On Tuesday, the details of FIFA’s plan to sell a share of the commercial rights of its competitions to private investors, with the promise of tens of millions in additional revenues for national football associations, became public.
It’s not that UEFA, Europe’s governing confederation, have pushed back against the plan, something FIFA President Gianni Infantino probably expected. It’s the unity and strength with which they’ve done so, promising a fully boycott of future FIFA competitions if the plan is enacted and attracting the support of their sibling continental federations in North America and Asia.
Maybe Infantino will still get his way on the matter. But it sure feels like the 56-year-old Swiss-Italian former attorney overplayed his hand. And the intriguing question is why.
For all Infantino’s flaws, since first coming into the position of FIFA’s top executive in 2016, he has generally shown a good instinct for understanding the difference between unpopular ideas and unworkable ones.
So why didn’t he this time, when opposition so clear from the very start? Here are four reasons he may have gotten this moment so wrong.
Confusing Profit For Endorsement
As the 2026 World Cup concluded, FIFA revised its projected revenues for the four-year tournament cycle upward to $15 billion, well north of expectations when the cycle began.
But the act of supporting increased commercial activity over that cycle isn’t necessarily an endorsement of how that cycle transpired.
At a basic level, this was pretty obvious just by watching the World Cup. Yes, fans begrudgingly paid sky-high prices to be there. They also roundly booed Infantino wherever he appeared, as well as the hydration break that came to reflect an unwanted Americanization of the tournament.
This was a World Cup where fans, and at times players and teams, participated in spite of their objections to how things were being run, not because of them. But if your sole measure of success is financial, it becomes easier to miss that sentiment and maneuver yourself into a future problematic position.
Underestimating Trump’s Toxicity
For some in UEFA, the worst part of FIFA’s commercialization proposal may not be the idea itself, but who is leading it.
Joshua Kushner was revealed as a lead investor in the plan to create FIFA Forward Enterprise, the new entity that would govern FIFA’s commercial activities. His brother is Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of United States President Donald Trump who is considered a close advisor to the U.S. chief executive.
Any appearance of Trumpian involvement in Europe likely made FIFA’s proposal significantly more toxic in Europe than it might have been otherwise, given the Trump administration’s consistent adversarial treatment of the European Union.
It seems very likely that steeled European unity in the face of a proposal that felt like not only a proposed commercial takeover of the World Cup, but a political one. And exactly because of Trump foreign policy, it comes at a time when Europe’s place in the global order is feeling increasingly fragile.
Blinded By Top-Down Governance
It has become increasingly clear that Infantino governs FIFA as a strong executive who bends others to his desires rather than as an organizational consensus builder.
There can be advantages to that, particularly in adapting quickly to unforseen changes in demands. But it can also create a climate where the circle of advisors around Infantino is built to reflect his own opinions.
That can lead to blind spots, especially if and when that advisory circle is also attempting to personally profit off Infantino’s decisions. That latter scenario certainly feels plausible here.
Avoiding Previous Worst Outcomes
A last influence that should not be discounted is just how fortunate Infantino has been to avoid the most problematic outcomes in the World Cup and other competitions.
From the United States losing in the round of 16 after the whole Folarin Balogun saga, to Argentina eventually going down to Spain in the final, the outcomes on the field in the end minimized whispers about potential FIFA meddling.
Similarly, a late-stage influx of cash saved FIFA from the embarrassment of staging the first version of an expanded Club World Cup in 2025 without a workable TV deal, and spared it from the worst claims of asset mismanagement.
That string of luck has not only insulated Infantino and some of his advisors from the deserved consequences of some of his decisions, but also perhaps provided an erroneous sense of broad support for them.
