Two weeks ago the FIFA election had become an auction, and the incumbent’s bid was a blank cheque. Now the blank has a number: $25 million for every member association, to be approved at the same March Congress that chooses the president. The angle comes from a FIFA document reviewed by the Associated Press.
When we priced the vote at the start of October, there were three offers on the table. The withdrawn FIFA Forward Enterprise plan had promised each association up to $40 million. UEFA and Concacaf had proposed the existing funding plus at least $10 million more from FIFA’s reserves. Gianni Infantino’s offer was a blank: he wrote that he would “not prejudge the amount”. The blank has now been filled in. According to a FIFA document seen by the Associated Press, FIFA is proposing a $6.35 billion development fund for 2027 to 2030, with $25 million for each national association and $99 million for each of the six confederations.
The money comes from where the opposition said it could. FIFA would distribute more than $3.5 billion from its financial reserves, which it links to the “unprecedented commercial” success of the 48-team World Cup. In FIFA’s words, the proposal would “more than double the level of planned distribution funding for the 2027-2030 period”, with a focus on women’s and youth football. The AP describes the $25 million as up from an originally planned $10 million per association.
Set the offers side by side and the shape of the contest changes. UEFA and Concacaf asked FIFA to release around $2.1 billion from reserves they estimated at about $6 billion. Infantino’s administration now proposes to release more than $3.5 billion. Whichever baseline you start from, $25 million is more than the existing plan plus the opposition’s $10 million. The confederations that spent September arguing FIFA could afford to pay its members more, without selling a stake in the World Cup, have been taken at their word and then outbid.
The timetable matters as much as the amount. The FIFA Council is to finalise the plan in December, and it then needs final approval at the 77th FIFA Congress in March 2027. That is the Congress at which the 211 federations will vote for their president, on 18 March in Rabat. The members will approve their money and choose the man who proposed it in the same room, on the same trip. Nominations for the presidency close on 18 November, a month before the Council finalises the fund. Any challenger will have to declare before the money is settled.
Recall the count. The AP’s tally gave Infantino 87 federations, against 49 opposed, with 75 still to declare. He needed 19 of them to reach the 106 that win the election. A challenger needed 57. For many of those 75 undecided associations, $25 million over four years is not a rounding error. It is the budget for a national team, a women’s programme and a training centre, and it arrives with the incumbent’s name on it.
This leaves the opposition in an awkward position. It cannot campaign against the payout, because it proposed the principle. It cannot outbid it, because the Council controls the agenda and the incumbent chairs the Council. What it has left is the argument it started with, about governance. UEFA has said it is preparing a criminal complaint in Switzerland over the abandoned World Cup sell-off and has asked US courts to authorise discovery. Those are serious steps. They are also slower than a cheque, and less easy to explain to a federation treasurer.
None of this is decided. The Council can change the figure, Congress can reject it, and an endorsement is not a vote. But the series of numbers tells its own story. In August the number that mattered was 106. In October it was 87. Now it is 25, and the man who controls it is the one on the ballot. The challenger, whoever it turns out to be, has until 18 November to put a name against it.
Sources: Associated Press (via Dhaka Tribune, 10BM News and The Washington Times), ESPN, AFP, BBC Sport (via Yahoo Sports), Japan Today.
