Infantino sets deadline for FIFA offer in Kushner-backed World Cup plan

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has set a September 19 deadline for the 211 member federations to accept one-off $20m offers as part of a project to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors.

The $20bn FIFA subsidiary, bankrolled by the brother of Jared Kushner, was blasted by international football organisations. Europe’s football body, UEFA, aims to call its 55 member federations to an emergency online meeting, likely on Thursday.

The effort also marks Infantino’s latest effort to align with those in the orbit of US President Donald Trump: by creating the FIFA Peace Prize, letting Trump intervene in a process that led to United States forward Folarin Balogun playing at the World Cup, and now trying to lock in Joshua Kushner’s investment firm to a 12-year ownership deal with the Switzerland-based not-for-profit football body.

Infantino on Wednesday set out the “singular and unique funding opportunity” in a letter detailing why he wants to create the $20bn FIFA subsidiary — 20 percent owned by private investors — that would run the football body’s competitions and events like World Cups and Club World Cups.

“It is my duty and responsibility as FIFA president to present such game-changing opportunities to you, our members,” Infantino wrote in the letter seen by the news agency, The Associated Press.

The proposal, revealed on Tuesday and backed by Joshua Kushner’s investment firm Thrive Capital, met immediate fury from Infantino’s former colleagues at UEFA, which said the World Cup “is not FIFA’s to sell.”

One option open to European football is to threaten a boycott of FIFA competitions — a tactic used in 2021 when UEFA-led opposition helped stop Infantino’s plan to play the World Cup every two years instead of four.

FIFA’s private equity plan is the latest ambitious project proposed during Infantino’s 11-year presidency, during which he has increasingly seemed to be an executive leader acting without consulting with football’s major stakeholders.

Previous plans include creating a FIFA Peace Prize — awarded to Trump in December at the World Cup draw — and trying to push through a secretive $25bn private equity plan in 2018 to create new and bigger men’s competitions. UEFA resisted that idea.

Concerns about the latest and previously secret plan were aired on Wednesday by the continental football bodies for Asia and the North American region known as CONCACAF.

“We are deeply concerned by the lack of due process,” CONCACAF said in a statement.

The Kuala Lumpur-based Asian Football Confederation said it was “disappointed that a matter of such significance entered the public domain before the AFC family had been afforded the opportunity to examine and discuss it”.

Continental bodies that organise their own international club and national team competitions — such as the Champions League, European Championship and Copa America — likely will see threats to those events from FIFA wanting to increase revenue and value for investors by playing World Cups and Club World Cups for men and women more often, along with adding more teams.

The influential, 850-member European Football Clubs group — which has a joint venture with UEFA to manage the Champions League — said it “learned about this proposal in the same way as most global football stakeholders — without warning and through the media”.

Inviting in private investors could also, sports governance academic Antoine Duval suggested on Wednesday, “incentivize FIFA to further commodify the World Cup (think more hydration breaks and dynamic pricing ) in a drive to increase its revenue”.

If the FIFA Forward Enterprise subsidiary is approved by a majority of its 211 members, they are each promised $20m in funding from the four-year commercial cycle tied to the men’s 2030 World Cup.

That would lead, Infantino wrote, to “a pool of diverse international investors” joining Joshua Kushner’s Thrive as the anchor investor in a process “led by J.P. Morgan”.

If Infantino’s plan is rejected, those members will get their previously promised $10m over the next four years, his letter stated.

The cash difference on offer on Wednesday to FIFA members appears to be $86m over 12 years compared with about $36m in existing promised funding for rejecting the private equity deal.

Dozens of those member federations typically rely on FIFA for funding, have national teams with little realistic chance of qualifying for World Cups, and whose best players rarely, if ever, join clubs playing at the highest level of international competitions.

FIFA’s one-member, one-vote democratic system means the most successful football nations on the field can easily be outvoted by those who rarely play top-level games.

FIFA’s plan met quick opposition from British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whose government is preparing to support hosting the 2035 Women’s World Cup in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. FIFA is set to confirm that lone bid for 2035 at an online meeting in November.

“Football does not belong to investors,” Burnham, a longtime football fan, said in a video message on Instagram. “Once you have sold a piece of [the World Cup], you have sold out. Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”

Resistance by British lawmakers — including threats of legislation by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021 — previously helped stop the divisive European Super League project that was an existential threat to UEFA’s Champions League, and which Infantino had discreetly supported.

Infantino has seemed to be cruising towards being re-elected unopposed as FIFA president for a fourth and final term through 2031.

Promising more FIFA funds to member federations was a decisive part of his initial election-day speech in February 2016, and at his unopposed re-elections in 2019 and 2023.

Some observers have long suspected Infantino wants a longer-term role running the sport. A CEO or commissioner role at a FIFA subsidiary FFE would fit that bill.

This week, Infantino has ignited frustration with his leadership beyond the usual circles in Europe, which have almost four months to commit to an election challenge.

The candidate entry deadline is November 18 for an election scheduled for next March 18, in Rabat, Morocco, which has been a key Infantino ally in recent years and will cohost the 2030 World Cup.