Fifa's New Plan for Tournaments and Revenue
Fifa’s bold new money-making plan is laid out in black and white. More tournaments. Higher ticket prices. Debt.
Those are the levers the organisation is promising to pull as it tries to convince its 211 member associations to back the partial sale of its World Cup commercial rights to outside investors – fronted by Joshua Kushner, the US financier and brother of Jared Kushner.
A new company, a familiar bank
In a 25-page sales deck titled “Fifa Forward Enterprise Member Materials”, seen by the Guardian, Fifa promotes the creation of a new company to run its commercial operations. Twenty per cent of that vehicle would be sold to Kushner’s group.
The document has been put together by JP Morgan, the same US bank that stood behind the doomed European Super League project five years ago. The pitch is slick, the ambition vast, and the message blunt: football’s global governing body is, in JP Morgan’s words, “undermonetized”.
To change that, the bank sets out a growth model built on three pillars: “a growing tournament portfolio”, “third party sources of capital and debt financing”, and a focus on “high yield” partnerships and events.
More tournaments, more strain
The scale of expansion being floated is striking. The deck refers to more than doubling the number of global tournaments each year, from 200 to 450. If realised, that would pile fresh pressure on a calendar already creaking under player workload.
The most obvious cash cow is the World Cup itself. Fifa president Gianni Infantino has previously pushed the idea of a biennial World Cup, a proposal that sparked fierce resistance across the game. While the document does not spell out that specific plan, the logic is clear: more showpiece events, more money.
The appetite to squeeze more from broadcasters is equally clear. JP Morgan talks of a strategy to “expand and optimize media rights monetization”, language that points towards shifting more major events, including the World Cup, behind subscription paywalls or onto streaming platforms.
Cash-rich, but courting debt
The sales deck arrived in the inboxes of all 211 member associations on Wednesday night. The reaction was immediate – and sceptical.
One senior figure questioned why Fifa, which currently holds cash reserves of around $4bn and has generated $15bn in revenue over the current four-year cycle, would need to borrow at all. Another took aim at the comparisons JP Morgan uses to argue that Fifa is lagging behind its peers.
The document sets Fifa’s stated annual revenue of $3.6bn against numbers from the NFL ($21.2bn), Major League Baseball ($13.1bn) and the NBA ($12.5bn). Yet those are club- and franchise-driven leagues, not global governing bodies. The comparison jars for some within the game.
The bank, though, leans heavily on that gap to argue that Fifa’s commercial operation can be dramatically scaled up – with the help of external capital and a more aggressive commercial stance.
The $20m sweetener – and a tight timeline
Fifa has already dangled a sizeable carrot in front of its members. As previously reported, each association has been offered a $20m sign-up payment if the deal goes through, money that could arrive as early as January.
The deck goes further, projecting that Fifa Forward payments – the central development funds distributed to each member – would rise to $24m per association in the 2035‑39 cycle.
For smaller and mid-sized federations, that is a powerful incentive. Yet the speed at which JP Morgan wants to move is raising eyebrows.
According to the document, “Investors will be given access to a term sheet and select materials” in August – before Fifa’s members have voted on whether the deal should go ahead. For some, that timeline feels uncomfortably rushed, with key details still opaque.
Questions with no answers
The opacity runs deeper than scheduling. Beyond the headline that Kushner’s group would take a 20% stake, the investor consortium barely features in the 25 pages.
There is no explanation of the investors’ expected returns. No detail on exit terms. No discussion of how much influence they would wield over scheduling, competition formats or media strategy. For a proposal that would reshape the way the World Cup and other Fifa properties are sold, the silence is conspicuous.
Then there is the most glaring omission of all. Across the entire document, women’s football is not mentioned once.
At a time when the women’s game is expanding rapidly, with its own World Cup and a growing commercial footprint, its total absence from Fifa’s flagship growth prospectus will alarm many inside and outside the sport.
Fifa has been approached for comment. The numbers are on the table. The questions, for now, far outnumber the answers.
