The FIFA presidency market is priced completely wrong

On Wednesday, FIFA's management board met for seven hours in Rabat and told Gianni Infantino to stay. Polymarket's Infantino out as FIFA president market spent the next 18 hours going the other way. Yes touched 44 cents on Tuesday evening and costs 19.5 now, so the no side costs 80.5 cents and pays 24% on December 31.

The market resolves yes only if Infantino stops being president of FIFA, or says he intends to, before the year ends. Suspensions and administrative leave are ruled out in the text. The election that could actually unseat him is on March 18, 2027, which is 77 days after this market has already settled.

That leaves one mechanism inside the window:

• FIFA has 211 member associations, and 43 of them can force a no-confidence motion onto a congress agenda
• The only extraordinary congress on the calendar is November 23, and its agenda closes on September 23
• Removing Infantino there needs 106 votes, a simple majority of the membership
• UEFA's 55 federations voted to boycott FIFA competitions on July 30, and none of them has filed anything since
• No FIFA president has ever been removed by a vote of the congress

The yes case needs Infantino to decide, but on Wednesday he apologized for the errors in a $4.2bn plan to sell part of FIFA to private investors, and stayed. Luis Figo said he had debased the office, while Canada's prime minister said the affair should be fatal to him. However, FIFA's secretary general and management board reaffirmed their support the same evening.

48 days remain before September 23. After that date, 99 of the market's 147 remaining days contain no scheduled way to remove him at all, and the yes side is left waiting on a sentence Infantino has now refused to say twice.