Premier League club Manchester United have announced the "biggest shirt sponsorship deal in world football" with an almost $75M-a-year agreement with Snapdragon, according to Richard Fay of the MANCHESTER EVENING STANDARD. Fay noted the deal not "only highlights the huge commercial value of United as a brand," but it also has to "bring into question whether the Glazers will really sell when it remains so profitable for them." In the years ahead, United stand to "make even more money from the Champions League restructure," and due to the new rules favoring historically successful clubs, there will be an "even lower threshold for them to qualify." Throw into the equation the rise of the Saudi Pro League and how teams from the Middle East "might look to offer huge sums for lucrative friendlies or even push for an intercontinental tournament pitting them against the world elite," and it is "quite easy to see why the Glazers might even end up asking for more money" (MANCHESTER EVENING STANDARD, 9/13).
BRAND REMAINS STRONG: THE ATHLETIC’s Matt Slater writes while most ManU fans have “spent the past couple of months worrying about the club’s owners, the summer recruitment efforts, [and] off-field scandals,” the commercial department have signed “two stonking deals that confirm one simple fact: Manchester United are massive.” GlobalData Head of Sport Analysis Conrad Wiacek said, “While many fans will complain about the direction of the club on the pitch, it is undeniable that, commercially, the 20-time champions of England are still an exceedingly strong brand.” Qualcomm will “pay about a third more” than German software company TeamViewer did for the “privilege of having its logo splashed across the chests of United players.” The Adidas deal is “probably an even better example of how United’s outsized gravitational pull appears to do strange things to marketing executives.” When United told Nike that Adidas was “willing to give them” around $93M a season for 10 years, some say that they “could hear the laughter from their base in the U.S. state of Oregon almost 5,000 miles away in Manchester.” Eight years into that deal and Adidas has agreed, “under no obvious signs of coercion, to extend it by another decade" for around $18.6M a year more (THE ATHLETIC, 9/14).
