the federations have leverage they're willing to use. Whether that translates into real governance reform depends on whether they press the advantage or accept the win and move on.
O Pulso
- Infantino's FIFA Forward Enterprise plan would have handed private equity investors a stake in World Cup broadcasting, sponsorship, and ticketing — a structural shift critics called a privatization of football's crown jewel.
- UEFA struck first and hardest, unanimously threatening to pull European teams — holders of the men's, women's, and Club World Cup titles — from all FIFA tournaments if the scheme proceeded.
- The Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF joined the opposition, and the rebellion turned inward when FIFA's own COO publicly declared the initiative the rogue work of a single individual who had misled staff.
- A senior Infantino advisor resigned in protest, stripping the president of the internal cover he needed to press forward toward his mid-September approval deadline.
- Infantino issued a carefully worded concession on Saturday — framed not as an apology but as a recognition that the project had become too divisive to survive — marking one of the sharpest public defeats of his tenure.
In the arena of global sport, where commerce and tradition have long wrestled for dominance, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has retreated from an ambitious plan to open the World Cup's commercial rights to private equity investment. The proposal — which would have created a new commercial entity with minority stakes sold to outside investors — collapsed under the weight of a rare, unified resistance from continental federations who argued that football's most sacred tournament is not a commodity to be traded. The episode reveals both the limits of concentrated executive power within international sporting bodies and the enduring capacity of collective stakeholder voices to check it.
Gianni Infantino has abandoned one of the most commercially ambitious proposals of his FIFA presidency: a plan to sell minority stakes in a new commercial subsidiary — the FIFA Forward Enterprise — to private equity investors, granting them a share of World Cup broadcasting rights, sponsorship deals, ticket sales, and hospitality packages. The lead investor group was to be Thrive Eternal, a fund connected to Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner. The link to the Kushner family, given Infantino's known closeness to the Trump administration, drew immediate scrutiny.
To secure approval by mid-September, Infantino offered federations $40 million each in exchange for their votes — a sweetener that did little to soften the backlash. UEFA moved first, issuing a unanimous declaration that the World Cup was not for sale and threatening a full boycott of FIFA tournaments. The threat carried particular force: European teams hold the titles in the men's and women's World Cups as well as the Club World Cup. The AFC and CONCACAF soon followed with their own rejections, and the coalition against the plan became impossible to ignore.
The internal collapse proved equally damaging. Senior advisor Carlos Cordeiro resigned in protest on Friday. That same day, FIFA's chief operating officer Kevin Lamour went further, publicly characterizing the entire initiative as the work of one person who had misled the organization's own staff — a remarkable rebuke from within Infantino's own house.
By Saturday, Infantino acknowledged the plan was finished. His statement was measured — an admission of political reality rather than a concession of wrongdoing — noting that the project had created divisions that no longer served its original purpose. The episode stands as a rare check on a FIFA president accustomed to operating with wide autonomy, and leaves open the question of whether it will prompt genuine governance reform or simply mark a temporary pause in football's long march toward deeper commercialization.
Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, has abandoned a plan that would have fundamentally reshaped how the world's largest sporting organization monetizes its most valuable asset: the World Cup. The reversal came after an unprecedented show of unity among football's regional powers, with Europe's governing body threatening to pull its teams—the reigning champions across three major competitions—out of FIFA tournaments entirely.
The proposal at the center of the conflict was called the FIFA Forward Enterprise, a commercial subsidiary designed to centralize control over broadcasting rights, sponsorship deals, ticket sales, and hospitality packages for competitions like the World Cup. Under the scheme, FIFA would have sold minority stakes in this new entity to private equity investors. The lead investor group was to be Thrive Eternal, a fund managed by Thrive Capital, the investment firm founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, who serves as an advisor to US President Donald Trump. The connection raised eyebrows given Infantino's well-documented closeness to the Trump administration.
Infantino had pressed federations to approve the measure by mid-September, sweetening the pitch with offers of $40 million to associations that voted in favor. But the plan triggered a firestorm across global football. UEFA, representing European national federations and clubs, moved first on Thursday with a stark declaration: the World Cup is not for sale. The continental body announced its members had unanimously agreed to boycott all FIFA tournaments unless the privatization scheme was scrapped. The threat carried weight—European teams hold the titles in both the men's and women's World Cups, as well as the Club World Cup.
Within days, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF, which governs North America and the Caribbean, joined the opposition. While they stopped short of threatening boycotts, their rejection signaled that Infantino had lost the consensus he needed to move forward. The internal pressure intensified when Carlos Cordeiro, one of Infantino's senior advisors, resigned in protest on Friday. That same day, Kevin Lamour, FIFA's chief operating officer, delivered a more damaging blow, characterizing the entire initiative as the work of a single person who had misled FIFA's own staff.
On Saturday, Infantino issued a statement acknowledging defeat. He wrote that after listening to all perspectives, it had become clear the project had created divisions that, regardless of any support it might have had, no longer served the original purpose. The language was careful—not an apology, but a recognition that the political cost had become untenable. The reversal marks a rare moment when FIFA's president, typically accustomed to wielding considerable autonomy, found himself outmaneuvered by the very federations whose cooperation he depends on. What happens next—whether this triggers broader governance reforms or simply marks a pause in FIFA's commercialization ambitions—remains to be seen.
Citações Notáveis
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.— Gianni Infantino, FIFA President
The project of one person who had deceived FIFA staff.— Kevin Lamour, FIFA Chief Operating Officer, characterizing Infantino's plan
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