ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2015, Charlie Scharf, CEO, and other executives at VISA, one of the world’s largest global payments companies, must have been smiling. Just over a year earlier in January 2014, VISA had launched a global advertising campaign telling customers VISA is “Everywhere you want to be.”2 This new slogan is a slightly shortened version of one they used for 20 years starting in the mid 1980s. Strategically, VISA had determined that many of its customers would be among the world’s billions of soccer fans, as the advertising campaign coincided with VISA extending its relationship with FIFA as a “top-level partner” through till 2022. This had granted VISA global marketing rights for more than 40 FIFA events, including the highly successful 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil, and its estimated “one billion plus” viewers for the Germany v. Argentina fi nal.”3,4 And so, as the summer of 2015 approached, anticipation must have been building within VISA headquarters for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada, especially due to the favored U.S. Women’s National Team, their many loyal fans, and the accompanying U.S. television audience.5,6
Imagine then, the shock and dismay of VISA executives when they awoke on the morning of May 27, 2015 to news of the arrest by Swiss authorities of several top FIFA offi cials for extradition to the U.S.7 And later that day, concern must have deepened even more when U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch alleged “rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted” corruption within FIFA that had spanned “at least two generations of soccer offi cials who … [had] abused their positions of trust to acquire millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.”8 As a global brand and fi nancial services provider, is this really where VISA wanted to be?
