Comment by brunoborges
4 hours ago
Infantino clearly wants to see FIFA making billions so he and many others can pocket millions legally. But the only way for this to happen in a non-corrupt way, given that FIFA is non-profit and therefore requires a lot of questionable operations, is to turn FIFA into a business like NFL / MLS.
The problem with that is that it then it is no longer a sport, rather a... business.
UEFA letter is spot on.
CONCACAF join UEFA and reject FIFA's World Cup sell-off plan. https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49488584/uefa-boycott... . By the end of this Gianni Infantino will only be left with the Africans .I am African and these Federations will do anything to keep him around because of the unprecedented amounts of corruption...
CONCACAF statement: https://www.concacaf.com/competitions/concacaf/news/statemen...
This statement is weak and wishy-washy compared to the blunt UEFA statement. Kudos to Europe. Here’s hoping CONCACAF can get brave enough to take the moral stance as well.
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However, all all-Africa World Cup won't find too many takers.
While the football business is horrible it's nice that this may fail like the Super League.
Now if only that could put a dent in Infantino reelection...
I am not sure a replacement for Infantino is enough. It seems like FIFA has a culture of corruption and Infantino is merely the latest manifestation of said culture. Some serious reform and restructuring seem needed.
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> unprecedented amounts of corruption...
Yes I hear about that a lot. Yuk
But I also hear that FIFA puts a lot of resources into developing the game in African countries.
I am asking: Is that true in your experience?
And strangely a very high percentage of those resources get converted into mansions and yachts
Both can be - and seem to be - true.
Who told you that? FIFA?
It's already an entity that makes billions that's run as a business even though it's nominally one of the few parts of the sport that isn't for profit, and it's not like they really need private equity to help them put ticket prices up, as the last World Cup showed.
Regardless of rhetoric about "not to be sold", the bigger issue is that this looks like a very bad financial arrangement for a sport that is awash with funds already so doesn't need to sell its future revenues off cheaply or learn how to make money from PE, but probably a good deal for Infantino and chums. Corruption at FIFA is nothing new, but a behind-closed-doors sweetheart deal for a large fraction of their future revenue was really pushing at boundaries ...
And Infantino had become so convinced of his own genius he thought that giving member states a fait accompli, a ticking clock and an indication that most of the money would go to states that voted yes (and a financial deal that would be an attractive bung to the 100 or so FIFA members with no chance of actually qualifying, but shrinks the future revenue stream for everyone else) would actually fly.
Plus UEFA already makes more money than FIFA, could happily organize a rival competition attracting more top teams from the rest of the world and sponsorship money if it came to that, and had a unique opportunity to flex where fans and clubs would be universally behind them...
The experience interacting with FIFA is so terrible already. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if it turned into a profit machine.
Already is a highly corrupted profit machine. I am not against nor in favor of the proposed change. If EUFA is against is because they felt they are not being favored, it is not in favor of the sport.
Agreed, the tickets to the tournament this year were just outrageously priced. Football is historically a working class sport, but $1,000 to watch a team like DR Congo in the group stage is next level criminality. And it's only going to get worse from here.
FIFA looked at this World Cup as an experiment. They wanted to see whether turning the monetization knob all the way to 11 would encounter significant resistance or whether fans would still watch/attend. The US, with its plethora of expensive stadiums and lax regulatory environment for price gouging compared to Europe, was the perfect testing environment. They upped the number of teams to 48 to get more games, used dynamic ticket pricing, added hydration breaks for more commercials in markets that would allow it and added a few other income streams. All this more than doubled their profits because, and this is the important part going forward, fans didn’t push back. They complained, but the still came/watched.
So this will now be the new norm. Host countries will be ones where laws don’t prohibit gouging fans. They’ll come up with creative solutions to meet the rotation requirement like the upcoming host a couple games in South America farce that’s allowing them to go to Saudi Arabia after that. They’ll continue to push the boundaries of decency until they get sufficient pushback.
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Infantino & Trump are just corrupt. Neck to neck with officials in African governments.
Infantino & Trump's corruption is literally driven by greed. not the good greed - but just bad, power hungry insatiable greed.
Infantino should call Altman
Or Madoff, SBF, Weinstein, etc
For Infantino, they reckon his salary can go from 6M to 60M under this new org…
They also got so greedy that even EA couldn't deal with them anymore and they ended up destroying the Fifa videogame franchise
Imagine being more money hungry than EA - a company which makes billions from gaslighting children into gambling money on getting their favourite players.
FIFA is also a terrible employer
Got friends working for them as developers. They ran away. In months
It's wild how bad the experience is working for top level sports teams can be. Many (in the US at least) have an absolute lock on massive profits and value increasing like crazy ... but they operate like the cheapest small business that can't bother the new guy a chair that isn't broken.
Based on the quality of their World Cup ticketing website, I’m not surprised. That was the worst ticketing experience I’ve ever endured.
Are you talking about EA or FIFA?
Yes.
They just made $15bn.
and part of the proposal is to get Fifa to borrow and take on debt lol it's peak capitalism
Which is clearly not enough.
The point is not how much it made, it is how to transfer that wealth (whether 6B or 60B) out of a non-profit into someone else's account without looking like, or literally being, a criminal.
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> and many others
Trump and Kushners
"Joshua Kushner is now the kingpin in driving the sale of the World Cup to investors and family ties are tight around the project"[1]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/30/fifas-sale-...
These people looked at OpenAI and went "Hey, I can run corruption like that too!"
true lmao
> UEFA
They are no strangers to certain aspects of it. /s
What's new? I thought it has been known as a big-money thing for some time now.
The new thing is trying to take the organization from a non-profit to a corporation. Mainly so the executives can increase their already large compensation apparently.
Interesting parallels to OpenAI.
FIFA made $~15 billion USD this World Cup, roughly double what they made in Qatar in 2022. There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
The difference that FIFA ran the whole tournament now. There was no Local Organizing Committee (LOC) like with every single previous event.
I didn't realize the commercial-block-sized "hydration breaks" were that profitable.
For a second, I thought the Americanization[1] of fùtbol would be done gradually and no one would complain as we'd be slowly boiled. I'm glad the corrupt bastards got greedy/impatient and took a big swing.
1. Sports primarily as a business, catering to owners first, sponsors second, broadcasters third, and then lastly, fans. IMO non-profit sports organizations are the best model for fans, who I identify the most with.
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> There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
The $15 billion figure is for FIFA's ENTIRE 2023-2026 revenue cycle, so not just this World Cup. But the obvious "low-hanging fruit" was making the tournamenta lot larger (104 matches instead of Qatar's 64), so a lot more tickets, hospitality sales, ads etc
Also two 3 minute hydration breaks per match, giving broadcasters additional advertising windows.
That's your "optimization".
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FIFA has announced they plan to officially sell off everything to private investors, dropping all pretense of being a steward of a common good.
What's wrong with making billions? Will this hurt the game somehow?
We've seen the start with "hydration breaks" and a 30 minute half-time.
Investors calling to change red cards because the best players should play, etc
Instead of just various penis challenged nation leaders doing so...
Yes.
The game was already hurt this world cup with the flow destroying „hydration breaks“ to sell more ads.
nothing wrong, but did we really need ticket prices to go from 100 to 1000 if they weren't struggling financially?
Yes it will hurt the game. Americans already have the NFL if they want to watch commercials. Leave soccer alone.