Fifa accuses Uefa of 'misinformation campaign' as World Cup rights legal battle escalates

Fifa has accused Uefa of waging a “misinformation campaign” and attempting to interfere in its presidential election, filing a response in the Southern District of Florida that urges a US court to reject Uefa’s request for discovery linked to Gianni Infantino’s abandoned World Cup sell-off plan.

The dispute centres on a now-scrapped proposal to transfer World Cup commercial rights into a subsidiary called Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE). Last month, Uefa asked a US federal court for permission to obtain testimony and documents to support a planned criminal complaint in Switzerland against Infantino over the scheme.

In its Monday filing, Fifa said Uefa’s brief contained “numerous false or misleading statements about Fifa and Infantino” and flatly rejected the suggestion that Infantino sought personal financial gain. “With no basis whatsoever, Uefa suggests that Mr Infantino sought to profit personally from the FFE proposal,” Fifa said, adding that the plan had been subject to approval by both member associations and the Fifa Council.

Uefa had alleged that Infantino developed the proposal in secret with a small group of advisers and investors, bypassing normal governance processes and failing to consult Fifa’s Council, regional confederations, or member associations. The European body’s filing stated that investors would have paid $4.2 billion for a stake in FFE, valuing the business at approximately $20 billion, and alleged that the valuation significantly undervalued Fifa’s commercial rights without an open auction or independent assessment.

Fifa pushed back sharply on the valuation argument, accusing Uefa of conflating equity value with enterprise value. “FFE’s total enterprise value — meaning the entire value of the business — was well over $30 billion,” Fifa said, arguing the figure was more than twice the equity value cited by Uefa and therefore well above what Uefa claimed would be a fair price.

“Uefa’s suggestions that Mr Infantino violated any law or ethical principle are categorically without merit,” the filing stated.

The FFE project was abandoned in July following opposition from confederations. The legal confrontation between football’s two most powerful governing bodies now moves to a US court, which must decide whether to grant Uefa’s discovery request — a ruling that could determine whether the planned Swiss criminal complaint against Infantino proceeds with American-sourced evidence.