Fifa's Bold Vision for Football's Future: More Tournaments and Higher Prices
Fifa’s latest sales pitch lays bare a stark vision of football’s future: more tournaments, higher ticket prices, and a plunge into debt – all in the name of “growth”.
A 25-page presentation, titled “Fifa Forward Enterprise Member Materials” and sent to all 211 member associations on Wednesday night, sets out the governing body’s plan to spin off its commercial operations into a new company and sell 20% of it to US investor Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner. The prospectus was put together by JP Morgan, the same bank that stood behind the doomed European Super League project five years ago.
This is not a cautious tweak of the model. It is a hard pivot.
More tournaments, more strain
At the heart of the pitch is a simple equation: more football equals more money. JP Morgan’s deck makes it explicit that Fifa’s financial ambitions rest on “a growing tournament portfolio”, “third party sources of capital and debt financing”, and a focus on “high yield” partnerships and events.
One line leaps off the page. The plan refers to more than doubling the number of global tournaments each year, from 200 to 450. If that schedule ever becomes reality, the calendar – already stretched to breaking point – would be driven even closer to collapse. Player workload, already a flashpoint between clubs, unions and organisers, would come under unprecedented strain.
Staging the World Cup more often sits in the background of all this. Gianni Infantino floated the idea of a biennial World Cup five years ago, a proposal that met fierce resistance. The new prospectus does not spell out that change, but the logic is unmistakable: the World Cup is Fifa’s golden asset, and squeezing it harder is the most obvious way to chase the numbers JP Morgan is dangling.
A game for sale
The financial lure being waved in front of member associations is considerable. On top of the previously reported $20m sign-up payment that Fifa has told members could be available as early as January, the document projects that four-year Fifa Forward payments would rise to $24m per association in the 2035–39 cycle.
To justify the structural overhaul, JP Morgan paints Fifa as “undermonetized”. The presentation compares Fifa’s stated annual revenue of $3.6bn with the NFL’s $21.2bn, Major League Baseball’s $13.1bn and the NBA’s $12.5bn.
The comparison is striking – and, to many inside the game, deeply odd. Those US figures come from private, franchise-based leagues. Fifa is a global governing body, not a club competition. One senior figure, reacting to the document, questioned why Fifa would benchmark itself against closed, member-run leagues rather than similar international federations.
Another senior official raised a more basic question: why chase debt at all? Fifa holds cash reserves of around $4bn and has accumulated revenues of $15bn in the current four-year cycle. For those numbers to sit alongside a call for “third party sources of capital and debt financing” has jarred with several recipients.
Paywalls and private capital
The sales deck also signals a shift in how fans might watch the sport’s biggest events. JP Morgan highlights a plan to “expand and optimize media rights monetization”, a phrase that points directly towards more lucrative, potentially more exclusive broadcast arrangements.
That could mean moving World Cup coverage and other flagship tournaments away from free-to-air television and deeper into the domain of subscription broadcasters and streaming platforms. For fans used to watching the sport’s showpiece on terrestrial channels, the direction of travel is clear.
The proposed timeline has raised eyebrows as well. According to the document, “Investors will be given access to a term sheet and select materials” in August – before Fifa’s 211 members have even voted on the plan. The investor group itself is barely discussed in the deck. There is no detail on their projected returns, no clarity on their exit terms, and only a brief reference to Kushner’s role.
For a deal of this scale, that lack of transparency has already become a point of contention.
A glaring omission
Perhaps the most telling detail is what the 25-page document does not mention at all. Across the entire prospectus, there is not a single reference to women’s football.
In an era when the women’s game is growing rapidly and when Fifa has repeatedly claimed to place it at the centre of its long-term vision, its total absence from a flagship commercial blueprint is striking. For some within the sport, that silence may say more about the true priorities of this project than any of the headline figures.
Fifa has been approached for comment.
