Posted on 04/29/2013 10:32:06 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
LONDON (Reuters) - Manchester United are expanding their marketing activities in the United States to cash in on interest generated by a new deal for NBC to screen English Premier League soccer, the U.S.-listed club's chief executive said on Tuesday.
United, owned by the American Glazer family, have proved adept at selling sponsorship deals both globally and nationally to help fund a team that won a record 20th English league title on Monday night.
The club is looking at adding a sales office on the east coast of the United States later this year to complement existing operations in London and Hong Kong.
"NBC has the Premier League rights for next season. We should be able to feed off the back of that enhanced and wider coverage," David Gill told Reuters in a telephone interview.
NBC has paid a reported $250 million to wrest the rights to Premier League games from Fox and ESPN for the next three years.
Interest in soccer is growing in the United States where it has traditionally struggled for media exposure in the face of competition from baseball, basketball and American football.
United, who claim to have more than 650 million followers worldwide, have already attracted sponsorship from General Motors.
The team will have GM's Chevrolet brand on their red shirts from 2014 in a seven-year deal worth $559 million - the most lucrative such sponsorship in soccer.
United, listed on the New York Stock Exchange last August, are also negotiating a new agreement with their kit supplier, Nike.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Keep your crappy sports on your own side of the pond!
Sept. 29, 2013: Steelers vs. Vikings, Wembley Stadium, London.
Oct. 27, 2013: 49ers vs. Jaguars, Wembley Stadium, London.
Not surprising news. Man Utd is arguably the largest sporting enterprise on the planet. And they’re a money pump like no other.
I was talking about their crappy sport, not OUR great sport! ;-)
no worse than our sports. mostly played by thugs, constantly being sissified, and is a tax drain.
Although Forbes estimates Manchester United's worth at $3.17 billion, making it the world's second-most valuable sports franchise behind Real Madrid, its debt load left the team cautious during the transfer period in recent years. Between 2001 and 2008 Man U spent more than $29 million on transfer fees for a single player six times. In the last five years it did that just once — for Van Persie, a deal that went forward only after Glazer gave his approval — while allowing the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo to leave for better-paying deals elsewhere."We've always operated like this," Gill said. "The key cost at any football club is the players, and we've had a target of spending no more than 50% of revenues on wages."
That philosophy has been the exception around the Premier League in recent years, but it will soon become the rule after clubs ratified the long-debated Financial Fair Play guidelines earlier this month. The plan, which goes into effect this summer, will limit how much debt teams can take on over a three-season period while instituting what amounts to a soft cap on salary increases.
The cap may be breached if a club can cover the additional costs through added commercial revenue — a clause that benefits sponsorship-rich teams such as United while hurting rivals like Chelsea and Manchester City, which have been funding their payrolls primarily out of their owners' deep pockets.
Numbers are all adding up for Manchester United, Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2013.
If the EPL can put a lid on the socialism that permeates the NFL, I’d say it’d be better. But look above, say hello to salary caps.
After their draft debacle, I think the Cowboys are headed down that list.
Best thing about the EPL, if you suck, you get relegated. Could use that in the NFL.
Q. What is “Manchester United”?
37% responded “a defense contractor that makes up-armored Humvees.
22% responded “a New Hampshire-based charity”.
17% responded “an electro-pop band popular in the early days of MTV”
10% responded “a stock that Ward Cleaver wanted Wally and the Beaver to buy, but Eddie Haskell talked them into buying Jet Electro instead”.
8% responded “one of the occasional talking heads on the Fox News All-Star Panel”.
6% responded “I have absolutely no friggin’ clue whatsoever”.
2014 Rose Bowl: Oakland Raiders vs Detroit Lions - hey, PAC 10 vs Big 10, just like old times.
Meh. I don’t see salary caps as socialism, because the entire NFL is more or less one giant corporation, with independently operated subsidiaries. It is in the NFL’s best interest to prevent certain subsidiaries from being too dominant simply because they have more money to spend — they are competing in this respect against other forms of entertainment, not each other.
EPL is slightly different in that the membership of the group has a 15% turnover every year due to relegation/promotion. The clubs really are independent businesses and the FA isn’t as strong of a central organization as the NFL is (from what I’ve seen, at least). But I think the FA really does have a vested interest in making sure that they don’t become Spain, where they basically have two competitive teams and everyone else plays for third.
And yet look at the Bundesliga, which is about to put two teams in the Champions League Final....They mainly develop their players and don’t go on the wild spending binges, that their English and Spanish counterparts do.
I get it. But if I buy a Chicago Bears jersey, a portion of the money I spend (albeit a “small” percentage), shouldn’t go to support the Green Bay Packers.
I just wonder how long until the big Euro teams, like United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, etc. decide to start their own European Premier League. I mean how much does it gain United to play domestic games against the likes of Wigan, when they could play Real Madrid twice every year instead (of course assuming they wouldn’t meet during the Champions League).
Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport.
ping to #18
Yeah, 10-team divisions, with home-and-home giving you an 18 game schedule, no playoffs, bottom/top teams get promoted/demoted. Have a separate FA cup style tournament spaced throughout the year to replace the playoffs.
It lowers the barrier to entry for new franchises, too, as they would only need to be competitive in 4th (or 5th!) division to start up, but could build their way higher over time. It's also an incentive for top teams to not go the "rebuilding year" route, as demotion would be very costly.
It would probably work well for broadcast as well, with the traditional highlight games showing the top division, and maybe moving the lower divisions to nights normally devoid of football, for the true football junkies.
The biggest drawback: potential loss of traditional rivalries for long stretches at a time.
That said, I can't see the owners or player's union going for it. It's a big benefit for the top clubs, and some of the less competitive clubs might actually prefer running on the cheap (*cough* Arizona *cough*). It would probably be the end of the draft, too, allowing prospects to sign with whatever team cares to recruit them (and then possibly sent on loan to a lower division to get some game experience at that level).
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