FIFA Scraps Controversial $20bn World Cup Investment Plan After Global Backlash
Gianni Infantino has abandoned his plan to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors, days after UEFA voted to boycott FIFA competitions, the Asian confederation joined the opposition, and his own senior adviser resigned in protest.
The U-turn
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has abandoned his plan to sell a 20% stake in the World Cup's commercial operations to private investors, ending a standoff that had escalated into one of the most serious governance crises football has faced. "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," Infantino said in a statement on Friday. "Our purpose has always been — and will always be — to unite and improve. As a result, this proposal will not proceed."
How it unravelled
The plan — to bundle the World Cup and Club World Cup's commercial rights into a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise, valued at $20 billion, with roughly 20% sold to outside investors led by Joshua Kushner's Thrive Eternal — was revealed on Tuesday and unravelled within days. UEFA's 55 member associations voted unanimously on Thursday to boycott all FIFA competitions, including the World Cup, unless the plan was dropped. CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation also rejected it, though both stopped short of threatening a boycott. The pressure intensified on Friday when Carlos Cordeiro — Infantino's senior adviser and FIFA's representative on the White House Task Force for the World Cup — resigned, saying "I cannot stand by while FIFA considers selling a stake in the World Cup." Hours later, FIFA's own chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, told the Associated Press that staff had been "deceived" by Infantino's lack of openness in planning the sale, calling it "the project of one person."
UEFA's reaction
UEFA, which had led the opposition from the outset, welcomed the reversal but made clear its position was never up for negotiation. "Some things are simply too important to sell," the confederation said in a statement issued alongside its boycott vote earlier in the week. "The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will. And so long as Europe has a voice, it will never be for sale."
What it means for Infantino
The episode is the most serious test yet of Infantino's authority since he took charge of FIFA in 2016. Re-elected unopposed in 2019 and 2023, he is entitled to one further four-year term under FIFA's statutes, with candidates due to declare by November 18 ahead of a vote next March in Rabat, Morocco. The scale of the pushback — and the public interventions from Cordeiro and Lamour — leave that path looking less certain than it did a week ago.
What's next
FIFA's next event is the Women's Under-20 World Cup, kicking off September 5 in Poland, which UEFA members had said they would boycott had the investment plan gone ahead. With the plan now dropped, that stand-off is resolved, though CAF, CONMEBOL and the OFC — the three confederations that never formally voted on the proposal — are unlikely to need to now.
Sources: Associated Press, NBC News, CNN, ESPN, CBC Sports, July 31, 2026.