When FIFA president Sepp Blatter abruptly resigned on Tuesday — just four days after winning re-election — the Twittersphere had the same, immediate reaction:

John Oliver now has to drink a Bud Light Lime.

On last Sunday’s episode of his HBO show, “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver — who eviscerated the “comically grotesque” soccer governing body during last June’s World Cup — responded to the arrest of several top FIFA officials on corruption charges by urging sponsors to pull their support.

If Blatter was forced out, Oliver said, he vowed to drink a Bud Light Lime (Budweiser is a FIFA sponsor)­, ­­a beer the British-born comedian generously said tastes like “a puddle beneath a Long John Silver’s Dumpster.”

Two days later, the previously defiant Blatter stepped down after 17 years helming FIFA — representing another victory for “Last Week Tonight,” which in a little over a year has built a reputation as essential viewing for its incisive wit and long-form, heavily-researched investigative pieces.

“What they’re doing at ‘Last Week Tonight’ is really going the next step in showing how influential comedy can be,” says Bill Adair, professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University.

“By devoting the bulk of the show to one segment and really going in-depth on it, they can get laughs because they have gone deep. They’re using comedy and solid journalistic research to push a point of view and, often, to push activism.”

Indeed, when Oliver, a former “Daily Show” correspondent, ranted against the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed changes to net neutrality laws last summer, the FCC’s comment site crashed the next day. In February, the FCC voted to keep the Internet open.

And after exposing the scant amount of scholarship money actually awarded by the Miss America pageant last September on “Last Week Tonight,” the Society of Women Engineers — which Oliver name-dropped in the episode — received $25,000 in donations in two days.

Part of that influence is attributable to the show’s reach.

While “Last Week Tonight” averages 4.4 million viewers a week on HBO, its audience on its YouTube channel — where the show posts its main investigative pieces — can be much larger. The original FIFA video ranks as the channel’s most-watched, with 10.9 million views; the net neutrality segment ranks a close second (9.4 million views).

“[YouTube] multiplies exponentially the audience for these segments,” Adair says. “Now we can share them [and] do things we couldn’t do with a regular HBO program.”

Oliver did not respond to a request for comment and, in the past, has downplayed the show’s journalism, telling “CBS This Morning” in April that his goal is “just to make people laugh.”

(“Last Week Tonight” — which has a staff of eight writers and four researchers — was awarded a Peabody Award this year.)

So while the modest host may be hesitant to take a victory lap, with Blatter successfully dethroned, there’s really only one thing left for Oliver to do on Sunday: bottoms up, mate.