Infantino scraps World Cup privatization plan after global backlash

On Saturday morning, just after midnight, Gianni Infantino announced he was abandoning one of the most contentious proposals in modern football governance. The Fifa president, in a terse statement released in the early hours, said his plan to sell stakes in the World Cup and other major competitions to private investors had "created divisions" and would not move forward. It was a stunning reversal for a scheme that, just days earlier, he had insisted would proceed despite mounting opposition.

The proposal itself was straightforward in its ambition: Fifa would create a commercial subsidiary called Fifa Forward Enterprise and invite external investors to buy minority stakes in it. The governing body would then run its tournaments—men's and women's World Cups included—through this new entity. An investment bank's analysis suggested the arrangement could eventually generate payouts of 24 million euros per member association in the 2035-2039 World Cup cycle, a significant increase from current distributions. Infantino had even sweetened the offer: member associations that backed the plan by September 19 would receive $40 million upfront, with an initial $20 million available immediately.

The scheme unraveled with remarkable speed. On Tuesday, when news of the proposal first surfaced, Uefa—European football's governing body—responded by declaring football was "not Fifa's to sell" and threatened to boycott World Cups if the plans went ahead. By Wednesday, Infantino was writing to all 211 member associations trying to secure their support. By Thursday, Uefa's 55 member nations voted unanimously to reject any World Cup participation under these terms. Concacaf, representing North and Central America and the Caribbean, announced its 41 members had also rejected the proposal. On Friday, the Asian Football Confederation joined the opposition, effectively sealing the plan's fate. The mathematics were brutal: if all three continental bodies' members voted as blocs, 136 nations would oppose Infantino—far more than the simple majority needed to kill the proposal.

The internal collapse was equally damaging. Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino's senior adviser on global strategy and governance, resigned on Friday, issuing a lengthy statement saying the proposal was "a bad deal for football" that would "mortgage football's future." Kevin Lamour, Fifa's chief operating officer, went further, saying the governing body's own administration had been "deceived" about the project. He called it "the project of one person" and suggested that a president's job was to unite, not divide. Even some of Fifa's eight vice-presidents had apparently been kept in the dark about the initiative.

Infantino's political instincts ultimately prevailed. He recognized the numbers were insurmountable and chose to withdraw rather than suffer a public defeat at a vote. Yet the damage to his standing was already substantial. He faces re-election for a fourth term as president at Fifa's Congress in Morocco next March, and what had been anticipated as an unopposed coronation now looks uncertain. The AFC's statement, while welcoming the withdrawal, pointed to a deeper wound: the proposal had "exposed fundamental weaknesses in Fifa's consultation and decision-making processes." Infantino's attempt to reshape football's commercial future without genuine consensus had instead exposed the fragility of his authority and the limits of his ability to act unilaterally.

The reversal came less than a week after Infantino had posted on Instagram telling his critics to "meditate, pray or watch a football match" instead of spreading what he called "hate and false rumours" about his leadership. The contrast was stark. In his Saturday statement, he spoke of bringing parties back together "in the spirit of shared interest" in the game. Whether the football world would accept that olive branch remained to be seen.