FIFA scraps its World Cup investment plan after backlash

FIFA, world soccer's governing body, is shelving a controversial plan that would have allowed for billions of dollars in private commercial investment in the World Cup after the proposal was met with fierce opposition from its member nations. "Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place," FIFA President Gianni Infantino said in a statement Friday evening.Earlier this week, the British newspaper The Times first revealed Infantino's secret plan, called FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, under which FIFA would have created a commercial rights and event operations company, 20% of which would be sold to private investors with FIFA retaining ownership of 80%. FIFA had said that FFE would be given an initial evaluation of $20 billion, with $4.2 billion going to "carefully selecting long-term investors."FIFA confirmed in an earlier statement that Thrive Eternal, a venture spearheaded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, was "expected to lead the proposed investor grou...