FIFA Drops World Cup Stake Sale Plan in Setback for Infantino
(Bloomberg) — FIFA President Gianni Infantino abandoned a controversial plan to create a commercial entity that would have opened the door to outside investors for the World Cup, bowing to intense opposition from key regional football bodies and top clubs.
“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” Infantino said in a statement Friday evening.
The reversal comes after the governing regional football body for Europe vowed to boycott the World Cup entirely should FIFA push ahead with the plan, which sought to create an entity to house media rights, including those for the World Cup. Infantino sought to bring in as much as $4.2 billion of outside capital based on a $20 billion valuation for that entity.
UEFA, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation argued the proposal had been developed without sufficient consultation and raised concerns that introducing private capital could alter FIFA’s governance, priorities and distribution of revenues.
Top European clubs including Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund also spoke out in opposition of the monetization plan, putting other FIFA tournaments such as the Club World Cup at risk. Even FIFA’s own executives spoke out against Infantino’s proposal, with one of them saying he and the organization’s staff had been deceived and calling for the proposal to be defeated.
FIFA had argued that the new entity wouldn’t privatize the governing body itself, maintaining Friday that it was not “selling football.” Instead, it said the vehicle would help unlock greater value from its media and commercial rights while increasing funding for football development programs and distributions to member associations.
Infantino had been promising that each association would receive an additional $12 million in funding for the four-year cycle ending this year, bringing the total payment to $20 million. Members would also have been able to apply for an additional $20 million in funding for long-term projects such as stadiums and training centers.
The investment proposal came after this year’s World Cup generated about $15 billion in revenue, the most in the tournament’s history and with half of that estimated to be profit.
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–With assistance from Ira Boudway.
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