Is Football Safe from AI? Why Tech Investors Wanted the World Cup

Fifa has abandoned its proposal to sell a stake in the World Cup following intense resistance, including warnings of future boycotts and demands for president Gianni Infantino to step down.

But what attracted a group of technology investors to the World Cup, and could comparable plans emerge again in the years ahead?

As artificial intelligence threatens to transform leisure activities and entertainment, leaders at Thrive Eternal, an offshoot of venture capital company Thrive Capital, identified a chance to assemble investors and fund the world’s largest sporting tournament.

The football World Cup appeared to fit the firm’s new investment approach, based on the belief that sport will retain its appeal during the AI revolution and become even more valuable.

Led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, Thrive primarily backs technology businesses working on artificial intelligence and has provided substantial funding to OpenAI.

In April, however, the New York-based company established Thrive Eternal as a separate investment division focused on sectors with characteristics that technology cannot reproduce.

Sport is a key part of this plan, making football—and the possibility of acquiring a minority interest in the World Cup through Fifa’s proposed Forward Enterprise (FFE)—an attractive prospect.

The underlying argument is that football’s traditions, cultural importance and role in personal identity will make it more resistant to AI disruption than entertainment industries such as film and music, where technology is already beginning to perform work previously done by people.

Professor Simon Chadwick has spent three decades working across the international sports sector, engaging with supporters’ groups, football clubs and governing organisations including Fifa and Uefa.

He said growing investor involvement and wider commercial pressures meant that many choices affecting football and its supporters were increasingly being shaped in major financial and technology centres.

He suggested that the shift had happened gradually, leaving many people without a clear understanding of the changes taking place.

Although the proposal created governance concerns for Fifa, he added that private equity participation in sport was already becoming an established reality, regardless of public opinion.