Almost equitized the entire World Cup
Immediately after the 2026 World Cup, FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced a shocking plan: Selling the World Cup operating rights to private investors.
Gianni Infantino's plan is to establish a $20 billion company to operate the World Cup with private investors. Including a commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) to operate tournaments such as the World Cup and Club World Cup. FIFA announced that FFE will raise up to $4.2 billion by the end of this year to help fund development programs "based on an initial capital valuation of $20 billion by carefully selecting long-term investors who will buy minority shares, without control".
FIFA's statement on the project proposal focused on the amount of money each member out of 211 members could receive until 2038 in the "FIFA Fast-Forward" program.
Instead of 8 million USD promised for each federation in the development fund throughout the World Cup 2027 - 2030 trade cycle, the figure will be 20 million USD, followed by 22 million USD and 24 million USD in the following cycles.
FIFA has earned a record revenue of about 12 billion USD from the 2026 World Cup, a tournament with unprecedentedly high ticket prices and logistics services in 3 countries: the US, Canada and Mexico. It is still unclear how to achieve that level of money from the co-hosting of the 2030 World Cup by Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
Member federations can choose whether they want to participate in these new financial opportunities or not, FIFA said. "FIFA will maintain sole control over FFE and have exclusive authority over football governance, tournaments, schedules, and all decisions on regulations and sports," the agency said.
However, Mr. Gianni Infantino's World Cup equitization plan has been opposed by many Confederations of Labour and countries. Especially the European Football Federation - UEFA: "This is not something that belongs to FIFA to sell", UEFA said in its statement, "None of us are owners of football".
After UEFA, the North, Central America and Caribbean Football Confederation (CONCACAF) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) also simultaneously opposed the plan. AFC declared "standing with UEFA and CONCACAF", and called on FIFA to urgently review governance methods...
By early August 2026, Mr. Infantino confirmed that the above equitization plan would not be implemented. "After carefully listening to all opinions, I realized that the project has created divisions to the point that, no matter how much support it receives, it no longer serves the initial goal," he said.
To FIFA ASEAN Cup
Only after the Southeast Asian Football Championship (ASEAN Cup) ends, the Vietnamese national team will participate in a similar tournament called FIFA ASEAN Cup.
The core difference of the FIFA ASEAN Cup compared to the ASEAN Cup (formerly AFF Cup) is that: This tournament is directly managed by FIFA and is scheduled into the official schedule (FIFA Days). This creates a decisive change: Clubs around the globe are required to release players to the National Team. For decades, the traditional ASEAN Cup has always faced the absence of top stars because the tournament is not within the FIFA system, leading to a decline in both professional quality and commercial value.
With a bonus of up to 1 million USD for the champion team - more than 3 times the bonus of the AFF Cup - it also shows that FIFA wants to use financial leverage to upgrade the ambitions of countries in the region.
According to analysts, FIFA does not hide its ambition to turn Southeast Asia into a large commercial market following the model of the FIFA Arab Cup. The 2021 Arab Cup once attracted 272 million global television viewers with a prize fund of up to 25.5 million USD. According to the roadmap, the Arab Cup prize money could reach 10 million USD for the champion team.
However, because it is a commercial tournament, the copyright of FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026 in Vietnam has been pushed up to about 3 million USD, which is considered too high. Up to now, no unit in Vietnam has completed the purchase of broadcasting rights for FIFA ASEAN Cup 2026.
A representative of a television unit said that with a small number of matches but high copyright costs, broadcasting units must carefully calculate business efficiency before making a decision.
Clearly, for FIFA, the commercial nature of tournaments is very important and also a suggestion in the economicization of sports at the national level, turning sports into an economic spearhead.
