Heading into the final weekend of this summer’s World Cup, The Guardian reported that support for FIFA president Gianni Infantino had climbed to record levels. More than 200 of FIFA’s 211 member associations formally endorsed Infantino’s bid for a fourth term as head of world soccer’s governing body, the paper reported, making next March’s vote more of a coronation than an election.
Two weeks later, that support disappeared. Not only is Infantino’s reelection campaign in tatters, but there’s a chance he won’t survive until the spring, with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Javier Tebas, president of Spain’s soccer association, calling for his resignation and close confidants such as Carlos Cordeiro, the former president of U.S. Soccer, and Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer, publicly breaking with their boss.
At the center of that reversal was a closely guarded scheme to raise $4.2 billion by selling a 20% stake in the World Cup to private investors, who would be given influence in planning and executing future events, including broadcasting and commercial deals tied to the tournament.
In short, Infantino was planning, in secret, to sell shares in the World Cup. And once details began leaking in the media, he was forced Friday to scrap the whole thing, an embarrassing retreat that has left him vulnerable just two weeks after he had seemingly reached the heights of his third term as FIFA president.
Infantino’s idea, called the FIFA Forward Enterprise, was intended to turn the World Cup, FIFA’s milk cow, into a golden calf. But to do so, he needed the approval of at least 106 of FIFA’s 211 member countries, so he promised countries that backed him that they would receive $20 million each by mid-September. Those who declined would get just a fraction of that.
Infantino was certain the piles of cash would buy the acquiescence — or at least the silence — of enough members for the plan to go through. Instead, the bribe blew up in his face and FIFA issued a statement late Friday, under Infantino’s name, that basically said “never mind.”
“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,” the statement read.
The question now becomes whether Infantino’s presidency will proceed.
He wouldn’t be the first FIFA president to be grievously wounded by unbridled ambition, but the speed and depth of his fall is staggering. The 2026 World Cup was, by nearly every measure, wildly successful. The largest and most complex sporting event in history the tournament, hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, exceeded expectations, drawing more than 6.8 million live fans and a global TV audience of more than six billion. The four-year World Cup cycle brought FIFA revenues of about $15 billion, making it the first sporting event in history to earn more than $10 billion.
Infantino has never been shy about pushing boundaries despite heading a Swiss-based organization that, its wealth notwithstanding, is officially a nonprofit. Nor was this the first time he tried to bring private equity into the World Cup: In 2018, two years into his first term as FIFA president, he considered a plan to raise $25 billion to fund tournaments, only to cave in the face of massive opposition.
He didn’t give up the idea of squeezing more money out of the World Cup, though.
This summer, he introduced three-minute hydration breaks in the middle of each half — ostentatiously a nod to the heat and humidity, but in reality a ruse that allowed broadcasters to generate millions in additional revenue through TV commercials. FIFA also staged a halftime show for the first time ever during the final, sold VIP tickets priced at more than $1 million each and introduced dynamic pricing for the tournament’s 104 games, driving prices for some seats to four times what fans paid four years ago in Qatar.
That pushed the tournament beyond the reach of many of the sport’s most loyal supporters — and soccer, more than any other sport, belongs to the fans. It’s why teams are called clubs and fans are called supporters.
The World Cup, then, wasn’t Infantino’s to sell. So the pushback to his latest idea was immediate and unsparing.
“Football does not belong to investors,” Burnham said in an Instagram post. “Once you have sold a piece, you have sold out. Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”
What really angered stakeholders, however, was Infantino’s brazen move to develop the FFE in secret, only to have its details leak out.
Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German soccer association and a member of the FIFA Council, the group’s most influential body, said he first learned of the FFE by reading about it.
“I was very surprised, and also annoyed, that we had to find out about something like this from the press,” he told a German news outlet last week.
Another self-inflicted wound was Infantino’s decision to launch the project with Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner, the 41-year-old brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a kind of all-purpose White House advisor and negotiator. Thrive Eternal focuses on long-term investments in scarce cultural institutions that technology cannot replace, but it has little relevant experience in managing something as large and complicated as a World Cup.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino, left, and President Trump wave during an award ceremony following Spain’s win over Argentina in the World Cup final July 19.
(David Ramos / Getty Images)
Moreover, the partnership would draw Infantino further into the orbit of Trump, whom the FIFA president has openly courted for years. Infantino, who has been a frequent visitor to the Oval Office and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, attended the president’s inauguration and accompanied him on visits around the world.
Trump’s relationship to Infantino was questioned when Infantino presented him with the first FIFA Peace Prize last December, then became even more controversial when Trump phoned Infantino three times to lobby to have the red-card suspension of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun overturned ahead of a World Cup elimination game last month.
FIFA eventually cleared Balogun to play, marking just the second time in tournament history a red card ban has been lifted. For some, Infantino’s decision to partner with someone close to Trump on his latest venture was a bridge too far.
“It’s a really bad look for Infantino given the concerns about political interference that were already there after Balogun,” said Steven A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured extensively on the economics of soccer. “Especially with the fund led by Jared Kushner’s brother.”
Once details of Infantino’s secret plan began to leak, UEFA, the confederation that governs European soccer, held an emergency meeting during which all 55 members — including Spain, the reigning men’s and women’s World Cup champion — voted to boycott all FIFA competitions.
“Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will,” UEFA, the largest and most powerful of FIFA’s six continental confederations, said in a statement.
CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, said its 41 countries also rejected the plan, an opinion the U.S. Soccer Federation backed in a sparse post on X.
“U.S. Soccer stands with CONCACAF and its members,” it wrote.
The Asian Football Confederation joined in, saying in a statement its 47 members stand “in solidarity with UEFA and CONCACAF in expressing serious concerns over FIFA’s proposal to introduce private investment into FIFA’s flagship competitions.”
When it became obvious Infantino would not get the votes he needed to go forward, he pulled the plug on his plan. But it may not have been so much that the idea was bad as it was the execution.
Soccer is awash with private investors. The biggest clubs are owned by billionaires or sovereign wealth funds and many leagues — including Spain’s La Liga, which Tebas oversees — have sold commercial stakes to private equity firms in much the same way FIFA proposed.
Alan Rothenberg, a former U.S. Soccer president and the driving force behind the 1994 men’s World Cup and 1999 women’s World Cup, among the most successful tournaments in history, said the idea of selling a private equity stake in the World Cup isn’t a bad idea. But the way Infantino tried to implement his plan led it to failure.
“What is proposed is not that revolutionary,” Rothenberg said. “There have been private equity investors in MLS, in one of the subsidiaries of the NFL, in F1.
“But I think the combination of everything has doomed it. It does raise the possibility that Infantino, he’s finally become Icarus and gotten too close to the sun. It actually may doom him politically.”
Others including Cordeiro, a former vice chairman at Goldman Sachs, questioned the need to bring in outside investors.
“FIFA already has access to extraordinary financial resources. The organization sits on billions of dollars in reserves and no debt,” Cordeiro pointed out in his resignation letter. “If member associations believe additional investment is needed to develop the game, FIFA already has the financial capacity to provide that support from its existing resources.”
Infantino has flaunted consensus before without significant consequence, cozying up to autocrats while overseeing the 2018 World Cup in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar before being accused of awarding the 2034 tournament to Saudi Arabia in a rigged vote.
This time, however, the stakeholders within FIFA were pushed too far by Infantino’s penchant for wielding unilateral power, so they pushed back and the president blinked. Hours before he backed down, an ally of Infantino’s told the Financial Times that he would not bend, seeing the standoff as “a fight to the death.”
Infantino’s presidency might not be dead, but it is surely in critical condition.