AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
By Tariq Panja
Getty Images (10); Reuters
In December of 2009 an unexpected package arrived at the headquarters of Concha y Toro, the 127-year-old winemaker in Santiago, Chile. Inside was an ornate box lined with black silk and holding a leather football. The Concha y Toro insignia was stenciled on the ball, next to that of the sender’s: Manchester United. Accompanying the gift was a book explaining the financial benefits of a partnership between the football club and the winemaker. Within 36 hours, United executives were on the phone with their counterparts at Concha y Toro, working on the outlines of a deal that was signed on May 17, 2010. An official ceremony was held four months later at Old Trafford, Man U’s stadium, where the club introduced the Chilean company as its first global wine partner. Under the arrangement, luxury boxes and lounges in Old Trafford 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 the acumen and aggressiveness that have made Manchester United among the most valuable brands in sports. A 2007 survey conducted by 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. So lucrative is the United brand that Than Shwe, until March the head of Myanmar’s military government, once considered making a $1 billion bid to buy the club, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released in 2010 by WikiLeaks. Go anywhere in the world and you’ll meet someone who knows about Manchester United.
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 ($31.5 million) a year to put its logo on the team’s jerseys; to Nike, which is in the final two years of a 13-year, £303 million agreement to produce all team apparel; to Mister Potato, the Malaysian brand that inked a deal in September to become Man U’s official “savoury 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, Manchester United announced revenue of £331.4 million for the 2010-11 season, a club record and by far the most among English football clubs—though about £95 million 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 (Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich at Chelsea; Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi at Manchester City).
The influence of money has prompted calls for reform. European soccer’s governing body says beginning in 2014 it will consider banning teams that spend significantly more than they make from the Champions League tournament. That would strengthen the position of those clubs with the most revenue—such as Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona—which could use it to buy the best talent. The league’s proposed fix could end up locking in the status quo for years.
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