FIFA quietly shopped around a commercialized Under-15 World Cup to private investors over the past year — and nobody was supposed to know about it. Now they do.
According to multiple sources, Gianni Infantino held conversations exploring a youth football festival involving all 211 FIFA member nations, modeled on baseball's Little League World Series. The pitch went as far as formal proposals, broadcaster talks, and theme park opening ceremonies. Then it was shelved, just before the men's World Cup kicked off.
Boehly, Kushner, Disney, and a plan FIFA never admitted to
The commercial blueprint was drawn up by Juan Carlos Rodríguez, the former Mexico Football Federation commissioner, backed by Eldridge Industries — Todd Boehly's global holding company. Yes, that Todd Boehly: Chelsea chairman, Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner, and apparently someone with an eye on football's youngest talent pool too.
Eldridge and Rodríguez held talks with ESPN — the long-time broadcaster of the Little League World Series — to host the tournament at ESPN's Wide World of Sports Complex near Disney World in Orlando. Opening and closing ceremonies at Disney theme parks were part of the proposal. The scale of ambition here was not small.
Joshua Kushner's Thrive Eternal — the fund that separately sought a 21% stake in FIFA's broader commercial operations — was also in Infantino's orbit during this period. Whether those two sets of conversations ever collided is unclear. Thrive Capital declined to comment.
The financial logic wasn't without merit. Little League International pulls around $17 million annually from ESPN for its baseball and softball world series rights. Football is exponentially more popular globally than baseball. Investors reportedly planned to initially waive broadcaster rights fees entirely, building audience first and monetizing sponsorship later — a patient, long-term play that Eldridge and Rodríguez saw paying off over decades.
The part that was never going to be straightforward
Infantino also floated the idea of Israel vs Palestine as the tournament's opening match. That idea didn't come from Rodríguez or Eldridge — it was the president's own addition. It followed his failed attempt at the FIFA Congress in Vancouver in April, where he tried and couldn't get representatives from both federations to shake hands on stage.
The optics of commercializing a children's tournament — complete with Disney ceremonies and private equity — apparently gave some within FIFA pause. Whether that concern, or the conflict with the separate Thrive stake acquisition talks, killed the project isn't confirmed. What is confirmed: roughly 12 days into the men's World Cup, FIFA announced the Under-15 event would go to Azerbaijan, with no mention of external investment.
Baku gets the tournament. Eldridge gets nothing. And FIFA's Council, per sources, was never formally told their president had been exploring outside commercialization of a youth competition in the first place.
