Why FIFA's World Cup Sell-Off Collapsed in 72 Hours
The World Cup trophy had barely made its way back to Madrid before FIFA announced a plan to sell part of the tournament to private investors. Now, that plan has collapsed entirely. On Tuesday, football's global governing body unveiled FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a commercial subsidiary that would sell minority stakes to outside investors for up to $4.2US billion, against a proposed $US20 billion valuation.[1] By the weekend, it was dead. FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced that "this proposal will not proceed", after UEFA's 55 member associations voted to "unanimously and unequivocally reject" the plan, CONCACAF and the AFC formally opposed it, and a senior FIFA advisor resigned in protest.[2] The speed of the collapse is itself a story. But underneath it sits a genuine legal question: was FIFA ever entitled to sell this in the first place?
The Legal Foundation FIFA was Bending
FIFA is registered as a non-profit association under Article 60 of the Swiss Civil Code, a status granted to bodies formed for "political, religious, scientific, cultural, charitable, social or other non-commercial" purposes.[3] That status means FIFA has no shareholders and cannot legally distribute profits to private owners; surpluses are meant to be reinvested into football development and operations.[4] It is precisely this structure that has made FIFA "unbuyable" in any conventional sense, and secures its favourable tax treatment in Switzerland.[5]
FFE was designed to work around that constraint rather than change it. Instead of selling stakes in FIFA itself, the plan would have separated broadcasting, sponsorship, ticketing and licensing rights out into a commercial subsidiary, one FIFA would still control but in which it would sell non-controlling stakes to outside capital.[6] Legally, that distinction probably would have held. FIFA's own non-profit status would have stayed untouched on paper. Ethically, it was always harder to defend: the commercial engine that has funded football development worldwide would have had private equity-style investors sitting inside it, expecting a return.
Who Rejected It, and Why
The governance mechanics were enough to sink the plan. It needed approval from a majority of FIFA's 211 member associations and its 37-member council, and Infantino had given members until 19 September to decide, attaching a one-off funding incentive to associations that backed it.[7] Member associations stood to receive roughly 75% less development funding over the next four-year cycle if they voted no.[8] Notwithstanding the legal technicalities, asking 211 associations to weigh a decision of this magnitude against a nine-figure funding threat, on a compressed timeline, was never a process built for careful deliberation. FIFA later blamed "erroneous reporting in the media" for the backlash.[9] For their own members, the problem wasn’t the coverage, but rather their omission from consultation for a decision that could reshape the game’s ownership and governance for good.
The scale and speed of the rejection was decisive. UEFA's members voted to reject the plan on Thursday, just two days after it was announced. Their language was the most pointed throughout: "The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product... No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale."[10] CONCACAF's 41 members formally rejected the plan, questioning "the need for private equity investment to fund new and existing FIFA Forward programs following the most profitable FIFA World Cup in history."[11] The AFC followed this theme.[12]
Australia's response tracked the broader pattern. Football Australia's initial position was procedural rather than critical, saying only that this was "the first time we have been made aware of the initiative," and that it would withhold a position pending further information.[13] The Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) union was considerably less restrained. PFA chief executive Beau Busch called the plan a step toward "the privatisation of FIFA World Cups," warning of "the absence of meaningful consultation with those that generate the value that FIFA is seeking to exploit – the players and the fans."[14]
The Conflict-of-Interest Problem
The proposal's most politically sensitive detail never went away, even as the deal itself did. The lead prospective investor was Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital, with J.P. Morgan acting as FIFA's financial advisor.[15] Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. The personal relationship between Infantino and Trump is already well-documented, most visibly through FIFA's decision to award Trump a "Peace Prize" before the tournament, and the president's phone call to Infantino that led FIFA to overturn Folarin Balogun's red-card suspension during the World Cup's knockout stage.[16]
None of this establishes that any law was broken. But conflict-of-interest rules in corporate and association governance exist precisely for situations like this. Here, a federation president steered a multi-billion-dollar transaction toward investors with direct family ties to a head of state he has a well-publicised personal relationship with, without first consulting the members he claims to represent. It may not have broken any law, but it was still a legitimacy problem. Even disgraced former FIFA president Sepp Blatter made a version of the same point in plainer terms once the deal collapsed: "If you sell football's crown jewels to private investors, you also sell part of the game – especially its soul."[17]
Ultimately…
FIFA may well have been able to execute this deal without technically falling foul of Swiss association law. However, it never got the chance to be tested, as what killed it was something other than legality: a near-unanimous judgment by the sport’s own governing bodies that the process was illegitimate, rushed and conflicted. Infantino's closing message, that he intends to "bring all interested parties back together... in the spirit of shared interest in our game," leaves the door open for a revised version of this idea to return.[18] Whether any future proposal survives will likely depend less on whether FIFA's lawyers can make it work, and more on whether football's stakeholders can be convinced that the World Cup is FIFA's to sell at all, and that any deal serves to strengthen football, not a handful of investors.
References
[1] 'FIFA's $4.2B Stake Sale Doubles Down on 2 Major Criticisms', Sportico (online, 28 July 2026) https://www.sportico.com/business/finance/2026/fifa-investment-plan-billion-equity-kushner-trump-1234940327/.
[2] Kari Anderson, 'FIFA, Gianni Infantino Scrap Plan to Sell Investment Stake in World Cup', Yahoo Sports (online, 1 August 2026)
[3] 'Who Owns FIFA? Legal Status and Power Structure', LegalClarity(online)
https://legalclarity.org/who-owns-fifa-legal-status-and-power-structure/.
[4] 'Is FIFA a Non-Profit?', Pro Business Blog (online)
https://www.probusinessblog.co.uk/is-fifa-non-profit/.
[5] 'FIFA Retains Low-Tax Non-Profit Status Despite Billions', SWI swissinfo.ch (online) https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/law-change-rejected_fifa-retains-low-tax-non-profit-status-despite-billions/44522840.
[6] 'UEFA Hit Out at FIFA and Gianni Infantino Amid Plans to Sell Minority Stakes Linked to Competition', Sky Sports (online, 29 July 2026)
[7] 'FIFA to Sell World Cup Stake to Private Investors: UEFA — Why?', CBS Sports (online)https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/fifa-sell-world-cup-stake-to-private-investors-uefa-why-2026/.
[8] 'Football Australia Responds to Infantino's Plan to Sell Off the World Cup to Private Investors', Football360 (online, 30 July 2026) https://football360.com.au/fifa-world-cup-football-australia-response/.
[9] 'FIFA Defends World Cup Private Equity Plan: "Nobody Is Selling Football"', ESPN (online, 31 July 2026) https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49493858/fifa-defends-world-cup-private-equity-plan-selling-football.
[10] 'European Soccer Governing Body Flips Sport Upside Down: Boycott FIFA Future World Cups', Fox News (online, 30 July 2026)
[11] 'FIFA Scraps Controversial Plan to Turn World Cup Into Commercial Enterprise', Deadline (online, 31 July 2026) https://deadline.com/2026/07/fifa-scraps-plan-commercial-arm-1237015111/.
[12] Ibid [9].
[13] Ibid [8].
[14] Joey Lynch, 'Australian Players Slam FIFA Plan as Football Australia Waits for More Info', ESPN (online, 30 July 2026)
[15] 'FIFA Tests the Limits of Private Equity in Sports with World Cup Subsidiary Sale', Fortune (online, 28 July 2026)
https://fortune.com/2026/07/28/fifa-private-investors-deal-backlash-uefa-football-balance-of-power/.
[16] '"I Didn't Think It Was a Foul": Trump Says He Asked FIFA President for Review of Controversial Red Card', CNN Politics (online, 6 July 2026)
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/politics/trump-red-card-fifa-world-cup-balogun.
[17] Ibid [2].
[18] Ibid [2].