UEFA, Europe’s governing body for soccer, declared on Thursday that its member nations would refuse to participate in the men’s and women’s World Cups if FIFA proceeds with a plan to sell ownership stakes in the tournaments to private investors. The announcement represents an extraordinary position for European soccer federations and could significantly jeopardize FIFA’s newly proposed structure for handling commercial rights to its competitions.
The FIFA proposal, unveiled earlier in the week, would establish a separate company to manage all commercial operations for the organization’s tournaments, including the World Cup. The plan involves selling minority stakes to external investors, including a firm connected to Joshua Kushner. This aspect of the proposal generated considerable opposition among European soccer bodies.
The conflict emerges in advance of the 2030 FIFA World Cup, scheduled to be held primarily in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. The tournament will also include commemorative matches in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay to mark the centenary of the first World Cup, which took place in Uruguay in 1930. UEFA, representing 55 member associations across Europe, warned that permitting external investors to acquire ownership interests would fundamentally alter the sport. The confederation argued that such arrangements would make commercial profitability a permanent obligation and would ultimately cause investment returns rather than the interests of the game to drive future decisions regarding competition formats, the international calendar, and football’s development.
Concacaf, the governing body for North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, similarly raised objections to the proposal but did not call for a boycott. The confederation cited concerns about insufficient procedural oversight, an abbreviated timeline for decision-making, and the absence of review and approval from relevant FIFA governance structures. FIFA has defended its proposal by emphasizing that it would maintain complete decision-making authority over all tournaments and that the arrangement involves selling only a portion of the commercial enterprise.
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