FIFA scraps World Cup sell-off plan after backlash
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- Gianni Infantino scrapped his plan to spin off FIFA's commercial businesses — men's and women's World Cups and Club World Cups — into a $20 billion subsidiary with private investors taking a 20% stake, after backlash grew from Tuesday's announcement through Friday.
- Joshua Kushner's New York-based investment firm was the described 'anchor investor'; Kushner is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law.
- UEFA's 55 member nations voted to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions, declaring in a statement that 'some things are simply too important to sell.'
- Carlos Cordeiro, a former Goldman Sachs banker who served as a FIFA presidential adviser and represented the body on the White House Task Force for the World Cup, resigned in protest; FIFA COO Kevin Lamour said staff were 'deceived' by Infantino's lack of openness in planning the sale.
- Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation also opposed the plan, broadening the rebellion beyond Europe; the next FIFA competition is the Women's Under-20 World Cup starting Sept. 5 in Poland, which UEFA members said they would boycott.
- Infantino was reelected unopposed in 2019 and 2023 and is permitted one more four-year term under FIFA statutes, with the next presidential contest deadline set for Nov. 18 — four months ahead of the vote in Rabat, Morocco.
Why it matters: Infantino had cruised through two unopposed elections, but two senior insiders publicly broke with him — one resigning, the COO calling the project a deception — a rare internal fracture that could make his final term far more contested. The November presidential deadline now carries weight it didn't a week ago, with the confederations that just forced a U-turn in position to dictate whether Infantino gets that last term at all.
