New Orleans Saints' Drew Brees and Visa Collaborate to Unveil Financial Football - Free, Educational Video Game

Brees Helped Create New Game and is Featured on Cover

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As part of an ongoing global financial literacy effort, Visa Inc. has joined with New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees to launch Financial Football 2.0, an NFL-themed educational video game. This free game has been developed with help from Brees himself, who created a variety of personal finance questions and appears on the cover.

Visa's Financial Football is a game that combines the structure and rules of the NFL with financial education questions of varying difficulty to create an innovative approach for helping children and adults learn about money management. 

"It would have been great to learn more about personal finance when I was in school," said Brees, the Super Bowl XLIV MVP. "I've enjoyed working with Visa to help create and launch Financial Football, providing today's students with the opportunity to learn about the financial world in ways that were never available to me when I was younger." 

The new release is available in English or Spanish and can be played online or ordered at no cost at www.practicalmoneyskills.com/football. Visa also released the game as a free iPhone app on iTunes, along with an optimized HD iPad version.

This engaging, fast-paced game also includes companion classroom lesson modules for teachers who want to expand and reinforce greater financial learning for students. The four modules, each designed for a standard class period, cover skills and information that are vital to students' futures.

"We share Drew Brees' deep commitment to promoting financial literacy, and we are pleased to be working with him to reinvent the Financial Football video game," said Jason Alderman, Sr. Director of Financial Education, Visa Inc. "It is critical, especially in today's challenging economic environment, that everyone have access to the tools and resources they need to make informed financial decisions." 

Financial Football is the latest version of the popular financial literacy video game created by Visa and the NFL in 2005. Since then, Visa has partnered with 26 state governments to distribute free copies of Financial Football to every high school in those states.

Financial Football challenges players to answer multiple-choice money management questions correctly to advance down the field for a chance to score a touchdown. Financial Football offers single player and head-to-head game play options. This game features three difficulty levels – Rookie (ages 11–14), Pro (ages 14–18) or Hall of Fame (ages 18+). Players can select from 42 offensive plays, including running and passing options. There are also defensive opportunities so players can stop their opponents from advancing by answering a defensive question correctly.

Financial Football is part of Practical Money Skills for Life (www.practicalmoneyskills.com) a free, award-winning financial education program that reaches millions of people around the world each year. Launched in 1995, Practical Money Skills for Life gives educators, parents and students access to free educational resources including personal finance articles, games, lesson plans, and more.

Financial Football comes on the heels of Financial Soccer (www.financialsoccer.com), which was rolled out in 10 different languages in 30 countries worldwide in conjunction with the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Visa also runs What's My Score (www.whatsmyscore.org), a leading higher education consumer awareness program. The website guides college students through the ABCs of a FICO credit score, from factors that can lower a score to ways on improving it, at no charge.

About Visa Inc.

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable digital currency. Underpinning digital currency is one of the world's most advanced processing networks—VisaNet—that is capable of handling more than 10,000 transactions a second, with fraud protection for consumers and guaranteed payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank, and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa's innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: Pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com.

SOURCE Visa Inc.