Infantino's behaviour indicates urgent need for structural reform at FIFA

Gianni Infantino’s tenure as FIFA President has never lacked for controversy, from the Qatar World Cup to his relationship with Donald Trump and, now most recently, an unprecedented and secret plan to sell World Cup commercial rights to private investors.

His latest move has proven a step too far, triggering the most serious revolt against his leadership from the worlds of football and politics alike. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has threatened legal action over Infantino’s commercial ploy, and even UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the Swiss football administrator is not the man to take FIFA forward into the future.

In the face of unyielding opposition — including from all 55 UEFA members, the Asian Football Confederation and the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football — Infantino has since withdrawn his plans. If left unchecked, FIFA would have created a new commercial entity, the FIFA Forward Enterprise or FFE, which would have allowed the organisation — which already enjoys a monopoly over the global game — to coordinate the sale of its commercial rights to private investors.

“It is the project of one person,” said Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer and long-time colleague of Infantino. “Not only must this project not go ahead...but the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions.”

“What I have seen exposed in the last 10 days is the lowest, most deceitful and cravenly self-interested behaviour I have ever witnessed,” said world-renowned football legend Luis Figo in an op-ed this week. “The man who would try to force through such major changes just to enrich himself and his friends — is a relic of the game’s past and should have no part in its future.”

Infantino now faces seemingly unending pressure to resign and has quickly become public enemy number one for football fans around the globe. However, as justified as his critics are, the underlying structural reality of FIFA means that the sport’s dire governance problems will not end with his departure.

Ahead of this year’s World Cup competition, we published The Beautiful Game’s Ugly Price Tag, setting out the systemic problems facing world football. FIFA holds monopoly power over the game via ticket sales, broadcasting rights, sponsorship and licensing. This system gives high returns to investors while extracting value from the game at the expense of its fans, communities and the players who make it what it is.

As we discussed in our report, this summer’s World Cup laid bare the ways in which pricing has spiralled out of control, with the cheapest seat at the final starting at $4,185. Attending the entire tournament would cost around two months’ take-home pay on a median UK salary.

But the harms caused by FIFA’s power and control over the global game do not stop at the World Cup. Our report also showed how single investors or corporate identities hold controlling stakes in several clubs at once, for example: City Football Group controls Manchester City FC, New York City FC, Girona FC in Spain and Melbourne City FC in Australia.

In Germany, the Bundesliga enforces a “50+1” rule where fans retain at least 50% of a top-flight club’s voting rights, meaning that no outside investor can own a majority stake — although this system is rare across world football.

These networks operate systems in which smaller clubs are resigned to functioning as talent development hubs to “feed” the largest club in the ownership portfolio. It grants the largest club the ability to monopolise emerging talent, hoard players, and dominate transfer markets during off-seasons. Promising young players are also frequently “parked” at feeder clubs and released at the highest point of commercial value.

In a recent edition of the Counterbalance accompanying our report, we spoke with Rasmus Andresen, German MEP for the Greens and one of the leading voices in Europe pushing for structural reform of football governance.

“I find it strange if we talk on one hand about certain sectors and agree on the need to deal with anti-competitive behaviour, but on the other hand when it comes to football, this awareness seems to be missing,” Andresen told the Balanced Economy Project.

Amidst the long string of scandals that have caught up with Infantino are encouraging signs that attention is beginning to match the need for structural reform.

As we argued in our report, the problem is no single bad actor but a governance failure at scale, something which the European Court of Justice recognised in December 2023 when it ruled both FIFA and UEFA held a dominant position in the sport and their rules constituted an abuse of market power. The legal and political case for intervention exists. The question is whether regulators will enforce it.

Next March, a presidential election will be held in Morocco to determine who will lead FIFA, and world football, into the future as well as oversee the organisation’s centenary World Cup in 2030. Whoever succeeds Infantino — who is still clinging on to power at the time of publication — will inherit the same system and structure that made the president’s behaviour possible in the first place.

Infantino is not FIFA’s first problematic president, and he will not be the last unless and until the global system of football undergoes massive change.

The Counterbalance is published every Thursday. Please send any thoughts and feedback to scott@balancedeconomy.org.