NFL fans will soon be seeing VISA everywhere they look.  VISA U.S.A., now in its fifth year as the “Preferred Card of the National Football League,” is launching a wide-ranging national advertising campaign directed at millions of football fans.

The new promotion, called “VISA.  It’s Everywhere NFL Fans Want to Be,” will include national advertising, consumer promotions, direct mail, retail and online marketing, and the popular national fan search and league support.  Their research for the new campaign centered on the 69 million Americans who consider themselves “avid” NFL fans.

VISA will be hitting NFL fans where they live - making the fans’ fantasies come true. Each time a fan uses their VISA card between September 1 and October 31, 1999, they are automatically entered to win a weekly “Once-in-a-Lifetime NFL Fantasy”.  The fantasies include watching playoff games with NFL players or eating lunch with an NFL quarterback.

Because VISA is also offering your local merchants great incentives to promote the campaign--a chance at three trips to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, or being named “VISA/NFL Retailer of the Year”--you’ll be seeing plenty of the VISA logo in your neighborhood.

Hard-core NFL fans will again this year vie for one of the 31 spots (that’s one for each of the NFL teams) in the “VISA Hall of Fans”.  This is a season-long search  culminating with 31 fans being honored in the VISA-branded exhibit at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Other VISA partnerships in the sports world include the Olympics, NASCAR and the VISA Triple Crown.  You can sign-up for one of these cards, or a whole host of others, on their Web site, www.visa.com.      VISA bills itself as the “World’s Best Way to Pay”, and backs that up with being the leading payment brand and the largest consumer payment system worldwide, with more volume than all other major payment cards combined.