Fifa’s World Cup plan never stacked up – here are 4 reasons why

1. Flawed Financial Logic and Dubious Comparisons

At the core of Fifa’s promotional slides lay a central, and ultimately flawed, argument: that football, despite its immense global popularity, failed to generate sufficient revenue relative to its vast fanbase. The assertion was that "Fifa has been under-monetised versus other leagues," leading to a situation where "global football development gets squeezed." To bolster this claim, the presentation included a comparative chart displaying annual revenue and revenue per fan for various sporting entities, including Fifa, the Uefa Champions League, the Premier League, US baseball (MLB), and the NFL (American football).

Superficially, the comparison seemed damning for Fifa, portraying it as the financial "poorer cousin" with a mere $1 per global fan, starkly contrasted against the NFL’s impressive $52.80. However, this metric is profoundly suspect and misleading. The most glaring issue is that the World Cup is not an annual competition; it occurs only once every four years. If one were to adjust this metric to revenue per World Cup 2026 match, Fifa’s earnings would likely multiply, potentially exceeding three times that of the Premier League per fixture. This fundamental difference in competition frequency was deliberately overlooked, skewing the comparison dramatically.

Furthermore, the very nature of global football revenue is inherently decentralised. Unlike the NFL, which largely encompasses the entirety of American football within a single, highly concentrated market, global football’s revenues are distributed across countless individual leagues, clubs, and confederations worldwide, such as the Premier League or the Champions League. Fifa’s argument was, in essence, a claim that it deserved a larger slice of this overall football pie, rather than acknowledging its distinct role as a global governing body, not a league operator.

The composition of the fan bases also plays a critical role. While the NFL has a massive and affluent fan base predominantly concentrated within the United States, football’s fans are spread across the entire globe, encompassing both wealthy and developing nations. Expecting a uniform "revenue per fan" across such disparate demographics is unrealistic and ignores the diverse economic realities of its supporters.

Finally, the comparison focused exclusively on revenues, neglecting the crucial aspect of profit. Approximately half of the NFL’s substantial revenues are allocated to player wages. Fifa, however, does not directly pay the salaries of superstars like Erling Haaland, Lionel Messi, or even lesser-known players like Vozinha. Had the comparison focused on net profits rather than gross revenues, the financial picture would have been dramatically different, exposing the weakness of Fifa’s initial premise and suggesting a disingenuous attempt to inflate perceived underperformance. This flawed financial logic served as the shaky foundation upon which the entire privatisation plan was built, making it difficult to justify the drastic measures proposed.

2. Extraordinary Ticket Prices and the Erosion of Control

The proposed structure for the partly privatised entity, to be named Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE), outlined a significant shift in the control and operation of the World Cup. The document stated that FFE would become the "organiser and operator of competitions" – effectively, the World Cup itself – and would assume responsibility for critical revenue streams including ticketing, broadcast rights, licensing, and sponsorship. This represented a profound transfer of organising power from Fifa, a non-profit organisation ostensibly accountable to all of world football, to a privately backed company, albeit one with a majority of Fifa board members.

The slides explicitly stated that the FFE structure aimed to "expand and optimise media rights monetisation" and "maximise the value of Fifa IP [Intellectual Property], which has been undermonetised, historically." This language signalled a clear intention to transfer significant responsibility and accountability from Fifa itself to a profit-driven entity. Such a move raised serious questions about the future accessibility of World Cup games.

By highlighting the NFL’s high revenue per fan, the document implicitly hinted at a future where free-to-air World Cup broadcasts could become a thing of the past. While legislation in the UK and Europe currently protects certain major sporting events from being exclusively behind paywalls, the landscape of digital rights is rapidly evolving. A privately controlled FFE, driven by a mandate to maximise revenue, would inevitably exert pressure to monetise every aspect of the tournament, including broadcasting. This could lead to a significant portion of the global audience being unable to access matches without expensive subscriptions, fundamentally altering the World Cup’s universal appeal and reach.

Moreover, this new structure clearly underpinned the continuation, and likely intensification, of the "extraordinary ticket prices" that have become a hallmark of recent World Cups, particularly those charged for the 2026 tournament. A profit-maximising FFE would have every incentive to push pricing boundaries, potentially alienating traditional fans and making the event exclusive to a wealthier demographic. The shift in control from a global governing body, theoretically focused on the sport’s worldwide development and accessibility, to a commercial enterprise with private investors at its heart, threatened to erode the very ethos of the World Cup as a unifying, globally accessible spectacle.

3. No Stated Fee for the ‘Annual Licence Payment’ and Disputed Member Payouts

One of the most glaring omissions and contentious points in Fifa’s proposal was the lack of transparency surrounding the financial mechanisms, particularly regarding the "annual licence payment." Fifa intended to sell a 20% stake in the FFE for an initial sum of $4.2 billion (£3.1 billion; €3.6 billion). The document explicitly stated that this initial cash injection would be used to fund an "extraordinary distribution" of $20 million to each of the 211 member associations. This direct link between the sale of the stake and immediate payouts to voting members raised significant ethical concerns.

Essentially, the $4.2 billion funding requirement was designed to provide a substantial, one-off payment to every voting association that would ultimately decide on Infantino’s plan. This meant that tiny nations like Montserrat, with an economy worth just over $40 million, would receive $20 million – a sum equivalent to nearly half its entire economic output, or approximately $10,000 per person. In stark contrast, a massively populated growth market for global football development like Bangladesh would receive the exact same $20 million, despite its vastly different economic scale and developmental needs. This "equal distribution" policy, while appearing fair on the surface, was profoundly inequitable in its impact, suggesting it was more a political incentive for votes than a strategic investment in global football development.

The most critical unanswered question revolved around the future financial relationship between FFE and Fifa. If the new investment was to be immediately distributed to voting members, where would the additional money for Fifa’s future investments and core operations come from? The documents vaguely referred to an "annual licence payment" in a flow diagram, but crucially, this payment was never quantified. Would it be a fixed fee, or proportionate to FFE’s revenues? Did FFE have an overriding mission to maximise revenues at all costs to provide lucrative returns for its private investors, potentially at the expense of Fifa’s broader developmental goals? These fundamental questions, concerning the long-term financial stability of Fifa and the accountability of the FFE, were left entirely unaddressed, making the proposal appear incomplete and strategically unsound. The immediate distribution of the seed money, coupled with the opacity of future payments, severely undermined the plan’s credibility as a sustainable financial model.

4. The Kushner Connection and a Singular Investment Thesis

The rapid timeline for this ambitious deal also raised eyebrows. The private timetable shared within the document revealed an accelerated schedule: investors were to gain access to materials this month (referring to the time of the leak), terms confirmed by September, and bids and fund transfers completed by the end of October. This demonstrated the immense pressure being exerted on member associations to make a swift decision on a plan with profound, long-term implications.

Adding another layer of scrutiny was the identity of the lead investors, publicly named as Thrive Eternal, a fund managed by Joshua Kushner. Joshua Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law to former US President Donald Trump. Thrive Eternal’s primary investment focus has historically been in artificial intelligence, notably with OpenAI holding a stake in one of its arms. The fund had only recently ventured into sports investment, launching its sports arm in April with an initial investment in the San Francisco Giants baseball team. The Giants are particularly notable in the sports world for pioneering sport-based dynamic pricing of tickets, a strategy that allows ticket prices to fluctuate based on demand, opponent, weather, and other factors.

Kushner himself articulated the fund’s investment thesis, stating that Thrive would focus on certain live sports because "these are assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology." This perspective reveals a clear investment strategy: to identify and capitalise on forms of entertainment that are immune to disruption by AI and other technological advancements (unlike, for instance, certain forms of music or film). The implication is that the unique, unreplicable value of live sports, particularly global spectacles like the World Cup, would allow for aggressive monetisation strategies.

This investment thesis, combined with Thrive’s recent entry into dynamic pricing with the Giants, painted a clear picture of the future envisioned for the World Cup under FFE. It suggested a path towards aggressive commercialisation, an emphasis on high ticket prices, and sustained pressure to extract maximum revenue from broadcasting rights, potentially pushing matches behind paywalls. Furthermore, such a profit-driven model would inevitably lead to calls for more matches and more frequent tournaments, pushing the sport’s calendar to its limits and potentially diluting its prestige. In the end, the proposed structure was opaque, designed to continue and amplify the commercial "experiment" of the 2026 World Cup, with its focus on exorbitant ticket prices and broadcast monetisation. Mercifully for many fans and football purists, this controversial proposal ultimately fell apart in a matter of days, revealing the inherent flaws and widespread resistance to such a radical reshaping of the world’s most beloved sporting event.