Infantino clearly wants to see FIFA making billions so he and many others can pocket millions legally. But the only way for this to happen in a non-corrupt way, given that FIFA is non-profit and therefore requires a lot of questionable operations, is to turn FIFA into a business like NFL / MLS.
The problem with that is that it then it is no longer a sport, rather a... business.
UEFA letter is spot on.
This is so highly unusual even sports-allergic HN wants to discuss it. It's like a religious schism in some sense.
It's about brazen corruption in one of the world's most famous institutions. Taking an interest in it isn't as irrational as all that.
I don’t know whos on Infantinos side on this
There are 200+ participating countries. Many of those are on his side, because they’re tiny and easy to bribe: a few million is significant for them and often that money can be siphoned into corrupt pockets.
That said, a World Cup without any of the 55 UEFA countries wouldn’t make sense commercially.
But the USA men might finally do well!
Depending on whether the South American teams show up…
Trump and his family.
His son in law is running the investment firm https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-fifa-investors-kushner-...
In turn Trump wants to nominate Infantino for Secretary General of UN https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/22/trumps-pick-for-the-next...
There is nothing this family does not see as an opportunity for corruption. Comically evil.
I think the evil part is the [at any cost] part, the incentives are irrelevant. An AI that only wants to make paperclips isn't evil because of the paperclips.
Kushner
> Sepp Blatter weighed in, writing on X: "The close relationship between the Fifa president and the US President [Donald Trump] has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football. No-one has the right to sell our game."
Sepp Blatter for crying out loud.
Who better to recognize corruption?
That's like John Gotti saying Al Capone was corrupt.
Blatter was corrupt to the core but cared about the actual sport if you look at his record. This new president is like a james bond villian caricature like he actually wants to destroy the sport.
The companies that want a piece of FIFA, I assume.
Edit: I just realized you meant who here on hn, in which case I assume the hardcore capitalists/libertarians. But they can speak for themselves.
On HN? The capitalist/libertarian/Elon posters, Meta employees, etc.
About time
Hard to think of a modern institution as corrupt as fifa. That may not bother too many people because it’s not their government, but I just think it stinks
FIFA has been monstrously corrupt since at least as far back as the 1970s (Havelange).
I backslid this year, but did completely boycott watching in 2018 and 2022. Russia is a pariah state and should never have been allowed to host, and Qatar was manifestly unsuitable.
The only difference this year is that the bribery and political favors were out in the open.
There are levels to it. Sepp Blatter was notoriously corrupt, but Infantino makes his "envelope full of cash under the table" style of corruption look amateurish.
> Hard to think of a modern institution as corrupt as fifa
IOC is about the only organisation that comes close to it I think.
I'm so happy to see they care enough to take a stand. The last World Cup was a sh-t show. I expect the LA olympics to be no better.
How was it a shit show? I’m genuinely curious. I attended 5 games (Atlanta, LA and Dallas) and was a fantastic experience minus the process to get tickets.
Not OP, but I would guess: "hydration breaks" to inject commercials, half-time shows that felt alien to much of the core audience, and various rule-bending shenanigans (Ronaldo, Balogun).
The ticket prices and scalping (sorry, authorized re-selling to find the market clearing price) were robbery.
Sports people (I was listening to Bill Simmons) rated it pretty highly.
There was nothing egregious and it was widely attended.
The way that the Iran team was only allowed into the USA on match days was a disgrace.
Refusing entry to a Somali referee on the spurious grounds of links to terrorism was a disgrace.
The overturning of Falorin Balogun's ban was a disgrace.
The ticket prices were a disgrace. The transport to the stadiums was a shambles.
I could go on.
> The transport to the stadiums was a shambles.
This bit was kind of baffling to me. Like, the US has a bunch of large stadiums. Presumably they sometimes get used for stuff. How is it not a constant disaster?
There’s a medium sized (50k capacity) stadium near me, and even _with_ a train station with a train each way every ten minutes right beside it, and within easy walking distance of about five high capacity bus routes, it’s always a bit of a shitshow when a big event finishes. I’ve no idea how it could work _at all_ if you’re just depending on buses and cars, which a bunch of the US stadiums seemed to be.
The World Cup final is supposed to be a war and the half time show turned it into a clown fest.
I can't agree with that. Host countries share their culture through the World Cup. South Africa had vuvuzelas, Qatar put a bisht on the winning captain's shoulders, and the USA had a half-time show.
Now if only it had been a good half-time show...
Maybe the way that Infantino nakedly advanced political favors for Trump (the f×××ing peace prize, Folarin f×××ing Balogun) and now wants a fat slice of payback?
The fact a ban was overturned as a political favour.
It's only a matter of time before there are sponsors on the Yellow and Red cards...
Guaranteed slots to the tournaments for patrons
The red card for covering your mouth while talking to an opponent is brought to you by Telegram.
“And that’s the second State Farm Yellow Card for Haaland!”
“Looks like this is a card. He already has a yellow (sponsored by Qatar Airwaves), and may be looking at his second. YES! he is receiving is second yellow, this time sponsored by Universal Studio, and here is the red card. Sponsored by Red Bull. He is leaving this game and his team mates one down.”
Second commentator: “It is true, Red Bull gives you wings. In this case, the wings only take you to the shower room.”
I follow a local team and don’t really follow the larger picture, but injuries are sponsored, i always thought that would produce a perverse incentive.
This whole thread is full of people that cannot conceive a model where profit is not the goal
Why is this out of the gate bad? Note that this is not taking FIFA to private equity, but creating an investors owned subsidiary to run events and commercial operations where the non profit arm will still own 80% of it. With the right protections it could help FIFA make more money and reinvest in the sport, particularly women’s football. FIFA currently makes 40% of what the NHL makes, not the NFL, not NBA. Soccer is by far the most popular sport on the planet, the fact that it makes a lot less money than hockey is insane.
Why is it bad to sell 20% of the biggest tournament in the world to a private company lead by people involved with the most corrupt administration in the history of the US? The model has been working fine for decades, why does it matter that it makes less than american sports?
It's a pity that those letters are not sent for many many other things.
I think the mandatory ad break introduced by FIFA at the World Cup was also too much for most football people, not just fans. Changed too much, broke the dynamics, basically the sport became a game of 4 quarters instead of 2 halves. These two things combined together are just over the top and unacceptable (UEFA already said they won't use these mandatory ad breaks anywhere)
This is the closest where I can see a future where we have a rugby union / rugby league like schism.
Oh and guess who is behind the investment group: https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-fifa-investors-kushner-...
I agree completely with your assessment of the water breaks, but the games were extremely entertaining and I watched as much as I could.
Of all the things wrong with the World Cup, the most inconsequential ones - hydration breaks and the final half-time show - have attracted the most griping.
Changing the pauses of the game alters the momentum and, as consequence, the results. How is that “inconsequential”? There have been cases of corrupted referees before, but violating the Laws of the Game in plain sight is an unprecedented attack on the sport.
I think hydration breaks can be defensible as long as they are a) conditionally triggered by pre-existing criteria that is b) created by an honest assessment of player welfare independent of economic considerations.
I can't say I think the halftime show is a big deal at all though.
They should also not be used an excuse for teams to be coached as a group.
I can agree that it definitely makes it a different game/playstyle but I'm still not sure if it's guaranteed worse. Putting ads during the break is obviously bad and a cash grab but from a gameplay perspective, it's not clear that a short break during the half is necessarily worse.
How does it violate the laws of the game?
Every single break time decision in football is arbitrary already.
Every rule in sports is arbitrary, that's not an argument. If you want to do it properly, ask about the spirit of the game, not the laws - and there's clearly a conflict there.
I don't mean to be disrespectful but this is a dumb statement. Do you think splitting each half in 2 quarters doesn't have an impact on how the game is played?
The VAR calls 5 minutes after the fact were the most bothersome thing to me
Good thing you don’t watch Premier League. The World Cup VAR was snappy in comparison.
… and the 9+’ stoppage for every match.
> the most inconsequential ones
This is like saying “customers aren’t worried enough about the corporate process - they only care about the end product!”
the mandatory ad breaks were usa-level bullshit that never happened before, not even when they were playing in the fucking desert (and that world cup should have been boycotted too, but for different reasons.)
a few years ago when the momentum was moving towards tennis, some european clubs proposed a "super league" comprising of only the elite teams, the purpose was again to maximize ad profits (and i should go back to check who actually proposed it, who they were affiliated with). That time they were suggested not to proceed, or else they would be boycotted from all other events, the players too. That was also a good decision.
football (not handegg) it already corrupt enough as it is, and too much money is flowing into it, it's incredible and heart warming that there is still some dignity left in the associations.
There was extensive coverage and discussion of Trump getting the Balogun red card overturned.
Thank you! An actual problem!
Why would non-fans even care? It was a 3 minute break, non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters". I think this is the kind of thing purists care about but most people don't, most don't even know it is new.
I'm most certainly not a football fan, but I definitely know that a match consists of two 45 minute (and then some) halves. It's pretty much equivalent to a non motor enthusiast knowing that there are usually four wheels on a car.
I'd say this is very, very common knowledge in huge parts of the world. It's not something only enthusiasts and purists know.
Sure, but they aren't leaving the field. There are plenty of stoppages in game already which take as much time. In that sense it's nothing new. Do non-fans view it as changing to 4 "quarters"? I'm not sure most people would care. This is what I mean it's the kind of thing that football purists care about but it's a very small thing.
The breaks change the game more than you’d think, especially when the coach gets to have a strategy session with the whole team. Completely changed the momentum in several games.
I don't know... I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're from a country where football isn't very popular. I don't think you realize just how many fans there are. How utterly ingrained it is in the culture of many countries. "non-fans" make up a minuscule minority of the population of at least Europe, and as far as I understand it South America and parts of Africa too. Not sure about Asia (varies wildly between countries, I suppose), but according to [0] it's estimated that about 3.5 billion people are considered football fans.
This is certainly something many people I know have cared a lot about - and again, I'm not a football enthusiast myself, but still the vast majority of the people I know are, because, not being one really is an outlier.
[0] https://www.topendsports.com/world/lists/popular-sport/fans....
> There are plenty of stoppages in game already which take as much time.
Well. Not really. And those "stoppages" are part of the game. Actually watching the players quarrel with the referee and whatnot is something football fans want to do. It's not comparable.
“I’m not sure what the big deal about tripling the number of tire changes in the race is.”
> non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters"
… By non-fans do you mean people who have literally never heard of football, or something? I’m very far from a fan, no interest at all. But, I mean, I know there are two halves. Everybody knows that.
There still are 2 halves. Framing it as quarters is the entire thing. There are numerous things throughout a game which will cause the game to be paused just as long, which is why there is stoppage time.
There aren’t usually numerous 5-minutes pauses in a football match, no.
Why would anyone be in favour of more ad breaks?
I'm not arguing for ad breaks, I'm saying non-fans would not even be aware this is something new.
This is the thing that is too much? I just don't get it. The entire thing is a spectacle to sell ads.
Europe is full of people who are not fans, but will still hear all about the games when their country plays, because it's basically impossible to avoid. Chat groups, work banter, waiting rooms, everybody will be talking about it ALL THE TIME. There is a base level of knowledge for the sport everybody shares. Maybe it's the same with American Football in the US? As a European, I still have no idea what that is even remotely about.
A game having two main uninterrupted halves is one of those foundational facts. Players train for being able to play for that long without getting too thirsty to continue.
In almost every part of the world, all people know some basic things about football (and I do mean the one where you kick a ball with the foot), like it has two halves of 45 minutes.
On the other hand, it gives a chance for fans to turn off the TV when the game isn’t great
The original post mentioned people that weren't fans, though. Who are we talking about that are "football people" but not fans. I'm not trying to be dense, I just don't know which audience this is.
Most football non-fans absolutely know that a football match is supposed to be two halves.
It's still two halves there is just another short stoppage time in which players stay on the field, the same as every foul, goal, and variety of other timing based decisions in football.
I wouldn’t know, I haven’t watched a single football match since 2018. As for short stoppage time, football use to have much less than, say, rugby. Was it different this year?
This would only be true if they did not allow the hydration breaks to be used as a group coaching opportunity.
Yes, but isn't football already overly commercialised? Why is advertising for sports betting or alcohol any better than the FIFA issue? UEFA should take a look at itself, too.
You can be against more than one thing.
I secretly hope that Infantino goes ahead with it anyway. UEFA and others will form something new. Something that replaces the incredibly broken and corrupted FIFA with a de-facto and de-jure non-profit governing body.
Somewhere in this fetid swamp of corruption, you just know the trump crime syndicate has its greasy hands on the pie.
*hands on a peace of the pie
I find the UEFA standpoint a little disingenuous since commercial interests have been a top priority in football (soccer) for decades. Claiming that allowing investors to participate will hurt the sport are at the very least a misrepresentation of the current situation.
Although I disagree with his methods and goals I enjoy watching the way Infantino uses power play to stack the cards in his favor.
The only way for the UEFA to reclaim authority would be to demand two-thirds voting rights. The model of "one country, one vote" clearly works to UEFA's disadvantage even though its clubs contribute the majority of FIFA's income.
The same UEFA that added redundant matches and teams to the Champions League for money, and that came up with the Nations League because they wanted to extract more money from the national teams?
Europe, united at long last!
Good calls. Honestly, the last World Cup already had way too many unwatchable matches before the quarterfinals. And the hydration pauses to sell more ads. And that halftime show during the final.
It was incredibly entertaining and I watched as many games as I could.
It's crazy that as despicable an organization as UEFA is, they're still far better than FIFA.
Infantino has been a disgrace, I hope they manage to get rid of him, but I have very little hope.
I don't follow any sport, but I actually don't understand why UEFA and FIFA are non-profits when all the American leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL) are for-profit corporations. It seems to work well in America.
MLB & NFL only changed to for-profit organisations somewhat recently (2007, 2015). afaict NBA has always been for-profit.
Internationally the standard is non-profits. Most sports have both their international organisations and highest standard of play organisations as non-profits - football, tennis, golf, cricket. The international components of baseball, american football, and basketball are all non-profits (though they are lower standards of play than the US internal leagues).
American sports leagues are also non-profit organizations. Profits go to the individual teams. So no, FIFA should not be run by private equity firms.
> It seems to work well in America.
Does it? Who does it work out well for? Franchises continuously extort tax-payer funds for stadia,some team switches host cities every few years, and the for-profit corporations are legal cartels that decides who gets to own a team. The number of ad-breaks is horrendous to anyone who's watched sports elsewhere.
Because they were designed to be decentralised federations, atop the footballing body in each country. More generally, the US is the most capitalist country, whereas the rest of the world does automatically see capitalism as justified, superior or inevitable.
Lastly, football is a grassroots participation sport that is seen by its fans as more of a religion than a conventional act of entertainment. Of course, religion in the US is also often for-profit, but hopefully you get the point.
Are they? Their revenues are limited and they can’t really extend their influence outside USA. Meanwhile European games are watched globally
Europe is where all the money is made in football. UEFA just want more of the pie.
FIFA is a repulsive pit of corruption but UEFA isn't much better.
Remember Blatter and Platini?
Blatter was president of FIFA, not UEFA.
Yes, and when he was investigated for corruption both he and Platini, president of UEFA, were banned.
This was barely 10 years ago, it's not ancient history.
Football/soccer is one place where Europe can easily flex their muscles against American capitalism and corruption. Good on them for saying it loud and clear.
This is a joke, right? I can’t think of any league as blatantly corrupt as FIFA on any level.
What are you on about? FIFA is not a league and certainly not in charge of european football
CONCACAF too
ELI5? What are the factors and implications?
FIFA made ludicrous amounts of money as a non profit running the last World Cup and want to transition to a for profit corporation to make even more.
UEFA representing the European nations with the most competitive teams and many of the biggest stars, just told them good luck running a World Cup without us.
There is no World Cup without UEFA.
UEFA is Europe basically. So like the nexus of modern football
7/10 of the currently top ranked national teams are UEFA members.
UEFA's reach affects the remaining 3/10 and beyond. Nearly the same fraction of world cup players (68%) earn their livelihoods playing for European league teams- including many players representing non-European countries at the World Cup.
Okay, got to admit I did _not_ have “Trump breaks the World Cup” on my bingo card.
E is for everything TTD
Good to see some "balls" can still be found
The FA's worldwide don't need FIFA, they can set up a new world tournament. You will get a lot of poor nations who stick with FIFA for the cash but at the end of the day without European teams the world cup and FIFA will have minimal value. 5 of the last 6 world cup winners were european and it will only get more biased towards Europe. Argentina post Messi have no chance, and Brazil are the furthest away from winning than they ever have been.
There will be no cash for the poor nations without the European teams competing.
FAs coming together and creating a new FIFA will just mean you get another organization that is exactly as corruption-ridden as FIFA. There's no point starting fresh if you don't fix the underlying problem.
> Argentina post Messi have no chance
Hold my beer
Spain have a far more youthful side, who can easily win again. France will come back, as will England. Argentina have few players coming through and many stars will have retired by the next tournament, even youthful Alvarez will be 30 next time out.
It seems like Europe, yet again, have to stand up for ethics, morality and try to deflect corruption. It's so tiresome.
This is UEFA we are talking about.
Remember that when (FIFA president) Blatter was investigated for corruption, (UEFA president) Platini was also banned.
It’s standing up for football. Far more important.
Well, FIFA is also an European organization. Swiss, to be exact.
It’s located in Switzerland, but it’s a global organization and has really close ties with the US president
You don't understand, good things come from the EU, bad things come from those filthy non-EU Europeans.
Sorry to be a pedant, while switzerland is in the european landmass, it is not a member of the EU.
Sorry to be a pedant too but no one said EU.
Maybe. But we take football quite seriously.
Isn't Infantino European?
Swiss.
..
You seem to believe things that bring people joy are a waste of human potential. Please explain. Are we only meant to be machines that produce 16/7?
I wish sports would be sports, business be business, and politics politics. Whenever they mix, it is for the worse.
Good. Good riddance.
According to aljazeera's article, "the core investor would be a New York venture capital investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner."
Welcome. Not a dupe if some time has passed between submissions without much discussion or upvotes. And this is the source.
Dupe of a dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108292
Welcome. Not a dupe if some time has passed between submissions without much discussion or upvotes. And this is the source.
FIFA is just upholding western values. Profit, exploitation and money over everything else. They with FIA and likes are just showing the world what truly matters for western world.
Put it this way - Europeans don't generally call themselves from "the West" in 2026 - it's an American geopolitical fantasy.
To be fair, China and Russia participate in the fantasy.
American values, not western.
US values, from the culture of the last 40 years.
We're really going to act like the entire world doesn't have issues with this.
Given this is a worldwide institution dealing with this, I think you are both casting the new too small.
Famously before either the US or Western world, these values were never celebrated.
Or maybe not, since it's Europe who are objecting here?
Yet it’s the very west uefa protesting.. right
Cue UEFA's leadership being replaced in the next year or two. FIFA has had a taste of the amount of money involved in professional sports. There's no going back.
FIFA has been spectacularly corrupt since at least thd 1970s, and UEFA is not far behind.
When Blatter was kicked out of FIFA for corruption, the USA provided a legal venue for the investigation. Between Infantino and Trump you would think that is off the table.
Expect some kind of back door deal.
50 of the 55 member UEFA states took the floor to express their outrage at FIFA, this is not a matter of UEFA leadership being out of touch. The vast majority of the confederation is ready to walk.
The experience interacting with FIFA is so terrible already. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if it turned into a profit machine.
Agreed, the tickets to the tournament this year were just outrageously priced. Football is historically a working class sport, but $1,000 to watch a team like DR Congo in the group stage is next level criminality. And it's only going to get worse from here.
FIFA looked at this World Cup as an experiment. They wanted to see whether turning the monetization knob all the way to 11 would encounter significant resistance or whether fans would still watch/attend. The US, with its plethora of expensive stadiums and lax regulatory environment for price gouging compared to Europe, was the perfect testing environment. They upped the number of teams to 48 to get more games, used dynamic ticket pricing, added hydration breaks for more commercials in markets that would allow it and added a few other income streams. All this more than doubled their profits because, and this is the important part going forward, fans didn’t push back. They complained, but the still came/watched.
So this will now be the new norm. Host countries will be ones where laws don’t prohibit gouging fans. They’ll come up with creative solutions to meet the rotation requirement like the upcoming host a couple games in South America farce that’s allowing them to go to Saudi Arabia after that. They’ll continue to push the boundaries of decency until they get sufficient pushback.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but I said before any of this mess, and just dealing with the ticket purchasing experience, that this would be the last World Cup I attend.
It’s sad though. The World Cup, while imperfect, remains an event that brings the world together. We don’t have many of those left.
For Infantino, they reckon his salary can go from 6M to 60M under this new org…
They also got so greedy that even EA couldn't deal with them anymore and they ended up destroying the Fifa videogame franchise
Imagine being more money hungry than EA - a company which makes billions from gaslighting children into gambling money on getting their favourite players.
They just made $15bn.
Which is clearly not enough.
The point is not how much it made, it is how to transfer that wealth (whether 6B or 60B) out of a non-profit into someone else's account without looking like, or literally being, a criminal.
A nonprofit can be questioned about how it pays people.
A private company answers only to shareholders.
FIFA is also a terrible employer
Got friends working for them as developers. They ran away. In months
Are you talking about EA or FIFA?
> and many others
Trump and Kushners
"Joshua Kushner is now the kingpin in driving the sale of the World Cup to investors and family ties are tight around the project"[1]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/30/fifas-sale-...
What's new? I thought it has been known as a big-money thing for some time now.
The new thing is trying to take the organization from a non-profit to a corporation. Mainly so the executives can increase their already large compensation apparently.
Interesting parallels to OpenAI.
FIFA made $~15 billion USD this World Cup, roughly double what they made in Qatar in 2022. There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
I didn't realize the commercial-block-sized "hydration breaks" were that profitable.
For a second, I thought the Americanization[1] of fùtbol would be done gradually and no one would complain as we'd be slowly boiled. I'm glad the corrupt bastards got greedy/impatient and took a big swing.
1. Sports as business first, catering to owners first, sponsors second, broadcasters, and then lastly fans. IMO non-profit sports organizations are the best model for fans, who I identify the most with.
The difference that FIFA ran the whole tournament now. There was no Local Organizing Committee (LOC) like with every single previous event.
> There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.
The $15 billion figure is for FIFA's ENTIRE 2023-2026 revenue cycle, so not just this World Cup. But the obvious "low-hanging fruit" was making the tournamenta lot larger (104 matches instead of Qatar's 64), so a lot more tickets, hospitality sales, ads etc
Also two 3 minute hydration breaks per match, giving broadcasters additional advertising windows.
That's your "optimization".