July 31 (Reuters) \u2013 FIFA said on Friday it would move forward with its consultation process to bring private investment into the World Cup \u200band its other tournaments in defiance of \u200ca fierce UEFA-led backlash against the proposal.<\/p>\n
The world soccer governing body on Tuesday announced it planned\u00a0to create a $20 billion subsidiary to run the World Cup and its other events, offering \u200cexternal \u200binvestors stakes of up to \u206020%.<\/p>\n
Under the plan, FIFA \u2060would establish FIFA Forward Enterprise to oversee commercial and event operations.<\/p>\n
The proposal drew strong criticism from regional confederations, which said they had been blind-sided by \u200bthe plan to bring private investors into the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur planned consultation process was disrupted by incorrect \u2060media reports. We will proceed \u2060with this consultation process to ensure that \u200beach\u00a0MA (Member Association) has the ability to express its vote \u200bbased on facts,\u201d FIFA said in a statement.<\/p>\n
European \u200csoccer\u2019s governing body UEFA, which accused FIFA of putting the sport\u2019s \u201csoul\u201d up for sale, on Thursday voted to boycott all FIFA tournaments, along with its 55 \u2060member nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody is selling football. This is not something FIFA would ever entertain,\u201d FIFA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has the right to \u2060express their opposition \u200cand to seek further clarification but \u2060no single entity can claim to \u200brepresent \u200call 211 MAs around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach MA \u200bshould be \u2060allowed to review the proposal and have a say in shaping their own future. These are the democratic principles of FIFA.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne and Aadi Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman \u200band Kate Mayberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 31 (Reuters) \u2013 FIFA said on Friday it would move forward with its consultation process to bring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-837561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}