Remember the World Cup? The Germans at the IHOPs, the Koreans in sombreros, the spirit of Cabo Verde, and Lionel Messi’s tears? Remember the growing ambitions of the U.S. men’s national team, or Erling Haaland’s headers, or the mastery of Rodrigo in the Spanish midfield? Remember the sense, however begrudging, that FIFA—despite its crass commercialism, its many missteps, and its well-documented history of venality; despite even the blasphemy of hydration breaks during World Cup games—might have been at least a little bit right about one thing, that soccer unites the world?

No?

Me neither. At least not after hearing about the FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s proposal to spin off FIFA’s commercial rights into a for-profit company and then sell a twenty-per-cent stake in the new entity to private investors. In exchange for their support of the capital raise, the proposal suggested, FIFA’s two hundred and eleven member federations would receive forty million dollars each from the windfall to turbocharge the sport’s development. The detail that the private-equity company he had in mind to lead the sale, Thrive Capital, was founded by the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law was as perfect as it was predictable.

Then again, maybe Infantino pulled off a neat trick after all: the world united impressively to denounce his plan. The idea of putting the World Cup up for sale was too rich even for people who’d rubber-stamped awarding the 2034 event to Saudi Arabia. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade,” Europe’s governing body, UEFA, said in a statement, and announced a unanimous decision to boycott all FIFA events, including the World Cup, until the proposal was withdrawn. CONCACAF, which represents North American, Central American, and Caribbean federations, added its opposition. The A.F.C., comprising Asia’s federations, protested the process by which the plans had been made—if it can even be called a process in the first place. “It is the project of one person,” Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer, wrote in a statement to the Associated Press on Friday. Everyone had been “deceived,” he said—not only the public but also FIFA’s own administration. “This lie by omission over many months and this unilateral exercise of power are not trivial. They are indicative of a lack of trust, a lack of transparency, a lack of discernment, a lack of good governance. And a serious lack of respect.” In protest, Infantino’s senior adviser, Carlos Cordeiro, who was instrumental in the planning of this summer’s World Cup, announced his resignation.

Some of the opposition was to be expected. UEFA, which is richer than FIFA, never passes up a chance to condescend to Infantino. Cordeiro, for his part, used to work at Goldman Sachs; he can count the money already piling up in FIFA’s coffers, and presumably he knows better than to trust the claim that even a passive private-equity investment promises to be a no-risk, no-involvement long-term deal. The plan was “mortgaging football’s future,” he said when he resigned. Still, the outcry—and the lack of outspoken public support even from those federations and allies that Infantino has made a show of propping up—had unusual force and breadth.

By Friday night, the scheme was dead. Infantino’s office released a statement withdrawing the plan. “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,” the statement said.

It was assumed that Infantino would run for reëlection as FIFA’s president unopposed; now he’ll probably have a fight on his hands. That’s for the good. But as for the soul of football? Its defenders will have to do better than making Infantino squirm. The sport is already awash in cash from petrocratic sovereign funds. It caters to autocrats; it is plagued by racism; it’s threatened by climate change. (Whatever the financial incentives behind those hydration breaks, some of them seemed necessary.)

It’s easy, and quite convenient right now, to blame FIFA’s greed for all this. But it didn’t invent the scheme. Professional teams and leagues all over have been eager to access capital from outside investors, whatever the cost to sports’ gauzy ideals. Private equity even has a solid foothold in college sports now. Everything seems to be for sale, and has been for some time: teams, players, luxury stadium boxes, patches on kits, stadium signage. And perhaps more.

One thing I can’t forget from this summer’s World Cup is Kalshi’s marketing blitz. The prediction market was hardly the only company to plaster its logo on every available surface. It wasn’t even the only company to deploy Timothée Chalamet in coy ways. But as the tournament wore on, it became hard to escape the Kalshiness of the whole thing. Most days during the World Cup, a publicity e-mail would land in my inbox, alerting me to the latest legend who’d signed on with Kalshi: Messi, Luka Modrić. Then came the e-mails reporting the latest trading volume: $6.67 billion, then $14.6 billion, then, finally, twenty-six billion—or roughly seven times the G.D.P. of Cabo Verde.

Three million new users downloaded the Kalshi app during the World Cup. Exactly what they were doing when they opened it up is a question I’ll leave to the courts. (On Friday, the State of New York sued Kalshi, accusing it of running an “illegal gambling operation”; Kalshi, which classifies the service it provides as commodities trading, insists that it is not.) But the effect it has on the experience of following an event, the commodification of attention, and the real-time intensity of having a stake in the game is of a piece with what gambling provides. The World Cup might not be for sale any longer. But the very thing that makes sports common and meaningful—hope—appears to be. Which is the bigger problem? ♦