WASHINGTON: Top football sponsors Coca-Cola, Adidas, McDonald's and Visa pressed FIFA to clean itself up as the newest corruption scandal threatens efforts to market their products through the world's most popular sport.
The companies that pay hundreds of millions of dollars to place their ads around World Cup and other global football venues said FIFA needed stronger ethical standards, after seven of its officials were arrested in Switzerland for bribery.
The arrests came as part of a US Justice Department case that named nine officials of football's governing body, and five sports marketing officials, in a number of instances of bribes and kickbacks involving sponsorships over the past two decades.
Visa said that if FIFA's ethical problems aren't addressed it may pull its sponsorship.
"Our disappointment and concern with FIFA in light of today's developments is profound," the company said in a strongly-worded statement, adding that it expects the football organization to rebuild with "strong ethical practices."
"Should FIFA fail to do so, we have informed them that we will reassess our sponsorship," Visa said.
Coca-Cola, which pays an estimated $30 million a year to be one of five official FIFA Partners, issued a stern rebuke to the organization.
"This lengthy controversy has tarnished the mission and ideals of the FIFA World Cup and we have repeatedly expressed our concerns about these serious allegations. We expect FIFA to continue to address these issues thoroughly," the company said.
"McDonald's takes matters of ethics and corruption very seriously," the US fast-food company, an official sponsor of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, said.
"We are in contact with FIFA on this matter. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely."
Also speaking out were Adidas and Budweiser.
The German sportswear group said it would encourage football's global governing body "to establish and follow transparent compliance standards in everything they do."
And Budweiser, the US beer unit of Belgian brewing giant AB InBev, said: "We expect all of our partners to maintain strong ethical standards and operate with transparency."
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