FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants to sell a slice of the World Cup — a 20% stake in a new $20 billion commercial spin-off called FIFA Forward Enterprise — and the lead investor backing the plan is tied to the Trump family.

On 28 July 2026, FIFA publicly announced it would create the subsidiary, offering external investors the chance to buy up to a fifth of its shares. FIFA confirmed to The Times that Joshua Kushner, the 41-year-old younger brother of Jared Kushner and founder of venture capital firm Thrive Capital, would be the proposed lead investor through a fund called Thrive Eternal. Jared Kushner is married to Ivanka Trump and serves as a Special Envoy for Peace in the Trump administration. Their father, Charles Kushner — convicted of tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions, then pardoned by Trump in 2020 — is now the US ambassador to France, confirmed by the Senate in May 2025.

The Kushner family's proximity to the deal has caught the attention of Congress. Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, summoned Infantino to appear before the committee and requested a sweeping set of documents: records of FIFA's contacts with the Trump administration and Trump family businesses, details of any gifts or benefits provided to Trump, and visitor logs for FIFA's office space in Trump Tower, New York. Raskin told Politico that FIFA was "going directly into business with the Trump family." His official press release characterised the arrangement as a "Trump bribery and corruption scheme."

Raskin also referenced a peace prize that Infantino awarded Trump in December, and Trump's own boast that his direct line to Infantino persuaded FIFA to lift Folarin Balogun's red-card suspension ahead of the USA's 2026 World Cup last-16 match against Belgium. The USA lost that game 4-1, but the intervention itself raised eyebrows about the relationship between a sitting president and football's governing body.

FIFA is not the only party unsettled. UEFA, European football's governing body, held an emergency meeting with member associations over the plan, and regional confederations were blindsided by the announcement. The Romanian Football Federation suspended discussion of its support for Infantino's re-election until the private investment plan is clarified. Critics have accused FIFA of "selling the soul of football."

Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president whose own tenure ended in scandal, said the World Cup should not become an investment product for private equity firms seeking returns.

Infantino has spent months laying groundwork for the commercial push, speaking about the World Cup's financial potential at the CNBC Invest in America Forum, the Milken Institute Conference, and the FIFA Priority Investment Summit. FIFA expects record funding of $2.7 billion for the 2027–2030 cycle and has proposed expanding development funding to more than $10 billion, subject to member approval.

For fans, the question is whether the World Cup — the one tournament that belongs to every footballing nation — is about to belong, in part, to private investors with political connections that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The plan still requires approval from FIFA's member associations. Whether they green-light it may determine who the World Cup really answers to.