Thrive’s Kushner defends involvement in FIFA mess, hires Elon’s go-to lawyer
- ID
- 20388
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 02 Sep 2026, 3:30 AM
- Fetched
- 02 Sep 2026, 4:15 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/01/thrives-kushner-defends-involvement-in-fifa-mess-hires-elons-go-to-lawyer/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 1.5
- Created
- 02 Sep 2026, 4:17 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_founders
What happened
Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner publicly defended the firm's role in a scrapped FIFA plan to create FIFA Forward Enterprise, a $20 billion-valued entity that would have let member associations sell secondary shares to private investors. Thrive had agreed to lead a $4.2 billion investment for 20% of FFE, but European and North American teams objected to private equity influence and FIFA killed the plan before a vote.
Why it matters
This is a VC sports-politics drama with no direct technical, product, or builder takeaway. The only marginally relevant detail is the secondary-share deal structure (member associations selling into a newly created entity at a $20B valuation), but there is nothing here that should change what a developer or founder builds or decides this week.
Discussion angle
Skip this in the meet unless someone wants a 2-minute aside on how secondary-share structures in sports entities compare to startup secondary sales — but the article doesn't go deep enough to support even that.