Less than two weeks after the final whistle blew on the biggest World Cup in history, football is at war with itself again.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has confirmed plans to sell off a chunk of the sport’s most valuable commercial rights to private investors, and Europe is not having it. UEFA has called an emergency virtual meeting of all 55 member associations this week, and a boycott of future FIFA competitions, including the World Cup itself, is reportedly on the table.
For a governing body that just banked record revenue from a tournament co-hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico, this is a spectacular way to pick a fresh fight.
What Infantino Actually Announced
The plan centres on a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE. FIFA wants it to take over commercial and event operations, including future editions of both the men’s and women’s World Cup.
To fund it, FIFA is looking to sell more than 20 percent of FFE to outside investors, aiming to raise up to $4.2 billion based on a valuation of roughly $20 billion. J.P. Morgan is working as FIFA’s financial adviser on the deal, and Thrive Eternal, a firm launched in April by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investor group. Kushner’s brother, Jared, is Donald Trump’s son-in-law, a detail nobody covering this story has managed to leave out, and for good reason.
In its own statement, FIFA insisted it would keep sole control over governance, competitions, the international match calendar, and every sporting and regulatory decision. Any outside money, the organisation says, would go into a subsidiary, not into FIFA itself. Infantino framed the whole thing as a matter of fairness: “This is about the democratization of football worldwide,” he said in FIFA’s statement.
That framing has not landed the way FIFA hoped.
Why UEFA Is Furious
UEFA’s response came fast, and it did not hold back. “None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell,” the confederation said. It went further, calling the plan a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross.
Sources told ESPN that a virtual meeting of the 55 European associations is highly likely to happen before the week is out, with a potential World Cup boycott among the options on the agenda. It would not be the first time UEFA has reached for that particular threat. Back in 2021, FIFA quietly shelved its plan to hold the World Cup every two years after the same kind of pushback from Europe.
The anger has not stayed inside football’s usual circles, either. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham posted a lengthy statement on X arguing that football belongs to fans, not investors, and that the World Cup was never anyone’s to sell. The Football Supporters’ Association piled on too, accusing Infantino of trying to reshape the game without regard for the people who actually watch it.
So far, only UEFA has issued a formal statement. CONMEBOL, CAF, AFC, CONCACAF and the Oceania Football Confederation have all stayed quiet, at least publicly.
The Question Nobody at FIFA Wants to Answer
There is a second story running underneath the money, and it involves Infantino’s own future.
The Times of London reported that Infantino could go on to serve as a commissioner or chief executive of FFE once his FIFA presidency term-limits out in 2031. Infantino told the paper the idea “has never been discussed.” FIFA’s official statement on the plan does not mention his future role at all, which, given how specific everything else in that statement is, is hard to read as an accident.
Whatever the truth of it, the timing is awkward. Infantino spent the 2026 World Cup standing shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump, including at the final, and speculation has swirled for a while now that he wants a bigger global role once his FIFA term ends. A commercial entity worth $20 billion, backed by a firm with direct family ties to the US president, is not exactly a subtle answer to that speculation.
Numbers Behind the Noise
The 2026 World Cup, hosted across the US, Canada and Mexico, generated record revenue for FIFA, with figures cited in the billions and viewership records set in North America along the way. Spain lifted the trophy after beating Argentina in the final, a match that alone pulled in over 62 million viewers in the United States.
That success is exactly what makes this moment so strange. FIFA is coming off arguably its most commercially successful tournament ever, and instead of enjoying the moment, it has triggered a governance crisis that could end with Europe’s national teams sitting out future editions of the competition that just made everyone rich.
Nothing here is settled. UEFA’s meeting this week is expected to produce a coordinated response, not necessarily a final decision on boycotting anything. FIFA, for its part, seems to be betting that member federations will eventually come around once they see development funding attached to the deal.
But the last time Infantino tried to push through a change this big against UEFA’s wishes, he backed down. Whether he does the same this time, or whether the Kushner-backed money is too tempting to walk away from, is the question that will define the next few months of football politics.
For now, the sport that just finished celebrating its biggest party in years is bracing for another fight, and this one is entirely of FIFA’s own making.
