GENEVA (AP) — European nations agreed Thursday to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions to protest Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in soccer’s biggest tournament to private equity investors.
Infantino’s secret project was revealed Tuesday to spin off its commercial operations in a new $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) 20% owned by private investors. The core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Infantino wrote Tuesday to the 211 members — already the effective owners of FIFA as a non-profit association under Swiss law — that if they approve 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.
“This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football,” said UEFA, where Infantino was a long-time staffer and its CEO-like general secretary when he was first elected to lead FIFA in 2016.
I’d argue, A-bot unprecedented, apparently the same threat was made when infantino previously argued for World Cup every two years, and B- slightly self interested, as it would reduce the relevance of European Cup and League of Nations