AFCON 2025
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has given the organization’s 211 member associations until September 19 to approve his proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) project, a plan that would see the football body sell minority stakes in its major competitions to private investors. Under the proposal, each association would gain access to up to $40 million in funding if it backs the plan, compared to roughly $10 million if it rejects it.
The FFE would remain FIFA-owned and operated, consolidating the organization’s commercial rights — including broadcast, sponsorship, ticketing, and licensing revenue — along with the running of FIFA tournaments. FIFA values the project at $20 billion and plans to sell non-controlling minority stakes to external investors to raise as much as $4.2 billion, part of a wider funding package Infantino has put at up to $10 billion if the plan is approved, versus roughly $2.7 billion if it’s rejected.
Infantino has defended the plan as an act of empowerment for smaller footballing nations rather than a power grab. He argued that football’s next stage of growth needs a structure built specifically for it, with the commercial side run as a focused business whose value is shared more widely, giving every member association a fair shot at funding by deciding for itself. He described the exercise as “the democratisation of football worldwide.”
The plan has triggered swift backlash across multiple confederations. UEFA has publicly stated that the World Cup is not “an asset to trade,” while the Asian Football Confederation says it was never consulted on the proposal. Sources say UEFA is even weighing options that include a potential World Cup boycott, citing a lack of consultation and governance around the plan.
UEFA has been especially pointed about the timing of the deadline itself, saying that learning of FIFA’s ultimatum to associations — support the proposal or lose the one-off payout offer — “says everything you need to know about this plan.” It’s understood Infantino kept some of FIFA’s own vice-presidents in the dark about the plan before it was unveiled, a detail that has fueled criticism over transparency.
Political figures have weighed in as well. EU sports chief Glenn Micallef told FIFA bluntly to keep its “hands off our game.” La Liga president Javier Tebas went further, accusing Infantino of using the funding offer to influence votes ahead of FIFA’s next Congress in March, calling it less a reform than an electoral campaign financed with football’s future.
With the September 19 deadline now set, member associations across the six federations face a rather short time frame to decide. Gianni Infantino has maintained that the final decision rests with individual associations, but the scale of the financial gap between accepting and rejecting the plan — and the speed at which federations are being asked to decide — has turned this into one of the most contentious governance battles football has seen in years.
