FIFA moves to sell a fifth of the World Cup, and Europe threatens to walk

Sports 4 min 11 sources

FIFA wants to raise about 4.2 billion dollars by selling a stake in the World Cup's commercial arm to private investors led by a Kushner fund. UEFA is furious. It caps a summer in which outside money is buying claims on the game everywhere.

Key takeaways

FIFA wants to raise about 4.2 billion dollars by selling a fifth of the World Cup's commercial arm to private investors, and Europe's UEFA is threatening to boycott.
It caps a summer of outside money buying into the game: a 1 billion euro loan offer to the Bundesliga, Jeff Bezos circling Liverpool, and even college teams being priced like franchises.
The value being sold was built by everyone who plays and watches, yet a growing slice of what the game earns next now flows to private owners.

FIFA puts a price on the World Cup

On Tuesday, FIFA confirmed it wants to raise about 4.2 billion dollars. The buyer would take a 20 percent stake in a new company that runs the World Cup’s commercial side [1]. The company, to be called FIFA Forward Enterprise, would control the tournament’s commercial and event operations, and the sale values it at 20 billion dollars [1]. The lead investor is Thrive Eternal, a fund tied to Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital; JPMorgan is advising FIFA [1]. First reported by The Times and the Financial Times, the plan still needs approval from a majority of FIFA’s 211 member associations [1].

FIFA is a nonprofit. For a century the World Cup has been run as football’s shared trust, its profits funnelled back to national federations to grow the game. This deal converts a slice of that trust into private property. FIFA says it would stay the majority owner and keep control of scheduling, governance and the rules [1]. But a fifth of the World Cup’s future profit would now flow to outside shareholders.

Europe reacted with fury. UEFA, whose clubs and players supply most of the tournament’s stars, is weighing a historic World Cup boycott [2][3]. FIFA’s pitch is that the cash funds football. Each of the 211 members would receive 20 million dollars, and FIFA says total development funding could reach 10 billion dollars, subject to a members’ vote [1]. To UEFA, that reads as selling everyone’s game to fund a promise, and diluting who controls it. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, term-limited after 2031, was reported as a possible chief of the new company; he told The Times the idea “has never been discussed” [1].

FIFA is not the only one taking the money

The World Cup deal caps a summer in which outside capital has been buying claims on football’s future. Germany’s Bundesliga has held talks with the US firm Apollo Sports Capital over a loan of about 1 billion euros, roughly 855 million pounds [4]. The loan would run 20 years at over 5 percent, secured against the league’s future domestic TV income. No equity changes hands, and it needs a vote of the 36 member clubs [4].

In England, Jeff Bezos is in talks to join a consortium seeking a 30 percent stake in Liverpool [5]. The bid, led by Amit Bhatia, values the club at around 4.5 billion pounds [5]. That is more than Manchester United was worth when Jim Ratcliffe bought a quarter of it two years ago. Liverpool’s owner FSG has confirmed the talks [5], and analysts are still unpicking exactly who is behind the consortium [6]. Different structures, one direction: money from finance and tech is buying a share of what the game earns next.

The screen is being carved up too

The place fans watch is splitting apart at the same time. Amazon’s Prime Video struck a 12-year deal with Rogers to show Wednesday-night NHL games and some early playoff series in Canada, at least 26 national games a season [7]. YouTube TV added ESPN and NBC channels to its lineup [8]. And ESPN, long the self-styled worldwide leader in sports, ran another round of layoffs [9]. It cut familiar on-air names as it pivots to selling its own streaming service directly to viewers.

For decades, one cable bundle carried nearly every fan’s money to the leagues, whether they watched or not. That single pipe is breaking into a dozen paid services. The leagues still get paid; the bill just moves onto the fan, service by service.

Even college sport now has a sticker price

The clearest sign of where this goes sits in American college football, which for a century insisted it was amateur. The Athletic this week priced every major program as if it were a sellable franchise, with Texas topping the list at about 2.46 billion dollars [10]. The exercise is hypothetical, since you cannot yet buy the Longhorns, but private-capital firms are already moving into college conferences, and the professional comparison is telling. Analysts valued the Seattle Seahawks at around 7 billion dollars last year; the team sold this month for 9.6 billion dollars [10].

Across FIFA, the Bundesliga, Liverpool and the college game, the same thing is happening. Parts of sport that were held in common, or held as amateur, are being measured, packaged and sold. MLB’s owners and players are even fighting this week over how to split the sport’s roughly 12 billion dollars in annual revenue [11]. Whoever ends up owning the game, the fans in the stands built most of what it is worth.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

How you sell a thing that everyone built

A shared asset has no single owner, only a gatekeeper - and a gatekeeper can sell what the crowd made and pocket the difference.

The strange thing about the sale

FIFA is a nonprofit. It does not own the World Cup the way a person owns a car. The tournament’s worth was made by 211 national federations, by every player who ever pulled on a shirt, by a hundred years of fans who cared. FIFA is the caretaker, not the maker.

And yet this week FIFA moved to sell a fifth of it for billions. That is the odd thing to sit with. How do you sell a thing that everyone built and no one person owns? The answer is the whole lesson.

The commons, and the fence

Three centuries ago, English villages had common land. Anyone could graze a cow on it, cut firewood, let their geese roam. No one owned the common; everyone used it. Then, field by field, Parliament passed laws that let a landowner fence it off. The grass did not change. What changed was who was allowed to profit from it. The villagers who had used it for generations found the gate locked.

Historians call this enclosure. It is one of the oldest moves in economics, and it works the same wherever there is a shared thing and someone holding the key. You do not have to own what the crowd made. You only have to control the gate. Once you control the gate, you can fence the field and sell the frontage.

What FIFA actually holds

The World Cup is a commons of a different shape. Its value is not grass; it is attention. Billions of people watch, and that watching is what a 20-billion-dollar price tag is built on. No single party owns that attention. But FIFA holds the charter, the sole right to organise the tournament, granted long ago and rarely questioned.

Holding the key is not the same as owning the thing. A caretaker who keeps the gate is still just a caretaker - until the day he decides the gate is his to sell. That is the day enclosure happens. FIFA raising cash by selling a stake to Josh Kushner’s fund is the fence going up around football’s common field.

You are in the field

Here is the part that is easy to miss from the stands. The reason the World Cup is worth 20 billion dollars is that you watch it. Your attention, and the attention of billions like you, is the asset being priced and sold. You are not a spectator to this deal. You are the thing being valued in it.

When a fifth of the future profit flows to outside shareholders, a slice of what your watching creates now leaves the game. It goes to a private fund in New York. You helped build the value. You do not hold the deed. And it is not only football. A German league mortgaging its future TV money. An American billionaire buying a piece of Liverpool. A college team priced like a franchise. The same fence, going up around field after field, all built by crowds who will not share in the sale.

Both things are true

Enclosure is not simply theft, and it is worth being honest about that. The English enclosures did raise farm output; fenced land was often worked harder. FIFA’s cash could genuinely reach a small federation that has no pitches and no coaches, and 20 million dollars there is real. An arrangement can serve the one who builds the fence and still leave something for those inside it. Say both. The money flows out to new owners, and some flows back as development funding. The question enclosure always raises is not whether anyone benefits, but who now decides, and who now collects the rent on a thing they did not make.

What no single seat can see

The strangest thing about a fence around a commons is that from any one spot, it looks reasonable. The fan sees a match and a ticket price. The investor sees a return on 4 billion dollars. FIFA sees a development budget for the poorest federations. The federation in a small country sees a cheque it badly needed. Each seat sees a fair local trade. No seat sees the whole transfer: a shared thing, made by everyone, quietly becoming a thing that pays a few.

The fan in the stand, the child in a Sunday-league game, the volunteer running a village club - all of them made the World Cup what it is. None of them holds the deed. That is not a scandal to be angry about so much as a shape to notice. Once you see it, you start seeing fences everywhere: around the airwaves, around the data, around the quiet commons you did not know you were standing in.

03 · Lab · your turn

Fence the Field

Rehearse selling a stake in a shared asset - one-time cash against a cut that leaves every cycle forever, and feel where enclosure turns against the crowd who built it.

04 · Hope · carry this

A fence, unlike a field, can be argued with. The loudest fights over who owns the game are really proof of how many people still feel it is theirs, and a thing that many people love is hard to quietly sell.