UEFA on Thursday voted to boycott all FIFA competitions in protest against FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s plan for selling a stake in World Cup revenue to private investors, saying the “World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product.”
The European football body took the decision after an online meeting of its 55 national members, saying they “unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors.
“No UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership,” UEFA said in a news release.
“Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will. And so long as Europe has a voice, it will never be for sale.”
Global opposition grew Thursday with Asia’s football leaders warning members about threats to their own competitions.
“FIFA’s unilateral actions appear to undermine the very foundations of continental football,” the Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa said in a letter to member federations.
The FIFA project would be underwritten by a New York investment vehicle, Thrive Eternal, created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Infantino has had close ties to Jared Kushner since the first Trump administration.
Infantino held secret talks in recent months with potential backers in the U.S. about creating the $20 billion FIFA Forward Enterprise subsidiary with $4.2 billion of private equity. It comes off the back of a record-setting men’s World Cup in North America that pushed FIFA’s income to $15 billion over the past four years.
The 55 European federations and 46 from Asia count close to a majority of FIFA’s 211 member countries globally that each was given a Sept. 19 deadline by Infantino to accept a one-time offer of $20 million to invest.
CONCACAF, with 35 FIFA members, has said it is “deeply concerned by the lack of due process” in Infantino’s project revealed on Tuesday.
Sheikh Salman, an ally to Infantino since losing the FIFA presidential election to him in 2016, wrote in his letter “such an initiative will not succeed without the support of all the confederations, which is not the case now.”
Infantino wrote to the 211 members late Tuesday that on top of the initial $20 million offer, if they approve creating FFE their promised $10 million basic funding for the next four years will double to $20 million. He projected their FIFA funding through 2038 would be $86 million each, instead of about $36 million.
Infantino is due for re-election by the 211 FIFA members next March for a fourth and final term in office through 2031. Soccer officials have said privately Infantino eyes a commissioner-like role at the FFE spinoff beyond 2031.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
