The letter that is shaking the football world is dated 28 July 2026. As a subscriber you can read it in full. Letterhead of the FIFA president. Five pages, signed by Gianni Infantino. It went out on Tuesday to the presidents of the 211 national federations of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The core message: a subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, FFE for short, is to bundle the commercial rights and the staging of FIFA's tournaments. Twenty per cent of the shares are to go to private investors.
Infantino sells this to the member federations as a gain:
"Furthermore, for the first time ever, FIFA will now retain a majority ownership (min. c. 80%) in a dedicated commercial and event entity."
And further:
"With this in mind, the financial commitment of an anchor investor in FIFA Forward Enterprise has been secured, Thrive Capital, who have agreed to underwrite this proposal."
What Infantino did not tell the associations directly: Thrive Capital Management, LLC, is the firm of Joshua Kushner, younger brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. Jared Kushner in turn is said to have sold his stake in Thrive Capital after Trump's first election victory. Figures close to the Trump administration are said to have been consulted about the plan, British media report.
Subscribers can read Gianni Infantino’s full letter below.
Everything Infantino promises the national federations hangs on this one commitment. Increased Forward payments, the one-off 20 million from the new Fast-Forward programme, the costs of FIFA's other development programmes and, as the fourth item, the costs of FIFA's own non-commercial activities: "e.g. legal and regulatory, development, governance, etc." The company in which a Kushner would hold a stake is thus meant to help pay for the apparatus that is supposed to supervise it.
If a majority of the national federations agrees, a pool of international investors will be brought in alongside the anchor investor, the FIFA president announces. The wording gives away the sequence: nobody votes on Kushner's participation, it is already settled.
Only the further investors are up for a vote. And according to the letter their selection is no longer an open question either: "Clear rules regarding these investors are already set and agreed," Infantino writes, including caps on the ownership amounts of individual investors and on amounts held by individual geographic regions.
About his own possible role as a future FFE commissioner on an annual salary of 64 million dollars, reported by Martyn Ziegler in The Times, Infantino writes nothing.
When the matter became public at breakneck speed, FIFA issued a release in which important details of the letter are left out and other content is presented differently.
In this PR dispatch it is Thrive Eternal that appears, for instance, not Thrive Capital as in the letter. The name Kushner again does not come up. The secured commitment turns into an expectation. FIFA now declares:
"Subject to these final agreements and required approvals, Thrive Eternal, a permanent capital holding company, is expected to lead the proposed investor group for FFE. Greg Maffei, CEO of BANN Ventures and formerly President and CEO of Liberty Media during its acquisition and ownership of Formula One, has been a key commercial adviser and will remain involved in the establishment of FFE in this next phase."
Of the guarantees that hang on this commitment in the letter, the PR release says nothing. Nor does it mention that the rules for the investors have already been agreed; there, the talk is of a consultation process that has only just begun.
What FIFA also fails to say: Infantino has already set the national federations a deadline. By 19 September the 211 FIFA members have to decide.
He offers enormous sums, the usual method. Infantino is even dangling a kind of signing fee. He calls it FIFA Fast-Forward, an additional new programme, 20 million dollars:
"as a singular and unique funding opportunity only for those Member Associations who wish to participate, with their decision to be made by 19 September 2026 so we can plan ahead and with funds to be available immediately as of 1 January 2027. It will be financed by FIFA liquidating a minority portion of its share in FIFA Forward Enterprise to carefully selected long-term external investors without ceding control of any kind."
Here too the media release says something different. There the money is not raised through a sale of FIFA shares but through a capital increase at the subsidiary:
"The additional funding would be financed through FFE's planned initial capital raise of up to USD 4.2 billion." Two different transactions with two different recipients of the money. In a sale of its own shares the 4.2 billion flow to FIFA; in a capital increase they flow into FFE. Only the media release names the sum at all; the letter to the federations gives no figure.
It is the old FIFA principle, updated for 2026: Infantino's predecessor Joseph Blatter obtained the presidency in 1998 by deception, among other things with the promise of a quarter of a million dollars a year for every national federation and of an additional so-called development fund. Much of that money, as has been proven in court, ended up in dark channels. It is no different under Infantino. Since 2016 he has perfected the Blatter system and added a few zeros to the transfers and payments in kind.
Contradiction upon contradiction. For the period 2027 to 2030 FIFA currently has eight million dollars per member federation budgeted. That is what the media release says. In his letter Infantino gives a different figure for the same period: if the members decline, it stays with Forward Programme 4.0, communicated to them in April 2026, "c. 10m per MA for the next cycle".
Since Tuesday the promise reads:
"In total for the upcoming cycle starting as of 1 January 2027, each Member Association will have the possibility to access up to USD 40m per Member Association under this proposal. Over a 12-year, 3-cycle period, this would represent cash payments of c. USD 86m compared to the USD 3m received over the same time period before my election."
The letter itemises the 86 million in brackets: 40 million for the cycle from 2027, then 22 million for 2031 to 2034 and 24 million for 2035 to 2038.
The plan is to be implemented if, by 19 September, more than 50 per cent of the member associations agree and the FIFA Council adopts the necessary adjustments.
The conflict is thus pre-programmed. On the one hand, by Wednesday midday UEFA (Europe), CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Caribbean) and the AFC (Asia) — the first three of six continental confederations, none of which is itself a FIFA member — had positioned themselves against it in statements that were in part indignant. On the other hand it is the national federations that decide, and one may assume that member associations of UEFA, CONCACAF and the AFC will once again give Infantino their support.
Eighty-six million dollars is an argument.
The FIFA members still come predominantly from footballing backwaters, though 86 million is an argument for federations with significant other income as well.
And yet FIFA would need no so-called investors and no dubious company like FFE in order to increase the payments to its members significantly. The economic key figures of the World Cup cycles show it:
- 2015-2018: revenue of 6.4 billion US dollars reported,
- 2019-2022: 7.6 billion,
- for 2023-2026 FIFA recently raised its forecast by two billion, to 13 billion dollars.
- At the end of 2025 FIFA reported reserves of 2.7 billion dollars, after 2.9 billion a year earlier.
Under the Forward 3.0 programme, 2.25 billion is currently distributed over the four-year period. Without any significant change in its shareholder structure, FIFA could already pay out more to its national and continental stakeholders. So why this secret plan?
"The decision on whether or not to proceed with this proposal belongs entirely to you," Infantino writes to the 211 members, of which around 200 are said to have already backed his re-election next year.
"Should you wish to proceed, this USD 10bn package will become available as of 1 January 2027, ushering in the next phase of our journey together. In exchange, all that is required is your continued trust – everything else remains the same."
Infantino needs only 106 national associations behind him. And to all those who are sceptical he throws these figures, which do not stand up to closer examination:
10 billion (if they agree) or 2.7 billion (if they refuse).
"We will continue to do great things together," Infantino claims. According to his letter, JP Morgan Chase produced the FFE valuation of 20 billion dollars in total and is running the process of bringing in the further investors — for the FIFA Administration and subject to its ultimate approval. The same bank is also to advise the associations: the Member Associations Division will be in contact in the coming days to explain the proposal, "together with J.P. Morgan". On this the media release says merely that the bank has been engaged to work alongside FIFA.
FIFA's propaganda release omits a number of further details. Infantino's letter, however, sketches out the construction: the intellectual property and the commercial assets remain with FIFA and would be licensed to FFE, in exchange for the guaranteed payments. If the payments fail to materialise, the licence automatically reverts to FIFA and the status quo is reinstated. What happens in that case to the investors' money and to the Fast-Forward millions already paid out is stated in neither of the two documents.
Infantino claims that no change to the FIFA Statutes is required and that all existing competitions are guaranteed to remain unchanged. And then comes the fine print: "unless FIFA should decide otherwise in the future".
