Selling the World Cup: a bad idea, explained

What's being reported

ESPN FC published an opinion piece on 2 August 2025 taking direct aim at Infantino over reported plans to sell off or restructure commercial rights around the World Cup. The column argues the proposals fail on two fronts simultaneously: they don't make sound business sense, and they're politically tone-deaf for an institution that already has a complicated relationship with public trust.

One thing to flag upfront: ESPN FC's piece is a column — sharp, argued, worth reading — but it's a single-source opinion piece rather than a corroborated news report. The precise details of what Infantino has actually proposed have not been independently verified from this excerpt alone. This may well be commentary anchored to a plan that was previously reported elsewhere, rather than a fresh revelation. We're treating it as such.

Why the underlying question matters

The World Cup is the most valuable single sporting property on the planet. Any serious proposal to restructure how its rights are packaged, sold, or controlled would be a governance story of the first order — touching everything from broadcast deals and host nation agreements to FIFA's relationship with its 211 member associations. The moment you start treating the World Cup as an asset to be carved up and sold rather than a tournament to be administered, you've changed the nature of the organisation running it.

Infantino has form here. The expanded 48-team World Cup, the Club World Cup reboot, the ongoing push into new markets — the FIFA president's tenure has been defined by scale and commercial ambition in roughly equal measure. Critics would say the two have become indistinguishable.

The column's core argument

ESPN FC's piece doesn't just call the reported plan a bad idea — the sharper thrust is that the logic doesn't hold even on its own commercial terms. Calling something wrong in principle is one critique; demonstrating it wouldn't even work as a business proposition is a different, harder one. If that argument lands, it strips away the usual defence: that FIFA's commercial instincts, whatever else you think of them, at least generate revenue for the game.

Infantino, for his part, has not publicly responded to the column.

What to watch

This story needs a harder news peg — fast. If the underlying plan is a documented FIFA proposal, something circulated internally or confirmed by a second outlet, the governance implications are enormous. ESPN FC has opened exactly the right debate. But right now it's a well-aimed shot across the bow, and whether it hits anything depends entirely on what Infantino actually put on the table.

FIFA has spent years telling the world it reformed. The World Cup was supposed to be the one asset nobody touched.