Research
Almost nobody is defending Gianni Infantino anymore
6,505 third-party Instagram posts from 2,302 creators and publishers across 33 markets, watched frame by frame, with Infantino's own account excluded. Rated posts grew 32× from April to July. Since the FIFA Forward Enterprise plan leaked on July 28, negative content has outnumbered positive 55 to 1.
Until April, creators and publishers posting about FIFA had almost nothing bad to say about its president – they barely said anything at all, and most of the few mentions that existed were positive.
As the World Cup approached and controversies began to mount, mentions started to rise – and the share of negative content with them. Through June and July the volume grew sharply, and since the FIFA Forward Enterprise plan leaked on July 28, negative content has outnumbered positive 55 to 1.
growth in rated postsApril → July (63 → 1,994)
negative : positive since Jul 28(1,193 rated mentions)
- 6,505
- third-party posts YTD
- 2,302
- creators & publishers
- 33
- markets covered
- 44M
- engagements
- 418M
- video views
Content sentiment evolution
Negative content overtook positive in April and has stayed ahead since. The break point came with the leak. The negative share reached 48% in July, and 56% in August, while positive content fell to just 1%. That makes August the first month where negative posts outnumber neutral and positive combined – 387 against 305.
Conversation volume
Rated third-party posts per month, stacked by sentiment (visual-only appearances excluded)
* Aug 1–26 only. Source: Ravineo.
The next chart marks some of the most discussed stories behind the shift. Two of them are pre-leak. The World Cup ticket-pricing backlash built from April to June (81 posts, then 128, with one German talk-show segment reaching 111K engagements), fuelled by Infantino's repeated public defence of the pricing. The refereeing and disciplinary controversies followed across June and July (183 posts, then 326, including a Match of the Day takedown that drew 192K engagements – the single biggest post in the dataset), among them the lifting of Balogun's red-card ban. The FIFA Forward Enterprise plan then leaked on July 28, and the reaction arrived within days – a joint open letter, federations withdrawing support, and calls for Infantino's resignation. That is when the positive share effectively disappears.
Share of rated mentions
April onwards (Jan–Mar have too few rated mentions to compare) · each numbered story moved the needle
Rated mentions only (~58% of posts); visual-only appearances excluded. August is a partial month, Aug 1–26, drawn hollow. Source: Ravineo.
Main content themes
Not every story carries the same weight. One theme dominates: Trump proximity and World Cup commercialization appear in 39% of the 5,557 posts, over three times more than anything else. It is the through-line of the criticism, running through several of the other themes.
Main content themes
Share of 5,557 posts, Apr 1 – Aug 26, excluding Infantino's own account
Themes come from multilingual keyword detection over the AI transcripts and descriptions; they can overlap, so shares do not sum to 100%. Source: Ravineo.
Brand & media content
Negative2.6M views
“an unprecedented earthquake in the world of football”
The single most-viewed post of the crisis: a boycott explainer on the FFE rights sale reaching France, Spain and England audiences.
View on Instagram
Neutral122.6K engagement
Breaking-news graphic: UEFA withdrawing from FIFA competitions over the private-investor plans, Čeferin vs Infantino head to head. At 122.6K engagements, the most-engaged post of the crisis window.
View on Instagram
Negative60.8K views
“It wasn't an error, right? It was a plan.”
Burley calls out FIFA's integrity and demands Wenger and FIFA-paid legends speak up – pundit clips like this set the tone UK media repeats.
View on Instagram
Negative73.9K views
“Gianni Infantino should resign now to save soccer”
– Luís Figo, Ballon d'Or winner and former Infantino supporter, quoted in Gazzetta's FFE explainer. The Figo clip is the most-reused asset in Italian feeds.
View on Instagram
No sentiment158.7K views
The Telegraph thread going international: UEFA-era severance allegations (€170K raise, paid-for MBA), Platini's role, FIFA's denial – all within 48 hours of the story breaking.
View on Instagram
No sentiment72.3K engagement
'For / against' country map of Infantino's support – even neutral scoreboard content now frames his presidency as contested. 72.3K engagements on one image.
View on InstagramCreator content
Negative1.6M views
“a $20 billion private company backed by Jared Kushner to run the World Cup”
US political creator, 3.1M views across three FIFA videos – the crisis crossed from football media into political feeds on day one.
View on Instagram
Negative166.2K views
“Who is running to support him? Argentina itself.”
Italian refereeing creator lists a decade of alleged FIFA favoritism toward Argentina – record penalties, cancelled suspensions, automatic 2030 qualification – to frame the AFA's support letter.
View on Instagram
Neutral35.3K views
“huge pressure mounting on Gianni Infantino”
TV presenter breaking down the Telegraph story to camera: the denied allegations, UEFA's confirmation a payment was made within the rules, and where the pressure is coming from.
View on Instagram
Negative39.7K views
“Does this letter mean the end of Gianni Infantino?”
German football creator connecting the dots for his audience: the FFE salary jump ($6M to $64M), the open letter, and the €200K UEFA severance claim – the whole crisis in one explainer.
View on Instagram
Negative1.0K engagement
“Their leader is a genuine sociopath”
Leadership author using FIFA as a case study in toxic leadership – the conversation has escaped football entirely and now reaches self-development audiences.
View on Instagram
Neutral24.7K views
“repeating an allegation does not make it true”
Spanish-language news creator reporting FIFA's counter-offensive: the “disinformation campaign” statement and the reminder that Infantino was democratically elected.
View on InstagramCurrent state by market
Since the leak, negative content has led in every market measured, peaking at a 71% share in the UK. No market shows a meaningful positive share; the US has the most favourable negative-to-positive ratio, and it is still 51% negative against 2% positive.
Sentiment by market
Rated mentions since Jul 28 · value shown = % negative
Source: Ravineo.
Main takeaways
Europe holds the most negative sentiment. UK 71% negative, Italy 63%, Austria 63%, Netherlands 62%, Germany 58%. Paid FIFA creator content would most probably be received with comment backlash.
The support pockets are narrow. No major market shows meaningful positive share.
The narrative is still moving. Creator sentiment should be tracked continuously due to the ongoing conversations about FIFA and Gianni Infantino.
Methodology
How the dataset was built: AI vision, not keyword matching. Mentions are detected by Ravineo AI vision watching the content itself, every frame and every second of audio. A post counts as a FIFA / World Cup mention whether the brand is spoken aloud, shown on screen (logos, jerseys, documents, on-screen text) or written in the caption. Text-only scanning would miss most of this dataset.
The full FIFA / World Cup detection set was then trimmed to content that also discusses Gianni Infantino: 7,321 Instagram posts, Jan 1 – Aug 26, 2026. Infantino's own account is excluded from every figure – its 816 posts and 43M engagements would otherwise account for nearly half of all positive mentions (11 of 24 since July 28, and 15 of 21 in January). All numbers here therefore describe 6,505 third-party posts from 2,302 creators and publishers across 33 markets.
Theme shares in "Main content themes" come from multilingual keyword detection over the AI transcripts and descriptions across the full Apr 1 – Aug 26 traction window (5,557 posts); themes can overlap, so shares don't sum to 100%.
How sentiment is scored: content sentiment, not comment sentiment. Each brand mention is rated by AI on a 5-point scale, very negative to very positive. This is the sentiment of the content itself, not the comments underneath it.
It is not text analysis. The AI weighs what is actually being said in the transcript together with facial expressions, tone and visual context: a presenter's exasperation counts, a thumbs-up photo under a critical headline doesn't fool it. Percentages in this briefing use rated mentions only (~58% of posts); the remainder are visual-only brand appearances with no expressed stance.
About Ravineo
Ravineo's AI watches influencer videos frame by frame and transcribes every word across millions of profiles in EU27 + UK and beyond, detecting brands whether they're spoken, shown or written, with timestamps and per-mention sentiment.
Media inquiries and the full post-level dataset behind this briefing: talk to our team.
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