On April 6, 2005, Sony Corporation announced the signing of a global partnership program contract with the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the organizer of the FIFA World Cup. The contract, which represented the first global marketing and communications platform for the Sony Group, would run from 2007 to 2014 with a contract value (excluding services and product leases) of 33.0 billion yen (approximately $305 million). This was a very significant marketing investment for Sony, since the cost of event sponsorship with advertising was typically two or three times the cost of the sponsorship rights; hence, Sony was potentially investing a billion dollars or more on FIFA-related marketing campaigns over the next several years. Many Sony senior executives were questioning the return on investment (ROI) of the FIFA sponsorship opportunity.