Faisal Islam: Four reasons why Fifa's World Cup plan never stacked up

Image source, ReutersByFaisal IslamEconomics editorPublished1 August 2026Documents that set out Fifa's plan to part-privatise the World Cup and seen by the BBC show why the deal may have fallen apart.

The sales pitch was circulated to Fifa members this week, setting out the case for Gianni Infantino's controversial plan featuring pictures of the Spain team lifting the trophy and Argentina's fans.

The 25-page deck of slides painted a picture of American football-level revenue expectations, which pointed to a potential continuation and extension of the controversial 2026 US-influenced World Cup model.

It suggested there was the potential for $1,000+ tickets, dynamic pricing, and pressure to put broadcasting of the world's biggest sports tournament behind a paywall.

The documents make it clear that the plan and Fifa's arguments never really stacked up. Here are four reasons why.

In the slides, Fifa's central argument was that football does not raise enough cash in relation to its fan base, that "Fifa has been under-monetised versus other leagues" and so "global football development gets squeezed".

It did this with reference to a comparative chart showing annual revenue as well as revenue per fan for Fifa, the Uefa Champions League, Premier League, US baseball and NFL American football.

On the face of it, Fifa is the poorer cousin at just $1 per global fan, compared to NFL's $52.80. But this measure is rather suspect.

The World Cup is not an annual competition - it happens once every four years. If instead this was done on revenue per World Cup 2026 match, Fifa makes multiples of the Premier League, perhaps more than three times as much.

As important, football is decentralised globally, so more of the revenues go to individual leagues, such as the Premier League or Champions League. Fifa was effectively arguing it wanted to keep more of that overall football pie.

Football's fans are also spread across the globe, in rich and poor countries alike. NFL has a much smaller base concentrated in the US and is pretty much the whole of American Football.

Finally, about half of NFL's revenues are paid out as wages. Fifa does not pay Erling Haaland or Lionel Messi or Vozinha. Profits would have yielded a rather different result than the chart’s focus on revenues.