A bone-breaking battle: who loses if the World Cup is held without Europe's national teams? | Goal.com

Published on 31 Jul 2026 | Reading time: 2 minutes

Gianni Infantino wants to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors. The FIFA president's plan has drawn a fierce response from UEFA, who are now threatening to boycott the next World Cup if it goes ahead.

According to a report by French network "RMC", UEFA's 55 associations unanimously agreed to boycott the upcoming international competitions should Infantino press ahead. That raises a fascinating question: what would a World Cup without Europe's national teams actually cost? Such threats, of course, rarely become an actual boycott.

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FIFA banked around 15 billion dollars across the 2023-2026 cycle, nearly double the previous one. The men's World Cup alone made up 85% of that.

Sports economics expert Christophe Lepetit splits those revenues into three pillars: television broadcasting rights at around a third, plus sponsorship and ticketing and hospitality at somewhere between 22 and 24% each.

Europe drives all three, thanks to its sporting weight and commercial muscle. Its club competitions, the Champions League chief among them, also churn out the stars such as Messi, Haaland, Ronaldo, Rodri and Mbappe, whose global fame FIFA cashes in on through the national teams.

Losing the big European nations would slash the value of the product FIFA sells, Lepetit believes. "With no offence to anyone, if you replace Germany with Curacao or France with Cape Verde, I am not entirely sure that would generate the same interest from the media, the sponsors or the public," he said.

Broadcasters would be first to renegotiate. Lepetit reckons the value of the World Cup broadcasting rights in France, for which M6 paid 120 million euros for the 2026 edition, could plummet to just 12 million euros without Les Bleus.

Sponsorship deals would shrink too. Ticketing and hospitality revenues would take a hit as well, given European fans rank among the biggest spenders at major tournaments.

Lepetit's verdict is blunt: the absence of Europe would amount to a "tsunami on FIFA's economic model".

Infantino wants to set up a new commercial company to sell the marketing rights of FIFA's competitions, valued at around 17.5 billion euros. That figure leans heavily on recent World Cup revenues, boosted by six of the eight quarter-finalists being European.

Strip Europe out and the company's value collapses, Lepetit warns. "The value given to your company would not be 17.5 billion euros, it could become 10 or 12 or 8 or even less. Everything is very much linked and intertwined," he said. Infantino, he believes, would have no way to make up the shortfall.

France and the rest of Europe would pay a heavy price too. The associations would lose part of their commercial revenues, sponsors and kit manufacturers might renegotiate their contracts, and the players would be shut out of the game's most prestigious tournaments.

Lepetit sums it up: "Everyone loses in the end: the fans, the players, the national associations, UEFA, the confederations, and FIFA."

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