"Had we known what this would devolve into, we would not have gotten involved." That's Josh Kushner, finally breaking his silence on the FIFA mess that now has his name attached to a Manhattan court filing.
Kushner and his firm Thrive Capital were set to be the anchor investors in Gianni Infantino's plan to sell a 20% stake in a FIFA commercial subsidiary — covering World Cup rights and other events — for $4.2 billion. The reaction from global football was immediate and furious. UEFA went to court. Infantino's project collapsed. And Kushner got dragged into a legal process he clearly never saw coming.
A political miscalculation, by his own admission
In comments to Axios on Monday, Kushner acknowledged the obvious: "We failed to appreciate the political dynamics of global football." For a firm that's navigated Silicon Valley and is currently part of a $12.5 billion takeover of the Los Angeles Lakers, that's a significant blind spot.
To be fair to Kushner, the pitch had a coherent surface logic. The plan, he says, was designed to direct capital equally across all 211 FIFA member countries — funding grassroots development, nurturing talent in underdeveloped nations, improving the fan experience. That's not an unreasonable ambition. The problem was Infantino's credibility, not the concept in isolation.
This is the third time Infantino has tried to pull off a transformational restructuring of world football's commercial backbone — and the third time it's collapsed. SoftBank's $25 billion competition plan died in 2018. The biennial World Cup push was killed in 2021. Now this. There's a pattern here that any serious investor should have stress-tested before signing on.
UEFA's filing and what it means
UEFA's court filing in Manhattan targets evidence that could support a potential criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland for financial mismanagement. Kushner and Thrive are explicitly named as non-defendants — the filing states neither is "an anticipated defendant" — but being named in that context at all is not where you want to be.
UEFA's broader boycott of FIFA events appears to be winding down, which may take some of the immediate pressure off. But the legal machinery is still in motion, and Infantino's position grows more precarious with each failed initiative.
For anyone pricing FIFA-related commercial outcomes or international football's governance stability, this saga is a reminder of how quickly Infantino's grand plans tend to unravel — and how much collateral turbulence they generate when they do.
Kushner's clearest line says it all: "We failed to appreciate the political dynamics of global football." That's a lesson that cost him nothing financially — yet — but a fair amount of reputational proximity to a serious institutional crisis.
