FIFA was quietly shopping a children's World Cup to private investors — and nobody was supposed to know about it. Gianni Infantino spent much of the past year in conversations with outside money men about commercializing an Under-15 global tournament featuring all 211 FIFA member nations, built on the blueprint of baseball's Little League World Series. The talks were shelved before the 2026 World Cup. FIFA never told the public they'd happened.
The most concrete proposal came from a group led by Juan Carlos Rodríguez, former Mexico Football Federation commissioner, backed by Todd Boehly's Eldridge Industries — yes, the same Boehly who chairs Chelsea. They envisioned hosting the tournament at ESPN's Wide World of Sports Complex near Disney World in Orlando, with opening and closing ceremonies at the theme parks themselves. ESPN, the long-time Little League broadcaster, was in conversation to air the competition in the United States.
The commercial logic isn't as absurd as it sounds
Little League International pulls around $17 million annually from ESPN under its current broadcast deal. Football is incomparably more popular globally than baseball. The pitch from Rodríguez and Eldridge was to launch without charging broadcasters a rights fee — prioritize reach first, build an audience across streaming platforms and TV networks worldwide, then monetize through sponsorship and, eventually, local rights deals in markets that rarely qualify for senior World Cups. Nations that never sniff a men's or women's World Cup would suddenly have a tournament where their Under-15s could compete every edition. That's a genuine product.
The Infantino touch was also present. He floated the idea of opening the festival with a match between Israel and Palestine — a political gesture that wasn't part of the Rodríguez or Eldridge proposals and came just months after his failed attempt at the FIFA Congress in Vancouver to get Israeli and Palestinian federation representatives to shake hands on camera.
Why it collapsed — and where it ended up
FIFA gave Eldridge enough encouragement to submit a formal proposal, then, roughly two weeks into the 2026 World Cup, informed them the project wasn't moving forward. The timing is telling. Infantino only went public with FIFA Forward Enterprises — his plan to sell a minority stake in FIFA's commercial and event operations to outside investors — after the World Cup concluded, and that initiative was quickly buried following serious backlash. Whether the U15 investment talks and the FFE plans were ever in conflict, or whether someone inside FIFA got cold feet about the optics of commercializing a children's tournament, remains an open question that FIFA isn't answering.
What FIFA did announce, on June 24, was that the Under-15 tournament would be held in Azerbaijan — Baku — seemingly without any external investment involved. The FIFA Bureau of the Council made the call, citing Azerbaijan's infrastructure as capable of hosting thousands of children and support staff in a centralized location.
- The tournament was first officially announced after a FIFA Council meeting in December 2025
- Matches will feature shorter playing times and smaller pitches than senior football
- The first edition is for boys only; a girls' edition follows in 2027, with both events eventually running separately each year
- 32 groups of six or seven teams were planned to accommodate all 211 nations
FIFA confirmed the tournament publicly. It never confirmed the investment conversations that surrounded it. The FIFA Council, whose approval would theoretically be required for this kind of commercialization, was apparently never informed that Infantino had been exploring outside money for a tournament involving children from every nation on earth.
Baku got the tournament. Boehly and Rodríguez didn't get the deal. And the full story of who knew what inside FIFA's boardroom still hasn't been told.
