Who Owns FIFA?

Nobody owns FIFA, and nobody can. It is an association registered under Swiss law, not a company — it has no shares, no shareholders and no owner, and it cannot be bought at any price. Its members are the 211 national football associations, including England’s FA, and they collectively control it through the FIFA Congress. Companies House holds nothing, because FIFA is not a British entity. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Fifa?

No one. This is not evasion — it is a structural fact, and it is the whole answer.

FIFA is a Verein, an association constituted under Article 60 of the Swiss Civil Code, based in Zurich. That legal form has no share capital. There is nothing to own, nothing to buy and nothing to inherit.

Its members are national football associations — 211 of them — each admitted by the Congress. The Football Association represents England, with separate members for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: four of FIFA’s members are British, a historical arrangement no other country enjoys.

Current owners and shareholding structure

There is no shareholding structure. In place of one:

• The FIFA Congress is the supreme body. Each member association has one vote, and they are equal.
• The FIFA Council handles governance between Congresses.
• The President — currently Gianni Infantino — leads the administration.

One vote per association is the detail that explains most of FIFA’s politics. England, with one of the world’s largest football economies, has exactly the same voting weight as the smallest member. Presidential elections are therefore won by assembling large numbers of small associations, not by commanding the big ones — and the development funding FIFA distributes to members flows into that same electorate.

No member can sell its membership, and no outside investor can acquire a stake.

Key controlling people and entities

Control sits with the Congress in theory and with the President and Council in practice. FIFA holds no ownership of clubs, leagues or players; it governs competitions and the laws of the game, the latter jointly through the International Football Association Board.

What FIFA does own is rights. The World Cup’s broadcasting and sponsorship rights are its overwhelming source of income, and the tournament funds essentially the entire organisation across each four-year cycle. That is why FIFA’s commercial decisions cluster around the World Cup, and why the expansion of the men’s tournament to 48 teams was a financial decision as much as a sporting one.

FIFA’s officials have been the subject of extensive criminal proceedings — most prominently the US Department of Justice indictments from 2015, which brought down the previous president and much of the leadership. Those cases concerned individuals, not ownership, and they did not and could not change who owns FIFA, because the answer was already nobody.

Ownership history

FIFA was founded in 1904 in Paris by seven European associations. Its legal form has not fundamentally changed since.

• 1904 — founded; the British associations initially stayed out, joining and leaving more than once.
• 1930 — the first World Cup.
• 1932 — headquarters established in Zurich.
• 2015 — US and Swiss investigations; Sepp Blatter resigns; Gianni Infantino elected in 2016.

In 122 years FIFA has never been owned, sold, floated or acquired. That makes it one of very few organisations on this site with no ownership history at all — the entire question is answered by its legal form.

Related clubs or investment group

FIFA owns no clubs and holds no investments in them. Its relationship to the game runs through its members and the confederations — UEFA in Europe, CONMEBOL in South America and four others — which are themselves separate associations, not subsidiaries. UEFA is not owned by FIFA.

National associations are likewise members, not property. The FA is an English company limited by guarantee with its own governance; the Premier League is a company owned by its twenty member clubs; the EFL operates on a comparable basis. None is owned by FIFA, and FIFA does not own the clubs covered elsewhere on this site.

The contrast with those clubs is the point. Manchester United, Chelsea and Leeds have owners, and their owners can sell. Football’s governing bodies are structured so that they cannot.

Sources and verification

FIFA is not registered at Companies House and appears in no UK filing, so nothing on this page comes from the British register.

The authoritative sources are the FIFA Statutes, which set out the association’s legal form, membership and voting, and FIFA’s own annual financial reports. FIFA is registered in the Swiss commercial register in Zurich, which records its status as an association.

Swiss associations face materially lighter disclosure requirements than UK companies — there is no PSC register, no equivalent of Companies House filings and no beneficial ownership regime to apply, because there is no beneficial owner. FIFA’s transparency, such as it is, is voluntary and self-published. That is a genuine limitation on anything anyone can verify about it independently.