"They messed up the Super League really badly and now they risk walking away with a big black eye." That verdict, from one of three large US sports investors who spoke about this saga, is about as clean a summary as you'll find of what JPMorgan has managed to do — twice — in five years.
The US bank has spent months quietly advising FIFA on a plan to raise $4.2bn from global investors, valuing a new commercial entity built around the World Cup at roughly $20bn. Joshua Kushner's fund Thrive Eternal — yes, brother of Jared Kushner — has been lined up as lead investor. Former Liberty Media president Greg Maffei is acting as commercial adviser. It is, on paper, a serious piece of financial architecture.
Then the Financial Times published the details on a Tuesday. By Thursday, all 55 UEFA member associations had unanimously agreed to boycott the World Cup if FIFA proceeds. Concacaf — North America, Central America and the Caribbean — rejected the proposals too.
Without Europe, the numbers don't work
European nations have won five of the six men's World Cups dating back to 2006. Without them, the tournament doesn't just lose prestige — it loses the commercial foundation that makes a $20bn valuation remotely defensible to investors. Any sovereign wealth fund or institutional investor being pitched this deal now has to factor in the possibility that France, Spain and England simply don't show up. That changes everything.
UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said "the soul and governance of football are not assets to trade." The EU's sports commissioner called it the "relentless commercialisation of football." The European Leagues group, which includes the Premier League and La Liga, labelled it a "reckless and divisive development for world football."
People inside the deal insist this is nothing like the Super League — that it's inclusionary rather than exclusionary, designed to funnel money into football globally rather than lock out smaller clubs. One person involved said: "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?"
They're not entirely wrong on the substance. The commercial logic isn't absurd. The Super League would have dismantled the pyramid football runs on. This is more analogous to private equity moving into Formula 1 or the PGA Tour — deals that faced noise but eventually closed.
The Trump connection is doing real damage
The problem, as two of the US sports investors pointed out, is the Kushner involvement. FIFA president Gianni Infantino already awarded Donald Trump FIFA's inaugural peace prize last year in what read as a naked diplomatic gesture. Layering a Trump family-connected fund on top of that as the lead investor doesn't just raise eyebrows — it hands critics the political angle they need to paint the whole thing as compromised before a single contract is signed.
JPMorgan's role is being led by Mary Erdoes, CEO of its asset and wealth management division, with Eric Menell heading the advisory side. The bank also happens to be the official banking partner of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland's national teams through its Chase UK brand — a detail that now sits awkwardly in the background. JPMorgan declined to comment.
In 2021, after the Super League collapsed in under 48 hours, JPMorgan said it "clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community" and promised to "learn from this." The evidence that any learning occurred is, at this point, thin.
"Anything with soccer gets the same reaction — the only thing maybe more polarising is politics," said a person involved in the deal. Both things are true. And somehow, they've managed to combine them.
