International Sport and Leisure (ISL) was a Swiss

sports marketing Sports marketing as a concept has established itself as a branch of marketing over the past few decades, however, a generally accepted definition does not exist. Academicians Kaser and Oelkers (2005, p. 9) define sports marketing as 'using spor ...

company that was closely bound to

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

History

ISL was established by former

Adidas Adidas AG (; stylized as adidas since 1949) is a German multinational corporation, founded and headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, that designs and manufactures shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufactur ...

boss

Horst Dassler Horst Dassler (12 March 1936 – 9 April 1987) was a German businessman. The son of Adolf "Adi" Dassler, founder of Adidas. Horst Dassler founded Arena, a swimwear company, and became chairman of Adidas, and at the time of his death it was the w ...

, and was associated with FIFA, the

International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...

and the International Association of Athletics Federations. It collapsed in 2001 with debts of £153 million. In 2008, following a four-year investigation by prosecutors in the Swiss canton of

Zug , neighboring_municipalities = Cham, Baar, Walchwil, Steinhausen, Unterägeri , twintowns = Fürstenfeld (Austria), Kalesija (Bosnia-Herzegowina) Zug (Standard German: , Alemannic German: ; french: Zoug it, Zugo r ...

, six former ISL executives, including the former chairman Jean Marie Weber, were accused of a series of charges including fraud, embezzlement and the falsification of documents. Court documents released in 2012 show that two FIFA executives, former president João Havelange and

Ricardo Teixeira Ricardo Terra Teixeira (; born June 20, 1947) is the former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF). He was in the office from January 16, 1989 to March 12, 2012. In July 2012 a Swiss prosecutor's report revealed that, during hi ...

, received 41m CHF (£27m) worth of bribes from ISL between 1992 and 2000. Only 3m CHF of these were repaid. In July 2012, the reformed

FIFA Ethics Committee The FIFA Ethics Committee is one of FIFA's three judicial bodies. It is organized in two chambers, the ''Investigatory Chamber'' and the ''Adjudicatory Chamber''. Its duties are regulated by several official documents, most importantly the ''FIF ...

began investigating the illegal payments made by ISL, in addition to evaluating the behaviour of FIFA president

Sepp Blatter Joseph "Sepp" Blatter (born Josef Blatter; 10 March 1936) is a Swiss former football administrator who served as the eighth President of FIFA from 1998 to 2015. He has been banned from participating in FIFA activities since 2015 as a result of ...

in the affair. ISL had specialized in buying and selling broadcast rights to FIFA events such as World Cups on contracts worth millions of dollars. The case was closed on 30 April 2014 after an investigation by Garcia, with

Hans-Joachim Eckert Hans-Joachim Eckert (born 1948, in Plochingen Plochingen (Swabian: ''Blocheng'' or ''Blochenga'') is a town in the district of Esslingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It lies on the river Neckar, on which it has a river port. With ab ...

ruling that bribes had been paid by ISL between 1992 and 2000 to Havelange, Teixeira and

Nicolas Leoz Nicolas or Nicolás may refer to: People Given name * Nicolas (given name) Mononym * Nicolas (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer * Nicolas (footballer, born 2000), Brazilian footballer Surname Nicolas * Dafydd Nicolas (c.1705–1774), ...

, then-president of

CONMEBOL The South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL, , or CSF; es, Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol; pt, Confederação Sul-Americana de Futebol) is the continental governing body of football in South America (apart from Guyana, Suri ...

. As Havelange (honorary president of FIFA) and Leoz had already resigned from their posts earlier in April 2014, no "

superfluous Superfluous means unnecessary or excessive. It may also refer to: *Superfluous precision, the use of calculated measurements beyond significant figures *''The Diary of a Superfluous Man'', an 1850 novella by Russian author Ivan Turgenev *Superfluo ...

" further action was taken. In contrast, Blatter was exonerated of "criminal or ethical misconduct", but was also described as "clumsy" and it was questioned whether he "knew or should have known over the years before the bankruptcy of ISL that ISL had made bribes to other FIFA officials".

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Article on ISL
– ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'' Sports event promotion companies Defunct companies of Switzerland FIFA Sports marketing {{Switzerland-company-stub

History

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