European football’s governing body Uefa has reacted furiously to proposals from Fifa to seek private investment in its competitions, including the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Fifa – the sport’s global governing body – said it intends to expand “football development funding” to more than $10bn (\u00a37.5bn) and invite third-party investment in a new venture.<\/p>\n
The story was first reported in the Financial Times and the Times, with the latter claiming the plans could potentially earn Fifa president Gianni Infantino tens of millions of pounds.<\/p>\n
In a lengthy statement outlining the proposals, Fifa says it will ” invite third parties to make minority, non-controlling investments” in a new subsidiary – Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) – to “consolidate” its commercial and event operations.<\/p>\n
Infantino said every nation should benefit from the riches football creates.<\/p>\n
“Parts of the game have turned that popularity into remarkable commercial value – and we celebrate that success and want it to continue, because it lifts the whole game,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Our job is to make sure the rest of football grows with it: Fifa exists to support sustainable, inclusive development in every corner of the world.”<\/p>\n
However, Uefa issued a statement criticising the proposals, which it claimed “crosses a line”.<\/p>\n
Uefa sees the announcement as a step too far – and raises the potential for further expansion of Fifa competitions in order to raise revenue, both in terms of size and frequency, which could threaten its own lucrative competitions.<\/p>\n
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” Uefa said.<\/p>\n
“Uefa takes it extremely seriously. So should every National Football Association. So should every stakeholder who cares about the future of the game.<\/p>\n
“The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade – especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not Fifa’s to sell.”<\/p>\n
Fifa says it would retain control of FFE “and exclusive authority over football governance, competitions, the international match calendar and all regulatory and sporting decisions”.<\/p>\n
The matter is likely to be a topic of conversation at the next Fifa Council meeting in the autumn and then around the Fifa Intercontinental Cup, featuring Champions League winners Paris St-Germain, in December.<\/p>\n
The proposal could be voted on by all 211 members at the Fifa Congress in Morocco in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European football’s governing body Uefa has reacted furiously to proposals from Fifa to seek private investment in its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-572352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}