Europe's 55 national soccer federations voted unanimously Thursday to boycott the World Cup and every other FIFA competition if the sport's governing body proceeds with a plan to sell a stake in its tournaments to private investors, and the 41-member Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football rejected the same proposal hours later.
FIFA said Friday it would press ahead anyway. In a statement issued from Zurich in the middle of the European night, the governing body said "nobody is selling football" and vowed to complete a consultation it accused media reports of disrupting. The confrontation puts the finances of the world's most-watched sporting event, valued at roughly $20 billion in FIFA's own pitch, into open political dispute two weeks after Spain's World Cup win.
The structure
The plan, announced Tuesday by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, would spin off the World Cup and FIFA's other events into a $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, with up to 20 percent sold to outside investors. FIFA has said the offering could raise as much as $4.2 billion. Thrive Eternal, a fund run by Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital, is expected to lead the investor group. Kushner is the brother of President Trump's son-in-law Jared.
The 25-page pitch document was prepared by JPMorgan and describes the World Cup as the "most widely viewed" sporting event and FIFA itself as "under-monetised". It projects payouts of about 24 million euros per member federation in the 2035-2039 cycle and lists "attracting top talent with incentive-driven compensation" among the new subsidiary's aims. The women's game does not appear in the document.
The vote math
Infantino needs 106 of FIFA's 211 members to approve the plan. UEFA and CONCACAF together control 90 votes, and both blocs have now said they intend to vote no. Infantino has written to members offering $40 million each if they back the plan, with a $20 million initial tranche tied to a September 19 deadline; CBS News reported his letter projected total FIFA funding of $86 million per federation through 2038, up from about $36 million.
The Asian Football Confederation, historically an Infantino ally, said Friday it "stands in solidarity" with UEFA and CONCACAF but stopped short of threatening a boycott. AFC President Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa called the way FIFA had presented the plan "totally unacceptable". South America's CONMEBOL has not commented. Africa's CAF and Oceania's OFC will meet in August.
The defense
Infantino, in a video Wednesday, called the plan "an offer, not an obligation" and "a golden opportunity to turbocharge the development of the game globally." UEFA's Thursday statement, following a meeting chaired by president Aleksander Ceferin, called the process "irresponsible and indefensible" and declared, "The World Cup is not for sale."
Today's reporting carries no right-of-center outlet, and the Trump White House said it had "nothing" to say on the plan. A person close to Thrive Capital told CBS News that Joshua Kushner "does not have any political roles" and that the firm's $60 billion in assets under management, not his brother-in-law, won the mandate.
The first FIFA event that would test a UEFA boycott is the Women's World Cup play-offs in October. The next scheduled tournament, the Women's Under-20 World Cup, opens in Poland on September 5, two weeks before Infantino's deadline.