31 July 26
The Sport of Kings
This past Tuesday FIFA president Gianni Infantino shocked the world by proposing to sell off partial rights to the World Cup to private investors, creating a $20 billion company to run the tournament. It was only slightly more shocking that the probable head of the investment group would be a member of Trump’s extended family, Jared Kushner’s brother.
Back in January I blogged about the concept of neo-royalism, which was receiving a lot of discussion at that time. This concept comes from a couple of international relations scholars, Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman. To summarize the concept, it is generally understood that the liberal international order is in decline. To replace it, many think that the system is falling back to what came beforehand, a “Westphalian great power system”, with each state looking out for its own interests. Goddard and Newman propose instead we are transitioning to an older analogue that they term “neo-royalism”, a system that “centers on ruling cliques, networks of political, capital, and military elites devoted to individual sovereigns, seeking to generate durable material and status hierarchies based on the extraction of financial and cultural tributes.”.
Infantino’s actions fit the neo-royalist model to a T. Infantino is trying to enter into the world of ruling cliques and be on top of his own network of tributes. He is attempting to buy agreement on the private investment plan by promising each of the 211 national football associations a one-time payment of $40 million if they vote for it. He has been ingratiating himself with Trump for a while —- this is surely the reason for presenting Trump with the “FIFA Peace Prize”. He frequently interacts with the Middle Eastern oil monarchs —- hence the 2022 Qatar World Cup and the upcoming World Cup in Saudi Arabia in 2034 —- and yesterday he met with King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Infantino is also trying to set himself up to be a power broker after his term as FIFA president ends —- he would be deeply involved with this investment group.
It is now clear that Infantino has been acting on his own accord, and the private investment proposal did not come from some upper-level FIFA cabal. Miguel Delaney writing for The Independent on Thursday reported that there are claims that Infantino’s inner circle did not even know about it, with one advisor describing this as Infantino “going rogue”. Today it was reported that FIFA’s chief operating officer said that staff were “deceived” over the project and that it has been the action of one person.
Fortunately, it looks like Infantino has overreached. The European confederation UEFA quickly opposed the proposal and in an emergency meeting on Thursday they decided that UEFA members would boycott any and all FIFA competitions until the proposal is off the table. CONCACAF (the North and Central American confederation) and AFC (the Asian confederation) have also rejected the proposal. With nations from those three confederations rejecting it, the proposal will not have the votes to pass.
Would such a network centered around Infantino and the investors be big enough to be seen as a neo-royalist power? FIFA does not generate tech giant-sized revenue but there is a lot of money flowing through it — one article says it received revenue of $13 billion over the 2023-2026 World Cup cycle. And football is the most popular sport on the planet, with the World Cup being the biggest single sporting event. This cultural capital is a tempting resource for the ruling elite.
—-
Update, 6:15 PM PDT 31 July 2026. Infantino has scrapped the proposal. The growing backlash may yet be large enough to sink his presidency.
Previous: In Praise of Public Transport Next: