Gianni Infantino Is Putting The World Cup Up For Sale

The recently concluded World Cup was the shining example of FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s particular brand of evil. It was nakedly greedy, nakedly corrupt, nakedly ugly, and also totally awesome. Infantino’s bet was that he could openly screw everyone—fans, teams, referees, ear-havers, even the sport itself—and could still get away with it simply because soccer is too good. As expected, he was proven right. And unsurprisingly, he’s already trying to push things even further.

On Tuesday, The Times reported that Infantino’s latest plan is to sell the World Cup to private equity investors, all under the guise of “growing the game,” which not so coincidentally involves growing his own bank account. Specifically, Infantino’s plan would include FIFA setting up a company, tentatively named FIFA Forward Enterprise, that would handle the commercial rights to the World Cup. FIFA would retain majority control of the FFE company, and each of the 211 member associations would get a stake reportedly worth around $20 million each. The rest would be sold off to investors, around 21 percent of the company, who would almost certainly see an immense return even on the planned $10 billion infusion from their investments. The search for investors is, of course, tainted to fuck already with Trumpworld, as FIFA is reportedly marking Jared Kushner’s brother Joshua and his private equity company Thrive Capital as primary investors for the FFE project. But hey, remember that $20 million? Eh? Everybody wins! Right?

Well, sort of. The dirty secret of FIFA’s current set-up is that it is very easy to bribe quite a few of the 211 organizations. Not in the Sepp Blatter fashion of literally giving them money under the table. That’s gauche in Infantino’s FIFA. Instead, the money is promised over the table and with all of the good “growing the game” intentions he can fit into his media appearances and statements. For many of FIFA’s member associations, $20 million is a lot of money. (For others, such as the UEFA associations, it is a drop in the bucket.) Infantino is able to buy the votes he needs—plans such as this FFE gambit are subject simply to a simple majority from FIFA members—to incorporate his plans, but simple mathematics show how weak his actual support is. Tallying up that $20 million for each of the 211 countries comes out to around $4.2 billion, leaving almost $16 billion of FIFA’s valuation of the prospective FFE company ($20 billion) up for grabs between the world soccer governing body and those pesky investors.