ZURICH: Sony, unsurprisingly considering the corporation’s financial crisis, will not be renewing its sponsorship of the World Cup.

FIFA recently ‘lost’ Emirates as a sponsor amid suggestions that the airline was concerned about negative fallout from the World Cup bid scandal controversy. However Sony’s exit had already been forecast because of its commercial difficulties and is not thought to have been connected to the bid scandal.

Sony has sponsored FIFA for eight years in a contract worth £222 million which runs out on December 31 2014.

FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke (pictured above) claims Emirates and Sony are not ending their deals with FIFA due to the allegations of corruption and bribery.

Despite not confirming that Sony will end its current agreement, he said he “would be surprised” if they extended the deal.

“Both Sony and Emirates have nothing to do with the situation we are facing these last days,” Valcke said. “I know that football is still a very strong product and I am not really concerned with FIFA’s finances for the future.”

Speaking in Belfast after a meeting of the International Football Association Board, Valcke admitted that FIFA’s image has been tarnished by the recent events.

“The image of FIFA is something I agree, over the last two weeks I would not say reached the bottom, but has reached a level which is definitely a level which we will not go lower than,” Valcke said.

“Things are happening, things have happened, but we are still doing a lot of good things. We have to rebuild this image day after day. It’s easy to destroy the reputation. It takes one second. It takes years to rebuild our reputation, but that’s what we will do.”

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