FIFA Folds on World Cup Stake Sale After Backlash
Infantino scraps plan to sell off pieces of football's crown jewel competitions
By Gus "Walk-Off" Fields
Gianni Infantino picked a fight he couldn't win.
FIFA's president has scrapped his proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup, according to BBC Sport and ESPN, after the plan ran into a wall of opposition — including from inside football's own governing body. European nations had reportedly threatened to boycott over the idea.
The specifics of what was on the table, and who exactly pushed back hardest, aren't fully spelled out in what's been reported so far. But the outcome is clear enough: a plan to bring outside investors into ownership of the sport's biggest prize is dead, at least for now.
This isn't Infantino's only World Cup headache. ESPN reports his broader push around World Cup format and governance risks undermining progress in the women's game, with the 2027 Women's World Cup potentially the first major tournament caught in the crossfire as countries weigh boycotts of their own.
For a competition that sells itself on being the one thing on the planet almost everybody still agrees to watch together, that's not a small thing. The World Cup's value has always rested on the idea that it belongs to the game, not to a balance sheet. Infantino's retreat suggests even FIFA's inner circle isn't ready to test that theory.
What happens next — whether some scaled-back version of the investment plan resurfaces, or whether this fight reshapes how the 2027 Women's World Cup gets staged — remains to be seen. We'll be watching.
Final score's the last thing that mattered here.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Sport and ESPN.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."