摩根大通因协助FIFA融资商业化计划再陷足球舆论风波

How JPMorgan walked into another football firestorm
JPMorgan Chase learnt the hard way about the ferocity of the backlash that comes from backing a project football fans see as a threat to the sport.
Five years ago, the US bank apologised for playing a central role in the failed launch of a breakaway Super League, which would have overturned Europe’s football hierarchy by creating a closed league of permanent members such as Real Madrid and Manchester United.
Now it is back at the centre of another football project that is sparking comparable levels of outrage.
JPMorgan has been instrumental in the formation of Fifa’s plans to raise $4.2bn from global investors for a new commercial entity valued at roughly $20bn.
That project, just like the Super League, is now at risk of unravelling.
On Thursday, just 48 hours after the FT revealed Fifa’s plans, 55 member countries of Uefa, which governs football in Europe, unanimously agreed to boycott the World Cup if the governing body presses ahead with its attempt to bring in external investors.
Without the participation of European countries, which have collectively won five of the six men’s World Cups dating back to 2006, Fifa will struggle to convince investors to back its plans. Concacaf, which governs the game in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, has also rejected the proposals.
JPMorgan has another vested interest in the outcome: its retail banking brand Chase UK is the official banking partner of the national football teams of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The company declined to comment.
The US bank has secretly worked for months as Fifa’s adviser alongside Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose fund Thrive Eternal has been lined up as the lead investor.
In 2021, the reaction to the Super League was vociferous. Uefa president Aleksander Čeferin labelled the plan’s architects “snakes and liars”, while leading football pundit Gary Neville branded the project an “absolute disgrace”.
After its collapse, JPMorgan said it “clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community” and that it would “learn from this”.
Yet the bank is now embroiled in a similar football firestorm.
Uefa said the “soul and governance of football are not assets to trade”, while the EU’s commissioner for sport, Glenn Micallef, decried the corrosive impact of “the relentless commercialisation of football”.
European Leagues, an industry group that includes the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga, called it a “reckless and divisive development for world football”.
The drama risks dealing a reputational blow to America’s biggest bank by assets, according to three large US investors in the sports industry.
“They messed up the Super League really badly and now they risk walking away [from this] with a big black eye,” one of the investors said. “You can’t keep getting involved in big projects and botching them without thinking about the broader impact.”
People close to JPMorgan insist Fifa’s proposals do not amount to a Super League 2.0, saying the new venture’s goals are in effect the opposite.
JPMorgan views Fifa’s plan as an inclusionary one that will boost funding for the sport across the world and bring more excitement to the World Cup, according to people familiar with the bank’s thinking.
“Anything with soccer gets the same reaction — the only thing maybe more polarising is politics,” said a person involved in the deal, adding that those involved knew the public response would be “hysterical”.
“I think a lot of the emotion is covering up the simple premise of what this is, which is how do you monetise better, just like any other company would want to do? Of course, it’s football. So it comes with all sorts of hair on it,” the person said.
Former Liberty Media president Greg Maffei, who is acting as commercial adviser to Fifa, a non-profit entity, told the FT this week that the plans are consistent with a trend sweeping across global sport, including Formula 1 and golf’s PGA Tour.
At JPMorgan, the deal is being led out of New York by Mary Erdoes, chief executive of its asset and wealth management division, said people familiar with the matter. On the advisory side, it is led by Eric Menell, global co-head of sports investment banking.
Two of the sports investors said the problem with the Fifa project was the involvement of Trump’s family members, given that Fifa president Gianni Infantino has publicly sought to curry favour with the US president, notably by awarding him Fifa’s inaugural peace prize last year.
“The commercial thesis is sound and very different from the Super League, which was going to destroy football as fans knew it,” said one person who had direct knowledge of the plan for several months.
But the appearance of close links between the deal and the Trump family leads people to immediately question it, the person added.
Fifa asked JPMorgan to put together a global investor base comprised of sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors and family offices that reflects its membership.
The bank’s pitch to would-be Fifa investors echoes what they would hear if they expressed interest in buying into a US sports franchise, according to people involved in the deal.
The returns, the argument goes, come from the rising value of the asset, driven by better monetisation of broadcast rights, faster growth, fatter margins and, eventually, an exit at a higher valuation.
Whether that is possible may hinge on whether the football associations of France, Spain and England among others hold firm on their threats to sit out the next World Cup.
Additional reporting by Josh Noble in London