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Europe’s soccer league, which encompasses nearly every country in the continent, has vowed a boycott of the World Cup and other FIFA events if the organization moves forward with its plan to sell a large minor stake of the global competition to the Kushner family.
On Tuesday, FIFA announced a plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors, and told members that the plan needed to be approved by September 19. Under the plan, the private investment group would be led by Thrive Eternal, a firm founded and run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner. The initial valuation of the enterprise, which would still be controlled by FIFA at the beginning, is $20 billion, FIFA said.
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), which includes 55 countries, announced on Thursday that it has voted to boycott FIFA-run competitions until “this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership.” This boycott would come to consequence soon, with the women’s World Cup next year.
The group also said that the plan is anti-democratic, formed in secret and presenting an “ultimatum” to coerce football teams to agree to sell off the World Cup.
“The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product. It is one of football’s greatest sporting legacies. It has been built over generations by players, national teams and supporters across every continent,” the strongly-worded UEFA statement said. “No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale.”
“Europe’s position is clear. We will never lend this model our legitimacy,” the statement goes on. Earlier this week, UEFA also accused FIFA of using “our sport to enrich themselves and their friends.”
UEFA comprises a major portion of FIFA’s 211 member countries and territories — not only by sheer numbers, but also by the weight carried by the performance of its teams. UEFA teams, for instance, made up roughly half of the round of 16 in this year’s men’s tournament, and it was a UEFA team, Spain, that ultimately won the top prize.
In other words, the withdrawal of UEFA’s countries would deal a blow of existential proportions to the World Cup.
Other leagues within Europe have also voiced their opposition to the proposal, including the European Leagues and England’s Premier League.
The 41 members of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, or Concacaf, also rejected the proposal in a statement on Thursday, though in a less forceful statement. The group said that members expressed “deep concerns” regarding the process of the plan, while some questioned the “need for private equity investment.”
But the group did not say it definitively stood against the privatization proposal, and simply “reinforced the need for greater transparency and proper governance.”
The potential UEFA boycott comes amid a swirl of corruption scandals surrounding FIFA and its president, Gianni Infantino — especially with regard to his moves to personally enrich Trump. The Kushner family involvement has added another layer to the criticism, with congressional Democrats already having cried foul earlier this week.
“FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), who announced an investigation into the FIFA-Trump dealings on Monday, to Politico. “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
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