The positives from a 48 team World Cup and retaining an independent Oceania Confederation and having NZ qualify for the World Cup and the Confederations Cup through Oceania seem to be mainly financial (although it's going to be great seeing the All Whites playing in the World Cup Finals every four years):
- Infantino announced a FIFA pay-out of $US 5 million to every member association after every World Cup as his election campaign pledge. Surely this will increase a lot from 2026 now that FIFA have estimated that revenue is predicted to increase to £5.29bn for a 48-team tournament, giving a potential profit rise of £521m. (source: BBC Sport website this week). NZF will gain $US 5 million from each of the next two World Cups even if we don't qualify.
If NZ qualify for the 48 team World Cups from 2026, we will probably earn something like $NZ 20 million or more every time.
- Qualifying for the Confederations Cup every four years from Oceania is also lucrative for NZ (guaranteed a minimum of $US 1.7 million):
http://www.fifa.com/confederationscup/news/y=2016/...
"a total prize pool of USD 20m will be shared among the eight participating teams:
The winner of the final, which will take place in Saint Petersburg on 2 July 2017, will receive USD 4.1m, with the runner-up taking home USD 3.6m.
USD 3m awaits the third-placed team, while the other semi-finalist will receive USD 2.5m. Each of the four teams that do not advance beyond the group stage will receive USD 1.7m."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Problems Other Than The Financial Loss Related To Joining The Asian Confederation:
Things though have just got more complicated recently with the Asian Confederation combining World Cup qualifying games with Asian Cup qualifiers.
Under the new format, most of the smaller Asian countries will play only two competitive matches every four years (in a preliminary round). Yes, two games every four years...
So most Oceania members would not be in favour of Oceania fully joining the AFC if that is what resulted.
Also, AFC just aren't going to be interested in admitting Oceania nations to AFC qualifying any time soon, having just introduced major changes to their qualifying formats recently. Any consideration of Oceania being admitted to AFC qualifying would be many years in the future, if at all...
The Asian Cup for 2019 has been expanded to 24 teams and for the first time, all AFC members were able to enter qualifying (previously only the top 20 teams in AFC competed in qualifying for ten or eleven spots, the remaining spots being claimed by the hosts, the winners of the previous two AFC Challenge Cups and the top three teams at the previous Asian Cup).
New AFC World Cup and Asian Cup qualifying format (combined):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_AFC_Asian_Cup_q...
First two rounds double as World Cup qualification:
Round One: Teams ranked 35–46 in Asia play home-and-away over two legs. The six winners advanced to the second round.
Round Two:
A total of 40 teams (teams ranked 1–34 and six first round winners) are divided into eight groups of five teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches.
- The eight group winners and the four best group runners-up advance to the third round of FIFA World Cup qualification as well as qualify for the AFC Asian Cup finals.
- The next 16 highest ranked teams (the remaining four group runners-up, the eight third-placed teams and the four best group fourth-placed teams) advance directly to the third round of Asian Cup qualification.
- The remaining 12 teams enter the play-off round to contest the remaining eight spots in the third round of Asian Cup qualification
It would of course be exciting for the All Whites to play in AFC qualifying under this format.
To give some idea of how likely or not it would be that the All Whites could progress through AFC World Cup qualifying to the third round, here are the teams who have already qualified for the third round and directly go to the Asian Cup Finals in 2019:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_AFC_Asian_Cup_q...
NZ would have to be in a weaker Round Two group to have a good chance - but you'd think it wouldn't be so hard to make the next round from some of those groups.
Second Round tables:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_AFC_Asian_Cup_q...
I think NZ would struggle to make it out of the Third Round to progress to the World Cup Finals under the current 32 team format of the next two World Cups if you look at the current Third Round tables (two groups of six):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup_...
We'd be lucky to take third place in a group and make the AFC play-off.
However, an increased 48 team World Cup Finals with a rumoured 8 places for AFC teams changes things in our favour with four teams from each Third Round Group progressing directly to the Finals.