Seeing positive evolution of football among Indians: Fernando de Matos of Visa

The 22nd edition of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar that took place from November 20 to December 18 had 32 national teams from five confederations playing right here in Doha, and it provided them a great opportunity to create history.

The FIFA World Cup is arguably the biggest global event in sports and traditionally billions of viewers watch the World Cup and as they concentrate on what's happening on the pitch the names of some of the biggest companies flash on a rolling Technicolor loop. Budweiser, Visa, Coca Cola, Qatar Airways, Adidas, McDonald's, Wanda, Kia, Byju's and Vivo.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino recently shared at a news conference that the organization has earned a record of $7.5 billion in revenue through commercial deals tied to 2022 World Cup, 1 billion more than what it earned from the 2018 World Cup. During the next cycle building up to 2026 World Cup held in United States, Mexico and Canada Infantino forecasts a revenue of $11 billion dollars.

Visa, a worldwide partner of FIFA since 2007. Visa is the official payment service partner of FIFA events around the world. The partnership provides visa with worldwide exclusive access to experiences at FIFA World Cup, FIFA Women's World Cup and over 40 other people competitions.

Speaking to Storyboard18’s Shibani Gharat, Fernando de Matos, Head of Sponsorship Marketing at Visa, Asia Pacific Region said, “I have had the pleasure of working on this since our the beginning of our partnership with FIFA. We have seen an unprecedented growth of football in Asia Pacific. And then if you kind of drill it down a little bit more into the Indian subcontinent, comparing it just with four years ago, I am really happy to kind of see a very positive evolution.”

He added, “Just to put things into perspective according to the Qatari Government, Indians during the group stage where the second largest of foreigners, foreign people coming into Qatar, after Saudi Arabia. So that kind of really demonstrates how football has evolved over the last four years and how Indians are now behind this, this sport.”