The Visa and Fifa row is showing no signs of going away quietly. A court earlier this week ruled that Visa could not sponsor Fifa events because a deal with incumbent Mastercard gave the latter brand first refusal for future tie-ups. Mastercard argued that they had not been given this chance.
Now Fifa has ‘parted company’ with four employees involved in the Visa deal – Jerome Valcke, the director of marketing and TV and three colleagues: Tom Houseman, Robert Lampman and Stefan Schuster. While the organisation claimed that the judge was biased towards Mastercard, it acknowledged that the Fifa employees had broken the brand’s ‘business principles’.
So what now for Fifa? Has the brand been tarnished by this court case? It certainly seems a worrying way to treat a partner if the whole point of these extremely expensive sponsorships is to form a brand relationship at the highest level. How will these two brands work together now?
