FIFA President Gianni Infantino is confronting the most serious challenge to his decade-long tenure after UEFA and CONCACAF declared on Saturday that they had lost confidence in his leadership, hours after he abandoned a controversial plan to sell a stake in World Cup commercial rights to private investors.
The plan would have created a $20 billion commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, with a roughly 20 percent stake sold for about $4.2 billion. The anchor investor was to be Thrive Capital, a firm run by New York venture capitalist Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, according to multiple reports.
Infantino had offered FIFA's 211 member associations up to $40 million each to back the proposal, with a mid-September deadline. The plan was announced Tuesday. By Thursday, UEFA's 55 member associations had voted unanimously to boycott all FIFA competitions, including the World Cup, if the plan proceeded. CONCACAF, which governs North and Central America and the Caribbean and hosted the 2026 World Cup, said its members "rejected" the proposal, with sources indicating the vast majority of associations in the region had lost faith in Infantino. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) declared solidarity with UEFA and CONCACAF.