Documents detailing FIFA's audacious plan to partially privatise the World Cup have surfaced, and they read less like a solid business proposal and more like a fever dream from a PowerPoint-obsessed consultant who just discovered American football economics.

The 25-page deck, circulated to FIFA members, paints a rosy picture of American football-level revenues, complete with visions of $1,000+ tickets, dynamic pricing, and pushing the world's biggest sporting event behind a paywall. Because nothing says "football for the people" like charging a month's rent to watch a group stage match.

The core argument? Football is "under-monetised" compared to other leagues, with FIFA earning a paltry $1 per global fan versus the NFL's $52.80. But this comparison conveniently ignores that the World Cup isn't an annual cash grab - it's a quadrennial festival of nations. Per match, FIFA rakes in multiples of the Premier League. Also, football is decentralised; the Premier League and Champions League aren't FIFA's to monetise. And the NFL's "fan base" is essentially the US, where they've perfected the art of extracting maximum dollars from a captive audience. Not to mention, about half of NFL revenues go to player wages - FIFA doesn't pay Erling Haaland or Lionel Messi, so the profit picture would look rather different.

The plan would have created "FIFA Forward Enterprise" (FFE), a private entity to run the World Cup - ticketing, broadcast, licensing, sponsorship - effectively stripping power from a non-profit answerable to global football and handing it to investors. The slides talk about "expanding and optimising media rights monetisation" and "maximising the value of FIFA IP" - corporate speak for "we want more money."

The $4.2bn (£3.1bn; €3.6bn) raised by selling a 20% stake would fund a $20m "extraordinary distribution" to each of the 211 member associations. For Montserrat, that's nearly half its entire economy - $10,000 per person. Bangladesh, too, would get a windfall. But where's the investment in football's future? The document mentions an "annual license payment" but doesn't quantify it. Did FFE have a mission to maximise revenues at all costs?

The timetable was breathlessly fast: investors get materials this month, terms by September, funds by October. Lead investor Thrive Eternal, run by Joshua Kushner (brother of Trump's son-in-law Jared), is primarily an AI investment firm with a stake in OpenAI. They only started a sports arm in April with the San Francisco Giants, pioneers of dynamic ticket pricing. Kushner's thesis: live sports are assets that "cannot be replicated by technology" - unlike music or films, which AI can churn out.

In the end, this was an opaque scheme to continue the 2026 experiment of sky-high ticket prices, commercialisation, and more matches. It collapsed in days. Shocking. Absolutely shocking.