As part of his ongoing coverage of FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, John Oliver argued recently that the only people with the power to get rid of FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter*, are its sponsors. Days earlier, fourteen people had been indicted—including seven FIFA officials who were arrested in Switzerland—on charges of racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering that ranged from a maze of wire transfers to outright bribes in envelopes filled with cash. Much of that money, the Justice Department alleges, came from FIFA’s increasingly lucrative broadcast contracts, such as those with Fox, Telemundo, and Canada’s TSN, as well as through corporate partnerships with some of the most recognizable brands in the world: McDonald’s, Budweiser, Nike, Adidas, Visa, Coca-Cola, Hyundai.

And so Oliver bargained with FIFA’s sponsors: he would wear one of Adidas’s gold shoes, take a bite of every item on the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, and drink a bottle of Bud Light Lime if only they would pull their support from the organization and, by doing so, help get rid of Blatter.

Oliver’s plea was played for laughs, but it gets at a larger issue raised by the scandal. “The revenue generated by the commercialization of the media and marketing rights associated with soccer constituted an essential source of revenue for the enterprise,” the indictment said, referring to FIFA and its confederations. If FIFA officials are being charged with money laundering, what responsibility, if any, falls to those companies that may have provided the money in the first place?

“The investigation is pointing toward a tight connection between sponsor dollars and bribes,” Robert Boland, an N.Y.U. law professor who focusses on sports, said. “The question is what does this do. Is the sponsor liable? Is there a new legal standard for liability? What did a company know and when?”

Some of these questions will be difficult to answer right away. Officials with the Justice Department have said that their investigation is “ongoing,” leaving open the question of whether sponsors could face charges, and of what kind. (The Justice Department has not responded to a request for comment.) But as the investigation continues, Boland said that he anticipated many of FIFA’s sponsors would conduct internal audits of their relationships. Such examinations would be normal if a case involved an organized-crime syndicate, say, but for the world of sports marketing, Boland added, “we’ve opened up a new culpability.” Few sponsors have been so directly tied to scandals with the level of organizational scope that the Justice Department alleges in regards to FIFA.

It is possible that the potential for liability in the current scandal may push sponsors to act more decisively against FIFA in a way that other controversies—such as the deaths of migrant workers in Qatar tied to the construction of the country’s World Cup stadiums—have not. But, so far, most of the public statements made by companies have effectively been finger wagging. From Adidas: “The negative tenor of the public debate around FIFA at the moment is neither good for football nor for FIFA and its partners.” A spokeswoman for Budweiser said that the company expected “all of our partners to maintain strong ethical standards and operate with transparency.” McDonald’s called the news from the Justice Department “extremely concerning.” None of them have announced whether they’re going to yank their checkbooks.

The billionaire Richard Branson, who heads the London Marathon title sponsor Virgin and the newly formed Virgin Sports, blasted FIFA’s sponsors, saying that he hoped companies would “reconsider their commitments” beyond issuing statements of concern. “Sponsorship money has played a major role in enabling and sustaining this corrupt system for decades, it seems. I couldn’t think of a greater risk to any brand than being described as complicit in what really looks like organized crime.”

But for many FIFA sponsors, any potential damage to their reputations hasn’t been direct. Most people purchasing a pair of Nikes, eating a Big Mac, or opening a can of Bud Light aren’t likely to immediately think of recent FIFA bribery headlines. No one is losing money—yet. Unless customers, or company boards, lash out dramatically, executives have little reason to budge. That leaves many of FIFA’s sponsors playing a game of wait-and-see, both legally and in terms of consumer relations, Rick Burton, a professor of sports management at Syracuse University, said.

“There’s a capriciousness from the sponsors,” Burton said. “If I’m a sponsor, I have to be careful about America’s righteous indignation versus the population I’m trying to sell cheeseburgers to [in other countries]. There are going to be people who think America is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Historically, companies haven’t hesitated to end their relationships with professional athletes amid scandals. Nike ended its endorsement of Ray Rice after video surfaced of him physically abusing his wife. Radisson Hotels severed ties with the Minnesota Vikings when the running back Adrian Peterson was charged with child abuse. After doping officials charged Lance Armstrong with using performance-enhancing drugs, he lost the support of several sponsors, including Nike and InBev.

But sporting organizations have not always faced such consequences. When sponsors of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were blasted in the press and on social media for not condemning Russia’s anti-gay laws, some of them, including Coca-Cola, defended their partnerships with the International Olympic Committee. N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell was criticized for how he handled the Rice case, but N.F.L. sponsors maintained their lucrative partnerships with the league.

FIFA essentially has a monopoly on soccer, which continues to be the world’s most popular sport and a multinational corporation’s marketing dream. Last year’s World Cup was one of the highest-rated global television events ever. The month-long tournament was responsible for more than three billion interactions on Facebook and six hundred and seventy-two million on Twitter. A company can choose among plenty of professional athletes to hock its wares, but if it wants to reach soccer fans around the world, FIFA is the gatekeeper.

Corporations dealing with FIFA have the power to pressure the organization to change, considering the fact that they’re providing most of its money. So far, though, there’s little evidence that such pressure is being applied. “In an ideal world, an ethical company would disassociate,” Matthew J. Bernthal, a professor of sports management at the University of South Carolina, said. “But from a business perspective, they gauge what they think the consumer reaction is going to be and that’s part of their consideration.”

In this way, Bernthal said, a dimension of corporate responsibility falls on soccer fans. Just as a conscientious viewer might choose to boycott the Olympics in Russia or the World Cup in Qatar, they could avoid supporting those companies whose profits in turn go to FIFA. John Oliver offered sponsors his support if they would stop giving FIFA theirs; soccer fans, lacking Oliver’s platform, could express their frustration by drinking Coors and going to Burger King.

Reform certainly doesn’t seem to be coming from FIFA itself. On Friday, Sepp Blatter was reëlected for a fifth term as president. For a majority of the voting member countries, the benefits that have accrued under Blatter’s watch so far outweigh any scandal. On paper, to this point, it’s hard to see any change.

*Update: On Tuesday, Sepp Blatter announced that he would resign as the president of FIFA and called for a new election to be scheduled as soon as possible.