FIFA's plan to bring private capital into its biggest tournaments is finished, and Joshua Kushner — the billionaire venture investor who was set to lead the whole thing — never said a word as it fell apart.
Gianni Infantino confirmed the proposal "will not proceed" after a coordinated revolt from three of football's most powerful confederations. UEFA threatened to boycott future World Cups. Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation both rejected it. Without them, FIFA couldn't get anywhere near the 106 votes required for approval. The plan didn't just fail — it collapsed without a fight.
Kushner's firm was at the centre of it
Joshua Kushner's company, Thrive Eternal, was expected to lead the private investor group seeking a stake in FIFA Forward Enterprise — the commercial vehicle FIFA had designed around its crown jewels, the World Cup among them. Thrive Capital, which Kushner founded in 2009, manages around $25 billion in assets and has backed Instagram, Spotify, and OpenAI. This wasn't a speculative punt. It was a serious financial play by a serious financial firm.
And yet when the backlash hit — when senior FIFA adviser Carlos Cordeiro resigned and called it "a bad deal for football", when chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said FIFA's own administration had been "deceived" — Kushner offered nothing. No statement. No defence. No explanation of what Thrive stood to gain.
The silence is deliberate. Kushner has spent years keeping his distance from the political noise that follows his family name. When his brother Jared was in the White House, Joshua told associates he had no ties to the administration. That same instinct appears to have kicked in here, especially once reports emerged that figures close to the Trump administration had been consulted on the deal — and once Trump himself had to publicly deny any involvement at all.
Infantino's presidency now looks shakier than it did a week ago
The bigger casualty here might be Infantino. He was expected to cruise to a fourth term at the FIFA Congress in Morocco next March. That assumption just took a serious hit. The rebellion wasn't from minnows — it was from Europe, North and Central America, and Asia moving in the same direction at the same time, which almost never happens.
Critics are already questioning whether Infantino bypassed FIFA's own governance structures to push this through. Several confederations are calling for a formal review. His development funding still buys loyalty among smaller football nations, but the political map looks different now than it did ten days ago.
As for Kushner — Thrive Eternal walks away empty-handed from a deal that would have given it a slice of the most-watched sporting event on the planet. Carlos Cordeiro called it "a bad deal for football." Whether it was also a bad deal for Thrive is a question Joshua Kushner still hasn't answered.
