According to The Guardian, Infantino has proposed packaging World Cup commercial rights into a new entity valued at $20 billion and selling minority stakes to outside investors. Joshua Kushner's investment firm is reportedly interested. Uefa fired back immediately, accusing Fifa of selling off football's soul and handing control to financiers with no stake in the sport itself.
This is a power grab wrapped in a finance story. Once private capital owns a piece of the World Cup, the incentives flip. Investors demand growth, which means more matches, more sponsorship inventory, more commercial pressure. There's less room for anyone arguing the tournament should have limits. The World Cup already strains players, fans, and calendars. Add a cap table to that equation and you get a tournament managed for returns, not sport.
Infantino's team sees this as smart asset monetization. The World Cup throws off enormous global attention and revenue; why not unlock that value? Investors bring capital and operational expertise. Uefa's complaint—that outside money means outside control—is the cost of growth, not a reason to leave billions on the table.
Football already knows the World Cup is worth a fortune. Everyone does. What this sale would do is turn that fortune into a standing demand for extraction. The risk is not tackier branding or a few extra matches. It's that the most important event in sport starts being managed for the cap table instead of the sport. The loudest name in this story is not a confederation. It's Kushner.
Filed to the World desk · Jul 29