*Says FIFA Forward Enterprise Is Dead On Arrival
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Mr Tilewa Adebajo, investment banker and Chairman of Stationery Stores Football Club, has dismissed the FIFA Forward Enterprise, the proposed commercial subsidiary valued at $20 billion in which FIFA is exploring the sale of a minority stake of about $4 billion in partnership with JP Morgan, describing it as “flawed and dead on arrival,” contrary to FIFA’s own statutes, and driven by “hungry” football associations and confederations rather than by any genuine commercial need.
He spoke on the Global Business Report on Arise News, responding to justifications offered by FIFA President Gianni Infantino and by former NFF President Amaju Pinnick.
“First of all, I think it is flawed and it’s dead on arrival. This whole thing is against the FIFA statutes itself. FIFA is a regulatory body. It’s a not-for-profit organisation and it benefits from massive tax breaks,” Adebajo stated.
“It’s also clear that he has not consulted, especially with UEFA, which is his constituency. This was a man who used to be the Secretary General of UEFA,” he stated.
He questioned the selection of investors: “The whole deal is also flawed because it has Trump written all over it. This is a flawed process, whereby how did you choose those investors? It’s already been decided who they were and you already have a process. It doesn’t work that way.”
Adebajo drew a comparison with North American sport.
“Let’s even go with the American tournaments, the Super Bowl, the NBA playoffs, Major League Baseball World Series, NHL hockey playoffs. None of those organisations would allow you to go with this sort of structure, because the club owners or the franchise owners will kick against it. Why should I let you get involved in it?” he stated.
Adebajo’s central commercial argument is that FIFA does not need external capital.
“FIFA made $15 billion on this World Cup. Their cost for the World Cup was $4 billion. So FIFA right now is sitting on $11 billion in surplus that it needs to reinvest and spread out to its members,” he stated.
“So what are you offering them $20 million for? What is another investor going to do? You can take $3 billion of this money, invest it, and use it to run your other World Cup. And the model FIFA runs is such that with your franchising and your sponsorship, all your money you collect in advance. So FIFA doesn’t really need any investors. It is a self-financing organisation. So fundamentally it’s flawed,” Adebajo stated.
Asked to expand, Adebajo drew the line between those who need the money and those who do not.
“Hungry confederations like CAF, they are the ones that want all these things,” he stated.
“You are talking to the English FA. The English Premier League is turning over £8 billion a year. What does he want to do with $20 million? Does it make sense to them? Real Madrid had a turnover of 1.13 billion euros. West Ham, that got relegated, has a turnover of 200 million euros,” Adebajo stated.
“So what I’m saying is that the money these guys are offering for the value is not justified. You put a valuation of $20 billion on the World Cup tournament and somebody wants to come in and take 20 per cent of that. It’s a rip-off. And again, it’s not necessary,” he stated.
“Twenty million for each federation, English FA. When you put those kinds of things to them, you are insulting them,” Adebajo added.
On the opposition to the proposal, Adebajo noted the alignment.
“UEFA, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation have come out against it. The only people we’ve not heard from is CAF,” he stated.
Adebajo was warmer on the tournament itself.
“The expanded version of the World Cup, 48 teams, surprising teams like Cape Verde came in. We could see that there are no minnows anymore in football. There were no easy games. Fantastic. That’s what football is all about,” he stated.
He was critical of one refereeing decision: “The controversial decision by allowing some American guy to get a full red card. Folarin Balogun. You don’t do it like that.”
On further expansion to 64 teams across three continents, he counselled caution: “We have to be careful with this expansion, because you defeat the quality and then the time, because you put pressure on the players. A lot of these players are playing in competitive leagues in Europe. They need that time off. They can do it every four years. But it’s not something that you want to put that sort of pressure on them. So they need to rethink it so you don’t water it down.”
Turning to Nigeria, Adebajo was blunt.
“We are not serious yet about sports in Nigeria, to be honest with you,” he stated.
Reminded that Nigerians love sports and spend heavily on it, he agreed on the spending but not on the seriousness: “Yes, and we spend a lot of money on sports. All the subscriptions, everybody is wearing foreign jerseys. That’s why I had to wear my jersey.”
“We are not serious in Nigeria about sports because the administrators are all about their self-interest. They are never about the interests of the sports,” Adebajo stated.
Adebajo cited what he described as proof that sports has become a conduit.
“Nigeria did not qualify for the World Cup, but they allocated a budget for World Cup expenditure and appearance in this 2026 Appropriation budget,” he stated.
“So this is what sports is being used too much as, a conduit,” Adebajo stated.
He also dismissed the ongoing Commonwealth Games participation in Aberdeen as “all a charade” and “all about government looking at money.”
Adebajo’s sharpest remarks concerned the governance structure of Nigerian football.
“And then this Nigerian FA. We have NFF. We have a dichotomy in Nigerian football management. You have a non-entity called NFF. NFF is a non-entity. It’s not a legal thing in Nigeria and there’s a court judgment to that effect. That’s what deals with FIFA and CAF,” he stated.
“Then you have NFA, which is the registered entity by Act 101, which is controlled by the Minister of Sports. So we have this dual structure of managing football, and that is what is holding football back,” Adebajo stated.
Adebajo insisted that funding is not the constraint.
“I’ve been suffering for 30 years. I speak to major telcos, banks, and all that. We have billion-dollar companies in this country. All the banks can sponsor football. All the oil and gas companies have the money to sponsor football. The FMCGs have money. The fintechs have money to sponsor a proper Nigerian football league,” he stated.
“The likes of the Dangote Group. We know we can raise a billion dollars in Nigeria. Not naira, a billion dollars in Nigeria we can put into football. But because we don’t have the right people there, then it’s not going to work. Not only football, but also in other sports too,” Adebajo stated.
On media rights, he identified a specific corruption.
“The media used to be in football, but because of the corruption, you signed a media deal whereby the agents take 70 per cent of the revenues and only give 30 per cent to the clubs. So we’re not yet serious about running football in Nigeria,” Adebajo stated.
Adebajo lamented the collapse of grassroots competition, invoking a personal connection.
“The secondary school sports, the academicals, where you can get things at the grassroots, we have abandoned that. There used to be a cup named after my late dad, the Adebajo Cup, which was supposed to be for secondary schools. It was a cup that was supposed to develop talents,” he stated.
“This is where a lot of these people came from. People like Stephen Keshi, Siasia, a lot of these people that went to the World Cup in ’94 and won the Olympic medal. They came from the secondary school system. We’ve lost that in Nigeria,” Adebajo stated.
He was severe on the unregulated academy sector that has replaced it.
“So we’re going on all this academy business. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an academy that is unregulated in Nigeria. They want to sell players abroad. It has become modern slavery and human trafficking, the way we sell our players abroad unregulated,” Adebajo stated.
“How many players do we have in the Premier League today compared to the Senegalese, the Ivorians, who have better organised structures?” he asked.
Adebajo delivered the comparison that has become the most quoted line of the interview.
“We have 10 slots for Africa in the World Cup. Ten slots. Nigeria could not take one. Cape Verde qualified. We did not. What’s the population of Cape Verde? Lekki has a bigger population than Cape Verde,” he stated.
Asked about reports that Aliko Dangote is interested in buying Arsenal, Adebajo recounted his own advice.
“Why don’t you ask Dangote why he’s not sponsoring an academy or putting money into football? I told him, I said, ‘Mr Dangote, before you buy Arsenal, charity begins at home. You need to do something in your home country before you start to move into all those things,'” Adebajo stated.
“Until we take sports seriously and privatise it and let it be run properly. Because it’s not that the money is not here. The money is here,” Adebajo concluded.
Returning to the global question, he restated his objection.
“It is dead on arrival. I think we should look at other alternatives, because the $11 billion they have from the surplus of the World Cup, they have not even decided where that money is going to go. And FIFA is a not-for-profit organisation. They do not declare profits and they do not pay dividends. So to bring an investor into FIFA is something that is even against the FIFA statutes. Check it out,” Adebajo stated.
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