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While the football business is horrible it's nice that this may fail like the Super League.

Now if only that could put a dent in Infantino reelection...

Agreed, the tickets to the tournament this year were just outrageously priced. Football is historically a working class sport, but $1,000 to watch a team like DR Congo in the group stage is next level criminality. And it's only going to get worse from here.

Imagine being more money hungry than EA - a company which makes billions from gaslighting children into gambling money on getting their favourite players.

Which is clearly not enough.

Are you talking about EA or FIFA?

The new thing is trying to take the organization from a non-profit to a corporation. Mainly so the executives can increase their already large compensation apparently.

Interesting parallels to OpenAI.

FIFA made $~15 billion USD this World Cup, roughly double what they made in Qatar in 2022. There are many low-hanging fruit that can be optimized to increase that revenue by 10x.

Investors calling to change red cards because the best players should play, etc

We've seen the start with "hydration breaks" and a 30 minute half-time.

Yes.

The game was already hurt this world cup with the flow destroying „hydration breaks“ to sell more ads.

There are 200+ participating countries. Many of those are on his side, because they’re tiny and easy to bribe: a few million is significant for them and often that money can be siphoned into corrupt pockets.

That said, a World Cup without any of the 55 UEFA countries wouldn’t make sense commercially.

The heads of Football Associations of tiny countries who took enormous bungs to vote for him and then spent the money on some facilities but mostly themselves

Trump and his family.

His son in law is running the investment firm https://apnews.com/article/world-cup-fifa-investors-kushner-...

In turn Trump wants to nominate Infantino for Secretary General of UN https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/22/trumps-pick-for-the-next...

Kushner

> Sepp Blatter weighed in, writing on X: "The close relationship between the Fifa president and the US President [Donald Trump] has reached a financial dimension that is deeply damaging football. No-one has the right to sell our game."

Sepp Blatter for crying out loud.

The companies that want a piece of FIFA, I assume.

Edit: I just realized you meant who here on hn, in which case I assume the hardcore capitalists/libertarians. But they can speak for themselves.

On HN? The capitalist/libertarian/Elon posters, Meta employees, etc.

There are levels to it. Sepp Blatter was notoriously corrupt, but Infantino makes his "envelope full of cash under the table" style of corruption look amateurish.

Interestingly, both FIFA and IOC are headquartered in Switzerland, a country that is ranked by Transparency International as one least corrupt countries in the world… Draw you own conclusions.

Not OP, but I would guess: "hydration breaks" to inject commercials, half-time shows that felt alien to much of the core audience, and various rule-bending shenanigans (Ronaldo, Balogun).

The Iranian team’s treatment is a prime example. The Somalian ref being denied entrance is another. And the Balogun red card is a double example (it shouldn’t have been a red card in the first place, but the precedent that the President of the host country can get a call overturned is even worse).

The ticket prices and scalping (sorry, authorized re-selling to find the market clearing price) were robbery.

Sports people (I was listening to Bill Simmons) rated it pretty highly.

There was nothing egregious and it was widely attended.

The football itself wasn't bad, it was all the other stuff - prices, unfair treatment for Iran, hydration breaks, the whole Balogun thing, the pre-game and half-time shows at the final, Trump photo-bombing the Spanish celebration, etc. Every WC has its own problems and some of these things will be forgotten about soon, but it definitely seemed more ruthlessly commercialised than ever before.

The fact a ban was overturned as a political favour.

Maybe the way that Infantino nakedly advanced political favors for Trump (the f×××ing peace prize, Folarin f×××ing Balogun) and now wants a fat slice of payback?

Changing the pauses of the game alters the momentum and, as consequence, the results. How is that “inconsequential”? There have been cases of corrupted referees before, but violating the Laws of the Game in plain sight is an unprecedented attack on the sport.

I don't mean to be disrespectful but this is a dumb statement. Do you think splitting each half in 2 quarters doesn't have an impact on how the game is played?

The VAR calls 5 minutes after the fact were the most bothersome thing to me

> the most inconsequential ones

This is like saying “customers aren’t worried enough about the corporate process - they only care about the end product!”

the mandatory ad breaks were usa-level bullshit that never happened before, not even when they were playing in the fucking desert (and that world cup should have been boycotted too, but for different reasons.)

a few years ago when the momentum was moving towards tennis, some european clubs proposed a "super league" comprising of only the elite teams, the purpose was again to maximize ad profits (and i should go back to check who actually proposed it, who they were affiliated with). That time they were suggested not to proceed, or else they would be boycotted from all other events, the players too. That was also a good decision.

football (not handegg) it already corrupt enough as it is, and too much money is flowing into it, it's incredible and heart warming that there is still some dignity left in the associations.

There was extensive coverage and discussion of Trump getting the Balogun red card overturned.

I'm most certainly not a football fan, but I definitely know that a match consists of two 45 minute (and then some) halves. It's pretty much equivalent to a non motor enthusiast knowing that there are usually four wheels on a car.

I'd say this is very, very common knowledge in huge parts of the world. It's not something only enthusiasts and purists know.

Why would anyone be in favour of more ad breaks?

> non-fans would not have any idea that you were going for 2 halves to 4 "quarters"

… By non-fans do you mean people who have literally never heard of football, or something? I’m very far from a fan, no interest at all. But, I mean, I know there are two halves. Everybody knows that.

Most football non-fans absolutely know that a football match is supposed to be two halves.

The most beloved, most watched sport in the world making less than the American/Canadian hockey league is a commercial failure. Non profits are generally inefficient at running businesses. With the right guardrails a private arm that knows how to run a business could help FIFA make a ton of money. And yes a lot of rich guys will become even richer too, so what?

That’s part of their poor commercial vision. Even the World Cup brings less revenue than one season of the NBA. Doesn’t even make sense to compare it with the NFL.

What are you on about? FIFA is not a league and certainly not in charge of european football

> It seems to work well in America.

Does it? Who does it work out well for? Franchises continuously extort tax-payer funds for stadia,some team switches host cities every few years, and the for-profit corporations are legal cartels that decides who gets to own a team. The number of ad-breaks is horrendous to anyone who's watched sports elsewhere.

MLB & NFL only changed to for-profit organisations somewhat recently (2007, 2015). afaict NBA has always been for-profit.

Internationally the standard is non-profits. Most sports have both their international organisations and highest standard of play organisations as non-profits - football, tennis, golf, cricket. The international components of baseball, american football, and basketball are all non-profits (though they are lower standards of play than the US internal leagues).

American sports leagues are also non-profit organizations. Profits go to the individual teams. So no, FIFA should not be run by private equity firms.

Because they were designed to be decentralised federations, atop the footballing body in each country. More generally, the US is the most capitalist country, whereas the rest of the world does automatically see capitalism as justified, superior or inevitable.

Lastly, football is a grassroots participation sport that is seen by its fans as more of a religion than a conventional act of entertainment. Of course, religion in the US is also often for-profit, but hopefully you get the point.

Are they? Their revenues are limited and they can’t really extend their influence outside USA. Meanwhile European games are watched globally

UEFA is Europe basically. So like the nexus of modern football

It’s located in Switzerland, but it’s a global organization and has really close ties with the US president

You don't understand, good things come from the EU, bad things come from those filthy non-EU Europeans.

Sorry to be a pedant, while switzerland is in the european landmass, it is not a member of the EU.

Swiss.

Spain have a far more youthful side, who can easily win again. France will come back, as will England. Argentina have few players coming through and many stars will have retired by the next tournament, even youthful Alvarez will be 30 next time out.

And Infantino has been in high leadership in UEFA (not president), then FIFA

Yes, and when Blatter was investigated for corruption both he and Platini, president of UEFA, were banned.

This was barely 10 years ago, it's not ancient history.

Platini is still suing Infantino now.

US values, from the culture of the last 40 years.

We're really going to act like the entire world doesn't have issues with this.

Given this is a worldwide institution dealing with this, I think you are both casting the new too small.

Famously before either the US or Western world, these values were never celebrated.

To be fair, China and Russia participate in the fantasy.

Welcome. Not a dupe if some time has passed between submissions without much discussion or upvotes. And this is the source.

I understand that this is a principled stand by UEFA, no doubt about it. But the amount of money in the offering is too large for the clubs (and their superstars) to snub their noses at it. When it comes down to money, principles are the first to be bought and sold.