Margin Points - Arnold Engel<br>August 1, 2026 · [Essay 137]<br>FIFA, Thrive<br>Despite the FIFA deal being dead, Thrive or another investor could get an even better deal by doing more work.

Made possible by<br>Spacebar Studios<br>The #1 Newsletter Agency For B2B Companies. Work with us →

Bottoms-up for FIFA<br>Thrive tried to invest in FIFA and it didn’t go well. UEFA, the European group of football associations, pulled its teams from FIFA competitions until the investment proposal was withdrawn. FIFA backtracked on Friday. The deal had been worked by FIFA’s head, Thrive, Liberty Media, and JP Morgan without consulting the members (211 of them—1 per country).

Thrive (and others) were offering FIFA $4B cash into a $20B valuation (20% stake) for a commercial entity to manage the World Cups. It looks like the deal is dead.1

Despite all the outcry against the deal, Thrive (or someone else) could still get a similar outcome if they want it. After trying the top-down deal, the dealmakers could now turn to trying the bottoms-up approach.

What you could end up with would be practically very similar to the original offered deal. Investors could get a 20% stake in commercial revenue and separately establish a new entity to direct commercialization initiatives.

The bottoms-up deal would look something like this: member countries sell off a share of their FIFA revenue in perpetuity in exchange for cash today. In addition, they also agree to vote as part of a bloc on certain governance issues. The entire structure could be accomplished outside of the domain and purview of FIFA. The voting agreement could be relatively loose or stepped up over time if that made the optics more palatable. There would be relative alignment between the commercial entity and the country signing on because the country would continue to get the majority of revenue each World Cup cycle.

We might never fully know who is in and who is out of such a group—which would make UEFA protests much more difficult. “East Timor needed financing so they could build schools” isn’t something that brings out the protests quite like cloak and dagger machinations at FIFA headquarters have a tendency to do.

With 107 countries signed onto the deal individually, investors would be set to go. The entire structure could live outside FIFA, without much opportunity for European powerhouses who oppose the concept to complain. The deal becomes a financing play for Montserrat, Tanzania, Samoa etc. and many, many, other countries, not a referendum on the state of World Cup commercialism.

Indonesia’s federation has already come out publicly in support of the investment plan. Others, surely, would follow particularly if the deal wouldn’t necessarily need public disclosure and fanfare.

The new deal could be accomplished by meeting with and convincing a very receptive set of countries. It’s a schlep business with a lot of travel and a lot of meetings and relationship building. Anyone that does it will be compensated in the end for showing up in places like Port Moresby, Harare and Abidjan. There’s probably some great podcast stories that fall out of the efforts.2

The new deal would be even more lucrative than the original. The price to buy a stream of future profits from Madagascar is much lower than buying the same profits from Norway.

The concept of investing in the World Cup isn’t new:

In 2018, two years after Infantino became president, FIFA explored a plan backed by SoftBank to raise $25B to create new global tournaments.

This won’t be the last time that an investment deal for the World Cup surfaces—or is worked on behind the scenes. Investors can just wait until the next global downturn and find a swath of countries eager to do business.

Thrive told FIFA the pitch wasn’t ready for the public, according to the Financial Times:<br>"The delay in revealing the proposal had not come from Fifa, according to people familiar with the matter, but from Thrive Eternal, an investment fund controlled by Joshua Kushner, the tech investor and brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. As the lead investor, he was concerned that the materials needed more work.  The response may have validated Kushner’s caution." ↩

Column did (does?) some of this in foreign countries. ↩

Made possible by

Spacebar Studios

Newsletters for B2B companies

The August

Offer

5,000 engaged subscribers in 90 days.

Or your money back.

Claim the August package &rarr;

Most B2B brands rent their audience. Every lead comes from a platform you do not own, priced by someone else, gone the moment you stop paying.

An owned audience is the fix, and everyone knows it. The problem is that building one is a job: strategy, writing, design, growth, week after week. That line item keeps sliding down the list because nobody has the hours.

We do. We run full-service newsletters for B2B software, AI, media, and professional services brands. For August, we have put together the easiest yes we know how to make:

Done-for-you...