Plans to sell World Cup shares have been scrapped by FIFA following growing opposition, according to The New York Post.
The New York Post reported that FIFA have scrapped the plan to sell World Cup shares to private investors after the strong reactions it has received globally, and the major rift it has created internally within FIFA among their executives.
FIFA have had plans to sell shares of the World Cup to private investors. This has led continental confederations to threaten to boycott all FIFA competitions.
It has also had consequences in the form of FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s advisor resigning in protest and another FIFA top official openly criticising Infantino harshly.
Infantino’s plan was broadly about forming a company, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), which would handle all of the World Cup’s commercial rights.
If the plan were to be approved, FIFA would own a majority of the company, while up to 20 percent could be sold to private investors, while the national associations would receive a share of the company, which they could either keep or sell. The plan would bring in up to $4 billion for FIFA.
But now the deal is dead, four sources told The New York Post.
Infantino had previously set a deadline of September 19. Until then, each member association of FIFA would take a position on the proposal.
In a letter to all member associations, which Fotbollskanalen has seen, Infantino announced that if they did not approve the proposal, they would receive a significantly smaller financial contribution.
If the proposal had been voted through, all member unions would have received a financial contribution of $20 million. However, the unions that approved the proposal would receive an additional contribution of another $20 million, for a total of $40 million, which the unions that had chosen to oppose the proposal would not receive.
In other words, the call was: Approve the proposal and get more money.
“Pure bribery,” a source told The Times.
The sale of the shares to private players would have been handled by American venture capitalist Joshua Kushner and his company Thrive. Joshua is the brother of Jared Kushner, who is the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. The bank JP Morgan would be an advisor to Kushner and Thrive.
Thrive has already begun talks to abandon the plans, according to three sources to The New York Post, and JPMorgan no longer expects the deal to go through. According to sources, the bank has stopped working on the matter.
With external investors now no longer an option, the newspaper claims that FIFA will continue to sell their commercial rights in-house.
A source familiar with the failed deal told The New York Post that the organisation may instead try to find a way to “formalize and commercialise their assets” through its existing nonprofit organisation – without going into any further detail.
