FIFA proposed on July 29 the sale of a 20-21% stake in its new commercial subsidiary FIFA Forward Enterprise for $4.2 billion, valuing the whole at $20 billion. Advised by J.P. Morgan, the deal lasted only 48 hours: by July 31, FIFA withdrew its proposal after UEFA and CONCACAF threatened to boycott FIFA events. To win over its 211 national federations, FIFA had offered each an immediate $20 million payment, totaling $4.2 billion in sweetener money alone. The absence of cryptocurrency or digital assets in this traditional finance project highlights the irony of a sports industry experimenting with fan tokens and blockchain while the world’s most powerful sports organization relied on conventional private equity for a transaction of this scale.
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