Owned by New Balance, Warrior will replace Adidas, producing Liverpool’s home, away and third kits and the team’s training wear in a deal that begins on 1 June 2012. The deal is understood to be worth £25m a year to Liverpool.

Warrior have traditionally been associated with ice hockey and lacrosse in the US, but their general manager, Richard Wright, said: “We are here to shake up the world of football.”

Ian Ayre, the club’s managing director, said: “This is another landmark deal for Liverpool Football Club and once again shows the value of the club’s brand globally. Warrior Sports will bring its own unique brand and ideas to the partnership, ensuring they can assist us at the club both on and off the field of play.”

Liverpool say they expect to earn a staggering £300m through their new six-year deal with the US sportswear company Warrior Sports, and have denied accusations that underachievement on the pitch led to the collapse of their current kit deal with Adidas.

Warrior, owned by New Balance, will become the club’s kit supplier from June having agreed a £25m-a-year deal to enter the football industry for the first time. The £25m per year is a guaranteed figure for Liverpool, not performance-related, and eclipses the £23.5m-a-year deal that Manchester United have with Nike but are currently renegotiating.

With Warrior, Liverpool will control all non-branded merchandising – products outside the usual kit range – and are free to open club stores wherever they choose. That is not the case under Adidas, who control Liverpool’s kit supply and the sale of non-branded merchandise, and the club believe they can double the £25m a year from Warrior when the current restrictions are lifted this summer.

Liverpool’s managing director, Ian Ayre, explained: “Our business is split in two. We have what you call kit, the branded products, the stuff the players wear, and that’s the part of the business that the deal with Warrior covers. In our existing deal, there have been some restrictions on that in terms of the other unbranded products we sell, general retail. That sat within our deal with Adidas in certain lines and in certain markets.

“In our new deal, we have complete control of that. We will still work with Warrior, but we will have a much wider opportunity. That area of business currently represents 50% of everything we generate. The new deal represents half of what we currently generate, so we still have another opportunity to develop similar kind of revenues and that’s what encouraged us.”

Herbert Hainer, chief executive of Adidas, claimed the German company withdrew from negotiations to extend its six-year contract with Liverpool as: “We thought that what Liverpool were asking and what they were delivering was not in the right balance.” Liverpool have, however, secured a £25m-a-year deal despite not qualifying for the Champions League for the past two years and Ayre insists the club’s global appeal ensured Adidas’s requirements were met.

“I’m happy that we delivered absolute value for a partner like Adidas and we will continue to deliver that value for Warrior,” Ayre said. “We shared all the numbers with everybody we spoke to and I don’t think it would surprise anyone to know that Liverpool are one of the biggest merchandising businesses in football and we wouldn’t have had so many people interested if we didn’t have a great business. We ran a very exciting process over 12 months. We worked very hard to speak to every major manufacturer in the sportswear category and we had winners and losers. Some people are very disappointed and some people are very happy.”

Rather than taking a risk with a company unknown in football – Michigan-based Warrior were synonymous with lacrosse and hockey before last year becoming supplier to the Boston Red Sox, the baseball club that shares owners with Liverpool – Ayre believes the club will benefit as the company’s main priority. That, it is suspected at Liverpool, has not always been the case with Adidas. Liverpool’s MD added: “What really encouraged us is that this is their first foray into football and so we are their only customer and they will be very focused on Liverpool Football Club and promoting this opportunity around the world.”

Source: Guardian.co.uk

The branding was unveiled as the team took on Manchester United at St James’ Park.

Sir Richard Branson’s banking venture completed its £747m purchase of Newcastle- based Northern Rock from the Government on Sunday.

Last night, Virgin Money confirmed a deal to sponsor Newcastle until the 2014-15 season.

Virgin Money chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia said: “Now that Virgin Money and Northern Rock are united as one business, it gives us great pleasure to continue the shirt sponsorship of Newcastle.

“The Northern Rock sponsorship started in 2003 and it is an important link to the North-East, which we are pleased to continue.

“Combined with our sponsorship of the London Marathon and the Edinburgh Festival ‘Fringe on the High Street’, the shirt sponsorship of Newcastle United Football Club embeds our involvement in the communities we serve.”

Newcastle’s managing director, Derek Llambias, said: “We’re delighted to secure this new deal with Virgin Money.”

With the Northern Rock name still on the firm’s website and the intention to phase it out gradually, Virgin originally indicated that there were no imminent plans to change the sponsorship on players’ shirts after eight years.

Ms Gadhia said on Tuesday afternoon: “It will still be Northern Rock on the shirt as usual.”

However it is understood that developments later that evening led to a change of heart. Virgin Money has moved its headquarters to Northern Rock’s Gosforth base, where about 2,000 staff are employed.

With the change coming mid-season and the fact some fans will have received replica strips for Christmas, Virgin Money last night said the first 10,000 supporters with 2011-12 season shirts who take them to Newcastle United’s club shop will receive a free update to the Virgin Money shirt.

Ms Gadhia said: “Availability of this new branding will be posted on the club website, but is expected at the end of the week.”

Ben McKeown, 34, of Darlington, who was at last night’s game, said: “I will go for anything as long as it isn’t Sports Direct. I secretly bought a Newcastle shirt for Christmas for my two-yearold daughter, Orla. Her mother is a Sunderland fan, she doesn’t know she has got the shirt anyway and she would not let me change the name on it if she did.”

Michael Webber, 49, also from Darlington, said: “I am little bit too old to have the word Virgin across my chest, but it is money we need and I think it is a good marketing move to offer the 10,000 shirts.

Source: thenorthernecho.co.uk

Although the Champions League exit will not affect the servicing of the club’s £433million debt, the internal review, which is understood to be a comprehensive assessment of the full impact of being consigned to the Europa League, began with discussions between Gill and senior figures within hours of the 2-1 defeat against FC Basle that led to United’s early exit.

The investigation includes a review of ticketing policy and admission prices, with the United hierarchy aware of the challenge of filling Old Trafford for fixtures against less glamorous opposition in Uefa’s much maligned competition.

Currently, the bank accounts of season-ticket holders are automatically debited for home games in the FA Cup, League Cup and both European competitions but many fans complained to the club yesterday that they did not wish to be included in such a scheme for the Europa League.

In response the club have confirmed that season ticket holders will not have to buy Europa League tickets on a compulsory scheme.

Players’ bonuses are also set to be reduced, with the rewards on offer for success in the Champions League likely to dwarf the incentives for a potential run to the Europa League final in Bucharest next May.

United are also keen to assess the value of television rights in a competition that has often been ridiculed by supporters, with United fans taunting their Liverpool counterparts for Europa League participation by chanting of “Thursday night, Channel Five”.

The Glazers’ plan to float up to 30 per cent of the club on the Singapore Stock Exchange have been placed on hold until market conditions are more suited to their attempts to raise £600million for the clearance of debts and team investment.

Initial hopes to launch the float before the end of the year were suspended in September and, with the financial crisis in the Eurozone, it is understood that the plan remain on hold.

United’s Champions League exit could yet affect the attractiveness of the planned float, however, with potential investors having been given a stark reminder of the risk attached to investing in football clubs — even commercially successful outfits such as United.

Meanwhile, defender Rio Ferdinand insists United will accept the “ridicule” they will face for playing in the Europa League after admitting they deserved their early exit from the Champions League.

“We have to be prepared [for the Europa League], it’s as simple as that.” Ferdinand said. “No matter what gets said, ridiculed or not, we respect the tournament and will go in there to win it.”

Source:telegraph.co.uk

Double qualification was the result the city’s business community was hoping for – as Champions League football means a major economic windfall for the city.

For modern football clubs, the Champions League is a gold mine, and as Paul Simpson, managing director of Visit Manchester, explained there is a marked spin-off for the city from success on the field.

Tourism already generates £5.4bn for Greater Manchester annually, supporting the equivalent of 75,000 full-time jobs – and European football success is a major factor, according to Mr. Simpson.

“Football is very much a part of Manchester’s DNA. From a tourism point of view, I can’t stress enough the benefits that UEFA Champions League fixtures bring to Manchester,” he said.

“They attract thousands of extra visitors to the city and provide a much valued boost to the city’s hotels, restaurants and bars.

“It also helps to raise our profile with international visitors that might not have been to Manchester before.”

Visit Manchester data says that the average overseas football fan will spend £776 in the city.

Even non-competitive fixtures have a financial benefit – 98% of the city’s hotel beds were taken on the day of former Manchester United player Paul Scholes’ testimonial earlier this year.

The last time United did not progress beyond the group stages of the competition was in 2005-6, causing heartbreak for fans and hoteliers alike.

Stephen Miller, chair of the Manchester Hoteliers Association, said at that time there was a marked drop in hotel bookings.

Although as chief economist at Manchester Chamber of Commerce Dr Brian Sloan points out, this time round both clubs are still in the Europa League.

And European football is still generating money for the city in other ways.

Manchester is currently the host city of the Soccerex European Forum, Europe’s leading football business event, which took place in 2009, 2010, 2011 and is scheduled to host the forum again next year.

According to Visit Manchester, each event generates between £1.5m to £2.5m for the city economy.

Source: bbc.co.uk

It is a significant achievement for the club as Asia, particularly China, represents a real opportunity in economic terms.

Successfully marketing the AC Milan brand into Asia is critical. Much like it was during the Age of Imperialism, though this time in a much more cordial fashion, most major European clubs are seeking financially rewarding ventures into Asia with the aim of securing a piece of the market share.

With the Eurozone crisis and the fiscal deterioration of the United States, Asia is where new money can be found. This has been known for some time but events ever since the GFC in 2008 and have only made this clearer.

Populations are rising across the region, and as with China, many Asian countries are seeing a rapid increase in the number of middle class citizens, who are the consumers driving their economic growth.

But, even more significant than the award are the numbers that were revealed in regard to Milan’s Chinese success.

The China market accounts for 18 per cent of Adidas Milan’s total business. Milan products sold in China make up 37 per cent of the top clubs sponsored by the German brand, which makes the club number one. An impressive feat considering clubs like Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Real Madrid also wear Adidas equipment.

But, perhaps best of all, it was said that a recent survey conducted by Titan Sports showed that Milan are the best supported foreign club in China with 31 per cent of the local market, ahead of the likes of Barcelona and Manchester United who have long been regarded as the biggest brand in the East.

Not to sound propagandist, but, it shows the great work Milan have been doing in ensuring the economic future of the club by capitalizing on the great brand that is AC Milan.

What has been achieved has not only been the work of AC Milan, but, of the FIGC too who played their role in taking the Italian Super Cup to China this year.

Looking again at some numbers proves that this was a highly successful ploy with the TIM Super Cup being watched by an estimated 72 million viewers in China along and 300 million worldwide. It remains the most watched sporting event in China this year.

The club has also established a Milan School in Hong Kong while there are talks of establishing formal links with two local clubs.

Such developments, which are already proving successful, bode well for the future of AC Milan. It is the Asian century after all and the clubs that will reap the greatest benefits from the region are those that establish themselves within it in the early stages, which is what Milan is doing.

Source: acmilanblog.net

The club, currently second in the Premier League, saw commercial revenues from sponsorship and licensing deals increase by 22%, to £29.6m.

Income was boosted by DHL’s agreement earlier this year to sponsor the club’s training kit.

However, the club reported a pre-tax loss of £6.9m, mainly due to currency fluctuations on its debt.

Manchester United also signed a deal with Vietnamese mobile phone group Beeline, with the club having an estimated 16 million fans in the South East Asian country.

Success in the Champions League helped boost media revenues, up from £19.4m to £22.6m.

The results helped the club reduce its debt pile to £433m compared with the same period last year.

However, it also drew down on its cash reserve, which more than halved to £65m.

In September, the club received permission to float some of its shares on the Singapore stock exchange – potentially raising funds to tackle its debt.

However, market volatility appears to have put the plans on hold.

Last season, Manchester United won the Premier League and reached the final of the Champions League against Barcelona.

The club was bought by the US-based Glazer family for £800m in 2005.

The purchase has been criticized by fans’ groups because of the amount of debt put onto the club as part of the deal.

 Source: bbc.co.uk

This highlights how important United are to the league, and the weight of any theoretical claim they might have to a greater share of the Premier League’s TV riches.

There is no suggestion United want a greater share of TV cash.

They have not floated the idea, unlike Liverpool’s Ian Ayre, who attracted massive criticism recently for doing do. He clarified that Liverpool wanted more money from collective sales, not to sell their own overseas TV rights.

Sources close to United’s owners insist they abide by collective rights selling and also by the principle that a league that broadly splits its income is a stronger league.

But the data and the analysis unequivocally shows United as the Premier League’s main draw.

A report published earlier this month by the respected Germany-based research and consultancy SPORT+MARKT concluded the total global cumulative Premier League TV audience in the 2010-11 season was 4.7 billion people.

This was made up of 3.9bn watching at home, plus another 777m ‘out of home’ – in pubs, bars and clubs.
The cumulative total is every person watching matches live or delayed, via repeats, highlights and on ‘magazine’ shows.

The 4.7bn figure means the global 2010-11 audience for each of the 380 Premier League games was, on average, 12.3m viewers per game.

This may seem a modest sum for a planet with almost 7bn people, many supposedly football crazy, but is entirely plausible.

Many of the live games on Sky in the UK – where by definition the League has its core audience – attract fewer than 1m viewers each. Many ‘minor’ games involving less fashionable teams will have barely any audience at all – if they’re even screened.

Separate data prepared for United by independent consultants puts United’s global cumulative TV audience for a season at 2.424bn people – or equivalent to 51.8 per cent of the Premier League total.

This equates to United matches each being watched by around 64m people on average – a significant increase on the ‘average’ Premier League game. Again this includes live coverage, replays, highlights and clips on magazine shows.

If all 20 clubs in the League were equally attractive to global audiences they could expect 10 per cent share of the total TV audience – because two teams play in every game so two sets of fans consume each game.

Several industry sources have told Sportingintelligence that United’s position as dominant attraction is clearly defined. ‘United are the No1 club by viewing by a very clear margin,’ says Kevin Alavy of Future Sports + Entertainment (FSE, an arm of leading international analysts Initiative) whose firm collates accurate, verifiable data from sources such as BARB and Nielsen.

‘Across many years it’s clear United have the biggest share of the Premier League TV audience,’ Alavy adds. ’The SPORT+MARKT report and our own research no doubt use slightly different methodologies but their totals don’t surprise me. United having a large share of the global figure is entirely in line with what we know.’

Significant growth potential for Premier League in most regions of the world.

Using the SPORT+MARKT viewing data, as well as financial information obtained by Sportingintelligence into the value of Premier League rights around the world, it appears the Premier League could yet achieve significant income increases in some areas.

All the UK TV rights to the League combined currently earn the League around £2bn for the three-year period 2010-13 inclusive.

This comes from for live rights (owned by Sky and ESPN together for £1.782bn), highlights (BBC, £171m) and ‘other bits and pieces’ from secondary rights (not long after live) and mobile clips (via Yahoo).

The League also has overseas deals worth £1.437bn from 2010-13, plus some minor scattered foreign ‘bits and pieces’ deals for phone clips.

SPORT+MARKT concluded the Premier League gets 629m ‘in home’ views per season in the UK, cumulatively. Out-of-home estimates add another 124m people over the season, so the UK total is something around 753m ‘views’.

Given the Premier League’s domestic TV income of £2bn for three years, that makes it £667.7m per year, for 753m ‘views’ in 2010-11, equating to 88p paid by each viewer for each game seen.

This is a basic equation that comes with many provisos: home subscribers pay more; pub viewers don’t pay directly but do via their pub’s prices; highlights viewers who only watch Match of the Day contribute via their TV licence fee, and so on. But it works as a benchmark.

In the rest of Europe combined, there were 761m in-home views in 2010-11, plus around 150m out of home, for a total of 911m. The rest of Europe combined pays around £130m per year for Premier League rights now, which equates to 14p per ‘view’.

There is sizeable theoretical growth between the 14p paid in Europe outside the UK and the 88p paid inside the UK.

Most other regions of the world pay even less than 14p per view using the same analysis: Sportingintelligence calculates it is as low as 10p per view in the Middle East and Africa.

The challenge for the League is to realise this potential in the next round of right sales, for 2013-16, when the tender documents go out in the early part of next year. The League is also awaiting the final ruling in the ‘Murphy’ case, after which it will decide how to repackage its rights, or not, to comply with European Law.

Source: sportingintelligence.com

Inside was an ornate box lined with black silk and holding a leather soccer ball with the Concha y Toro insignia stenciled next to that of the sender’s: Manchester United. An accompanying book laid out the financial benefits of a partnership with the soccer club. Within 36 hours, United executives were on the phone, outlining an agreement signed in May 2010.

The 19-time English champion introduced the Chilean company as its first global wine partner four months later at United’s Old Trafford stadium. Luxury boxes and lounges in the stadium serve only Concha y Toro’s Casillero del Diablo wines and the company’s ads appear on the digital billboards seen on broadcasts of United home games.

The courting of Concha y Toro epitomizes how United officials have made the club among the most valuable brands in sports, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Oct. 24 issue.

A 2007 survey conducted by London-based TNS Sport found that the team has 333 million supporters around the world.Last season, when United won its fourth English Premier League title in five years and made it to the finals of the European Cup, a cumulative audience of 4.2 billion watched its matches on television — the equivalent of a Super Bowl every week, according to Futures Sport & Entertainment.

Aon, Mister Potato

The club’s visibility has allowed it to assemble a roster of more than 30 global corporate partners ranging from Aon, the Chicago-based insurer that pays 20 million pounds ($31.5 million) a year to put its logo on the team’s jerseys; to Nike Inc. (NKE), which is in the final two years of a 13-year, 303 million pound agreement to produce all team apparel; to Mister Potato, the Malaysian brand that inked a deal in September to become United’s official “savory snack partner.”

“What’s the pitch?” asks Pierre Pang, deputy general manager for sales and marketing at Mamee-Double Decker, which owns Mister Potato. “Three hundred and thirty-three million fans globally, with close to two-thirds coming from Asia. That’s basically along the lines of where our strategy is: The vision of being Asian No. 1 for the potato snack segment.”

Last June, United said it had revenue of 331.4 million pounds for the 2010-11 season, a club record and by far the most among English clubs — though about 95 million pounds less than Spain’s Real Madrid, which is soccer’s biggest moneymaker.

Unlike U.S. sports, where salary caps and revenue-sharing agreements constrain the ability of rich teams to dominate, in soccer cash is still king. Chelsea, Manchester City, and others have catapulted themselves into the European elite thanks to billionaire owners willing to spend any amount to win.

Reform

European soccer’s governing body says beginning in 2014 it will consider banning teams that spend significantly more than they make. That would strengthen the position of clubs with the most revenue — such as Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona — which could use it to buy the best talent. The governing body’s proposed fix could end up locking in the status quo for years.

The people charged with selling the United brand work out of an office 200 miles south of Manchester in the London district of Mayfair, also known as Hedge Fund Alley. The office has oak-paneled conference rooms and an open-plan work space, where staffers dressed like bankers are bent over computers and working the phones. Rent for the London space costs the club 1 million pounds a year, and similar offices are set to open later this year in Hong Kong.

“Our approach has evolved beyond a traditional sports club’s, to being far more like that of a conventional blue-chip company,” Commercial Director Richard Arnold, 40, said in a conference room named for Alex Ferguson, United’s manager. “To arrive at this position we have spoken to companies with reputations as the world’s leading marketing organizations to see how they approach promotion and sales.”

History

United hasn’t always been successful. George Best and Bobby Charlton helped lead the club to a European championship in 1968, but the team went another two decades without a league title and even suffered relegation to the second division in 1974.

The improved on-field fortunes coincided with the creation of the Premier League in 1992, which made English soccer more global. Matches are broadcast live in 211 territories and income from global television rights now exceeds 1.4 billion pounds. That’s in addition to the 1.78 billion pounds the league earns from its domestic television contract.

Premier League

United has been the biggest beneficiary of the Premier League’s growth, winning the inaugural season title and 11 more over the next 20 years.

“Manchester United’s timing was great,” said Dan Jones, a partner with the accounting firm Deloitte, which has produced an annual review of soccer finance for the past 20 years. “They started to have huge success on the pitch at the time that all the other developments around media and so on gave them a place to take that.”

In 2005, Malcolm Glazer, the American owner of the National Football League’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, completed a 790 million- pound leveraged buyout of the soccer team. Glazer and his family have spent 40 million pounds on the team’s marketing strategy, including creating a sales force. Before the takeover, two people worked on selling the Manchester United brand.

Strategy

“The early months of what we did was spent in very high- depth strategy discussions [with] multiple, multiple iterations,” Arnold said. “Even now, two days a month is spent iterating all those strategies.”

By investing in research like the TNS Sport study, United has been able to get a better understanding of the brand’s value and reach, Arnold said. The result is a strategy that sells access to its stadium infrastructure to major sponsors, while offering limited territorial association rights to telecom and credit card companies, allowing them to sell United-branded products and content. Many of the agreements also include revenue sharing between United and its partners.

In the past year commercial sales have increased 27 percent, to more than 100 million pounds, while the value of the team’s corporate partnerships has risen tenfold since 2008.

The club has done it by creating new forms of advertising inventory, beyond the industry standard. The team’s global sponsors, including Turkish Airlines and Thai beer brand Singha, get physical advertising space at Old Trafford and digital ads during broadcasts of United’s home games.

Regional Partners

Since 2008 the club has also signed agreements with regional partners, which are given exclusive rights to promote their companies alongside United within specific geographic areas, though they have little or no visibility in Manchester or on the team’s website.

Arnold said one reason United is able to secure such deals is the time it spends learning about potential partners. “We found there was a CEO of one of the companies we dealt with who didn’t like tea or coffee, he liked Diet Coke,” Arnold said. “When the meeting starts he gets a Diet Coke, not tea or coffee. Everything we do has to express the premium offering that Manchester United is, and you have to be able to do that transcending industry, culture, country.”

The club’s recent agreement with shipping company DHL reflects its commercial power. Arnold’s team sent branded iPads loaded with company-specific presentations to DHL, in an effort to persuade the company to sponsor the jerseys United players wear–during practice.

In August, DHL signed a four-year contract for 40 million pounds, more than what all but four other Premier League teams get from their biggest sponsors.

Sliced Rights

It’s also an example of how the team is able to slice its rights. In 2009, Standard Chartered, the financial services company, competed with Aon in the race to sponsor United’s game- day jerseys. When Standard Chartered lost out, it signed on with Liverpool, but insisted on being the exclusive corporate name on all Liverpool apparel.

“The training kit thing is a very interesting angle because it’s essentially saying the media coverage that Manchester United get when they’re training equates to smaller teams’ coverage when they’re actually playing,” said Andy Korman, a partner at the U.K. law firm Couchmans, which specializes in sports sponsorship. “So more people are interested in seeing Manchester United down on the training ground than they are in seeing most other teams live.”

Competitors

United’s sales operation dwarfs that of any of its rivals. Chelsea, United’s chief Premier League competitor in recent seasons, has “a handful” of sponsorship sales staffers, one club executive told Bloomberg Businessweek. Liverpool, the team that comes closest to United in worldwide appeal, hired its first London-based employee earlier this year and didn’t have a commercial director until 2007.

“Any team should look at them and learn,” said Ivan Gazidis, chief executive officer of Arsenal, whose commercial revenue is about one-third the size of United’s. “But not every club is in the position Manchester United is in. So the solutions for any individual club could be different.”

For all their success at bringing in additional revenue, the Glazers have faced resentment from United fans who say the family is using the team’s income to cover the costs of buying it, rather than investing in talent. United, which had been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1991, was debt-free before Glazer took it private, and now has net debt of more than 300 million pounds.

Share Sale?

The Glazers have hired Credit Suisse to help float as much as 30 percent of the club for $1 billion. Analysts say the valuation is unrealistic because it would mean the club is worth more than $3 billion, far higher than a Forbes rating of $1.8 billion. Some of the proceeds from the listing would likely be used to pay off a 500 million-pound bond the team issued in Jan. 2010.

Financial details released in that bond prospectus revealed how much the Glazers’ ownership had cost, fueling a protest campaign. Andrew Green, a financial adviser to the Manchester United Supporters Trust, a group opposed to the Glazers, said the team’s commercial revenue is “a drop in the bucket compared to the 495 million pounds of interest, banking, and other costs” during the family’s ownership.

At the height of the backlash last year, fans brandished gold and green scarves, representing the club’s founding colors, and held up signs at home games with messages such as “Love United, Hate Glazer.” The protest colors have been less visible this season after United spent 50 million pounds beefing up its already potent roster.

Customer Data

Arnold said the club has explored ways to monetize a customer database with detailed information about 11 million fans. It’s expanding its relationships with credit-card companies. Indonesia-based Bank Danamon, Korea’s Shinhan Bank, and Malaysia’s Public Bank already have credit cards bearing the United logo.

The team is also renegotiating its contract with Nike, which currently gives the apparel maker control over the production of all United merchandise, whether its logo appears on it or not.

“Manchester United have grown … and that will reflect the price,” said sponsorship expert Korman, whose firm’s clients include Nike. “The greater the prestige of the brand, the greater their marketing team is able to go to the manufacturers and say, ‘Look, this is what we believe the deal to be worth.’”

Source: bloomberg.com

Reports in media suggest that the sale of PSG jerseys could reach record levels this season.

Far exceeding the sales of Olympique de Marseille and Olympique Lyonnais, PSG are already finding it hard to manufacture shirts for fans which means that the club’s growing popularity is not showing any signs of stopping.

The club has already made a lot of profit through jersey sale and it has been predicted that by the end of the campaign shirt sales would hit an all-time record.

In order to meet the growing demand of fans, PSG have asked sponsor Nike to manufacture 20,000 jerseys in Thailand and ship them to France via the Netherlands within a week.

In terms of name of jerseys, Javier Pastore and Kevin Gameiro are the biggest trendsetters followed closely by Nene and Jeremey Menez. According to a statistic, every second fan who buys a PSG shirt buys a shirt with Pastore’s name on it. Nene and Gameiro are far behind the Argentine star.

David Beckham is on the verge of joining Les Parisiens which means that shirt-sales would go even higher given the international profile of the former Manchester United man. Nike and PSG are already rubbing their hands over the prospect of having a world brand like Beckham on their side.

With the advent of a new era at the Parc des Princes, one can only imagine PSG to become one of the biggest clubs in Europe the way Qataris are doing things at the club. Currently PSG boast one of the most formidable attacking units in Europe and it’s only a matter of time when PSG would be rubbing shoulders with the best teams in world.

The recent shirt sale phenomena could be considered as a start to an era of dominance of a club that has not won a league title for over a decade.

Source: bettor.com/

A history of red cards and losing his temper? No problem.

Occasional off-field misbehaviour, including marital infidelity? That’s OK.

Father interviewed by police about alleged match fixing? Can overlook that.

Wayne Rooney’s chequered personal history has the football purists wringing their hands in dismay. But when it comes his global marketability, the sometimes-dubious exploits of the Manchester United star can actually serve to enhance his appeal.

As the Liverpool-born striker prepares to enter his late 20′s (he turns 26 on October 24), he shows few signs of growing up, despite almost a decade as a professional and more than eight years as an England international.

It is probably a fair bet to assume that during his post-playing career that Rooney’s maturity and wisdom will be comparable to that of Paul Gascoigne and the late George Best.

And his lack of the smooth media skills of former pros like Alan Hansen and Gary Lineker means that he’s never likely to be sharing sharp, analytical insights on cosy TV couches.

But Rooney’s brawling, street footballer image is what many fans love most about him.

Here’s a man who will lose his cool against Montenegro with qualification for Euro 2012 all but sewn up – simply because he is ‘in the moment’, contesting every kick as if his life depended on it. He will never be a ‘big picture’ kind of guy.

Bad boy

“We knew what Rooney was like and these kind of events only really serve to confirm what we thought he was: a very talented, badly behaved footballer,” said Nathaniel Milner of sports marketing company, VSM.

“He was never going to be the glamorous Beckham-esque poster boy for every grooming product and personal care brand.

“What’s happened may not even affect his appeal in the short term. Last year, Nike even used his off field issues and subsequent loss of form to very publicly rehabilitate him in the US to the current, on-field Wayne Rooney.”

This week, his club manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, publicly defended his favourite forward, saying that Rooney’s temperament had improved and that having a fiery streak wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It is noticeable that Rooney is usually better behaved when wearing the red of Manchester United compared to the white of his country.

His Montenegro meltdown saw him join ex-teammate David Beckham as the only England players to have been red-carded twice.

As repeated national coaches have failed, Sir Alex has mastered the knack of not only keeping a lid on the Rooney rage – but channelling it to great effect.

As a result, he’s scored 18 goals in his last 21 Premier League appearances ahead and only three in his last 18 England caps.

Brand Rooney

Rooney may one day reflect on an England career that failed to match his Old Trafford achievements, but that isn’t likely to affect his earning ability, given how big the Manchester United brand has become.

Even Sir Alex – and his possible Red Devils’ successor Jose Mourinho – have surreptitiously devalued the international game by suggesting that the UEFA Champions League had overtaken the FIFA World Cup in becoming the new benchmark for the sport.

The fact that Rooney’s suspension means that he will be missing for the start of Euro 2012 merely gives marketers a new angle to pursue: the comeback kid.

He will have the chance to jump to his nation’s rescue and return as their talisman in Poland and Ukraine next June – assuming England make it beyond the knockout stages.

“The majority of major sponsors are in the US and it is an undeniable fact that Americans love a comeback story,” said the San Diego-based Milner.

“Amongst the most heavily endorsed athletes in the world today are Michael Vick, Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps and Michael Jordan who’ve had alleged off-field issues including adultery, dog fighting, drugs and sexual assault.

“Their popularity and skill on the field are always going to outweigh these issues and the larger brands know this.”

Milner pointed out that Rooney’s most lucrative endorsements with companies like Nike and EA Sports were heavily focused on his on-field performance instead of his public persona.

Niall Donnelly, of Hong Kong media firm Two Up Front, added: “Even though he is a global star with all the trappings of success, the young male working class demographic can identify because they still see him as one of them.”

On Manchester United’s Asian tour in 2009, a group of Malaysian Chinese fans at Kuala Lumpur’s National Stadium weren’t totally joking when they announced on national television that Rooney was their favourite player because: “He is fat, just like us.”

While it is inaccurate to describe a wonderful athlete like Rooney as overweight, his chunky frame doesn’t sit easily in the designer clothing that Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo or Fernando Torres might wear and no amount of advanced hair treatment will turn him into a pin-up boy.

The fact that he does break the mould – and pushes the boundaries of acceptable on-and-off field behaviour – only adds to his mystique.

There is always a line that cannot be crossed, but as Philadelphia NFL quarterback Michael Vick has shown, there can still be good money to be made, even after a lengthy jail sentence, as long as the former felon can do the business on the field.

The key is to have a sharp marketing and PR team around for damage limitation, effortlessly turning apparent stumbling blocks into stepping-stones. That’s why Rooney’s Podgorica pot-shot will be long forgotten when he becomes England’s saviour at the Euros.

Source: Aljazeera