The world football governing body FIFA and the European football governing body UEFA have, as is well known, not been seeing eye to eye for some time, even though their acronyms are derived from French names (Fédération Internationale de Football Association and Union des Associations Européennes de Football, respectively), UEFA was only allowed to be established in Basel in 1954 with the approval of FIFA, which had already been founded in 1904, both organizations have their headquarters in Switzerland (Zurich and Nyon, respectively), and they are, of course, also closely linked institutionally through their core business.

The latest bone of contention was FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s plans to increase the involvement of private investors. However, in the face of strong opposition, the plans were withdrawn just a few days after their launch. Nevertheless, calls for the FIFA President to resign have not died down, as demonstrated by the «open letter to the football family» published on Monday..

UEFA is led by Slovenian Aleksander Čeferin, a name that is considerably less well known than that of his counterpart from Valais.

Ensuring liquidity is the priority

By its very nature, however, finews is less interested in the undoubtedly fascinating history of the football associations and the occasionally colourful characters among their leaders than in the figures and facts in the field of finance. At the beginning of August it took a close look at FIFA's accounts and discovered financial investments and liquidity of almost 7 billion dollars. Bonds are the main focus of the investment strategy, and FIFA places a high value on remaining liquid at all times.

What do UEFA’s investment universe and investment strategy look like? The 2024/2025 Financial Report together with the corresponding appendix, provides some indications. UEFA’s financial year begins on 1 July and ends on 30 June, and UEFA generally provides more comprehensive and transparent information than FIFA.

The financial impact of the Women’s European Championship held in Switzerland last year — at least in reputational terms, a success for the sport and for our country — will, notably, only be reflected in the next financial report.

Somewhat less cyclical, with the euro rather than the dollar as the reporting currency

As with FIFA, revenues are cyclical, since the Men’s European Championship, which takes place every four years, is the main source of revenue. The next European Championship will be held in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2028. However, UEFA has a source of revenue in the form of its club competitions that generates income every year and therefore reduces the fluctuations. In addition, unlike the world football governing body, the Europeans report in euros.

As at 30 June 2025, financial investments on UEFA’s balance sheet amounted to 1.54 billion euros, 1.1 billion euros less than in the previous year, which is related to the aforementioned cyclical nature of its revenues. As with FIFA, UEFA’s priority is also to remain liquid at all times and thus be able to meet its payment obligations.

Corporate bonds and medium-term notes

Fifty-five percent of total financial assets are invested on a short-term basis. «The remainder is invested in long-term, capital-protected securities and, to a significantly lesser extent, used to provide loans,» the financial report states. Overall, financial investments account for 58 percent of total assets.

The annex provides somewhat more detail on the asset allocation. In addition to cash and cash equivalents of 462 million euros, held predominantly in euros, UEFA reports «other financial assets» of 1.081 billion euros. Of this amount, 392 million euros falls into the short-term category, meaning money-market instruments and short-dated securities such as medium-term notes — MTNs, standardised debt securities issued under issuance programmes — as well as corporate bonds. A total of 689 million euros, mostly securities, is classified as long term.

«Disappointing performance»

The portfolio of long-term securities, totaling 674 million euros, likewise consists approximately half of corporate bonds and half of MTNs. The bond portfolio comprises 69 corporate bonds with an average Standard & Poor’s rating of A and an average duration of 3.6 years.

UEFA is forthright about its performance in 2024/2025. «The result from asset management is disappointing.» The reason was the weakness of the US dollar in March 2025, which resulted in foreign-exchange losses of 47 million euros. «These substantial losses were unavoidable because UEFA has to maintain a large position in US dollars in order to cover outstanding hedging transactions,» the financial report explains. Nevertheless, the investment result remained positive, although at 10.6 million euros it was 66.5 million euros lower than in the previous year.

A fraction of FIFA’s equity

In terms of equity, UEFA also operates in a lower league than FIFA, just as it does with regard to investments. At the end of June 2025, it reported reserves of 522 million euros, compared with euros 568 million in the previous period, while FIFA had 2.7 billion dollars at the end of 2025. Unlike the world football governing body, however, the Europeans have defined an explicit target of 500 million euros for the level of equity.

Anyone wishing to do so can now use the financial figures of the two rival partners to infer which of them holds the stronger hand in the ongoing political wrangling over their leadership. For its part, finews is happy to refrain from glib forecasts and self-satisfied judgements in this regard, since doing so would mean leaving its established and reasonably familiar territory.