Aug 3, 2026 · 3 min read
by Purpose Foundation
“No one has the moral authority to sell what they merely hold in trust for the next generation.”
Did you also somehow think of steward ownership when reading these lines? The quote is from last week’s UEFA statement, which expressed its opposition to FIFA President Infantino’s plans to sell shares of a new FIFA entity to private investors.
UEFA, with its 55 members – including several of the world’s strongest soccer nations – threatened to withdraw from the World Cup and all FIFA competitions.
Although Infantino dropped his plan on Friday after other confederations also spoke out against it, the debate goes on, with UEFA stating that the current FIFA leadership has lost its confidence, and that what happened must be properly reviewed.
UEFA is hardly a saint itself when it comes to football’s commercialisation. But it has struck a chord here that resonates with a lot of people – not only sports fans. The growing commodification of more and more areas of life is starting to trouble an increasing number of people. (And also politics, of course. Britain’s new prime minister Andy Burnham was the first head of government to condemn Infantino’s proposal and has made a 'new economic model' his central pledge. But that’s another story.)
It is precisely in cultural practices such as sports that it quickly becomes clear what is also a pressing issue for the economy as a whole: namely, the question of whether certain things can or should be “owned” in a conventional sense at all. Who owns football? What UEFA states is, more or less, almost common sense, not only among fans: It should not belong to anyone. Or rather, it belongs to all of us.
However, far more important than the question of WHO is the question of HOW. What we often take for granted is nothing more than a convention: Whoever owns something has full control and full access to its total value and profits.
But ownership can be organised differently. And what UEFA states is exactly that: viewing an enterprise or human endeavour not as a tradeable asset that can be sold or used for speculation at any time but rather as an institution sustained (or, well, stewarded) by people – and for people. An institution that remains independent of external short-termism and is handed down in trust to future generations. Steward ownership makes exactly this possible, by separating money from power.
Control: yes. Financial access: no.
Thousands of companies worldwide already work this way – from @Patagonia to @Ecosia to @Grady-White Boats, whose owner transitioned his company to a steward ownership structure last week, turning down offers of $400 million and more. They all want to make sure that their enterprise can never be commodified.
For now, the World Cup still belongs to football. “And so long as Europe has a voice, it will never be for sale,” says UEFA. But the pressure of the capital markets won’t disappear.
That’s why we need structural alternatives.