The new battle shaking world football

BarcelonaFIFA has long been studying a World Cup with 64 teams for the 2030 edition, which is the one that will be held in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. This is double the number of teams from 2022 and sixteen more than in the most recent edition. Beyond the reasons that may lead the Swiss institution to maximize the number of participants – economic or political due to the power relations hidden within – the president of the highest body in world football, Gianni Infantino, assured that, "when organizing a World Cup, it is important to do it for the whole world – not just for Europe and South America – but really for the whole planet." In his opinion, this is the reason why he is proposing an unprecedented expansion, because, "if you don't give smaller countries the opportunity to participate, they will lose the incentive to keep improving," he assures.

To continue making the cake bigger, Infantino not only has in mind expanding the World Cup, but as the British newspaper The Times has reported, his intentions go further. The FIFA president plans to sell shares to transform the World Cup and the Club World Cup into a type of public limited company. This would mean that capital would be distributed among private investors and the same 211 federations that make up FIFA, which, a priori, should be free to choose how they manage the money.

Infantino's proposal is that a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will assume all commercial operations, while FIFA will continue to be the global governing body of football and will retain a majority stake in FFE. For this to move forward, it must be subject to the approval of the majority of national associations and the FIFA council, made up of 37 members. Infantino, already expanding last summer's World Cup and promising new expansions, has been working behind the scenes for some time to secure this support.

Donald Trump is also getting involved

In a statement issued by FIFA, pressured by the information that was emerging, the organization confirmed that it expected to sell up to 21% of the FFE to private investors, with the aim of obtaining 4.2 billion dollars (about 3.7 billion euros), which would be immediately distributed among its member associations through a new financing line called the FIFA Fast-Forward Programme (FFFP).

The statement also confirmed that the international bank JP Morgan has been FIFA's main advisor on this project, and that Thrive Eternal, a long-term investment company created by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, would be in charge of heading "the group of investors". In this way, the design of the partial privatization of the World Cup – both men's and women's – has been developed in collaboration with personalities very close to Donald Trump, host of the last World Cup. One more example of the good relations between Trump and Infantino, whom the President of the United States would already like to be the next Secretary-General of the UN, according to The New York Post.

UEFA emergency meeting

The 55 federations that make up UEFA will meet urgently this week to debate FIFA's plans, the BBC reported on Wednesday. The European football governing body is not at all pleased with FIFA's intention to increase funding to over 10 billion dollars through the privatization of competitions to private investors.

While the body chaired by Infantino argues that, if its initiative prospers, some 20 million dollars per federation would be allocated in exceptional and immediate funding for special projects of the new FIFA Fast-Forward (FFFP) program, as well as an additional 20 million through the Forward program for the 2027-2030 period (currently budgeted at 8 million dollars), UEFA considers that all of this is a formula to sell stakes in the World Cup to private entities. "A line has been crossed," they stated in a statement on Tuesday.

For this reason, the 55 federations that make up UEFA will meet remotely this week to address the issue and decide what measures to take in the face of an initiative on which they assure they have not been consulted. "This crosses a line that no football institution should ever cross. UEFA takes this matter very seriously, as does every national federation. And so do any other stakeholders: leagues, clubs, players, fans, governments, and everyone who cares about the future of this sport," points out the European football governing body.

"The soul and governance of football are not assets that can be traded, especially when there is no transparency about who benefits economically. None of us owns football. It is not FIFA's function to sell it", UEFA adds in its statement. "The soul and governance of football are not assets that can be traded, especially when there is no transparency about who benefits economically. None of us owns football. It is not FIFA's function to sell it", UEFA adds in its statement.

The new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Andy Burnham, also showed his rejection with a post on X: "Football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and to those on the sidelines, week after week, rain or shine. The World Cup is not a product. It is the biggest competition in world sport, and it has never belonged to anyone to sell. Dress up the deal however you want: the moment you have sold a part of it, you have sold yourself".