It's nice to be the world's most popular soccer team.

Footie powerhouse Manchester United, which is currently undefeated and in first place in both the English Premier League and its Champions League grouping, is starting to really flex its financial muscle to score a premium for its brand. ManU listed itself on the New York Stock Exchange back in August and it has been extremely busy in its first quarter. The team’s massive debt load dropped 18% down to $570 million, the AP reports. ManU also had a big influx of cash recently from an agreement with Comcast to broadcast all of its games in the United States over the next three seasons for $250 million, which is much better than the deal worth $80 million for three years that the team just had with Fox, which reaches fewer American homes than Comcast.

The club signed 10 new sponsorships during the quarter, according to SeekingAlpha.com. One new deal was with the largest telecommunications company in Azerbaijan, Bakcell, which will allow more than 2.5 million consumers to watch ManchesterUnitedTV there during the next three years. And if you’re looking for the team’s official soft drink in Japan, look no further than fruit and veggie drink specialist Kagome. The most notable deal, though, was a pre-IPO arrangement with General Motors, which agreed to pay $559 million to have Chevrolet’s logo grace the front of the team’s jerseys.

The team also just broke up with a sponsor, DHL, which had agreed to pay $65 million to place its logo on the team’s practice jerseys. Now its management team is eager to wring more cash from uniform supplier (home and away) Nike, which gets to push its swoosh next to jersey sponsor AON as part of a 13-year, £303m ($480.3 million) contract with ManU that ends in 2015. That’s a measly $36.9 million a year!Continue reading...

The quadrennial FIFA men’s World Cup always has a huge international draw on television, but the numbers watching in India are growing. It is estimated that in the first two days of last year’s Cup, 20 million people watched in India, a 35% increase from 2006, according to the Times of India. Before the Cup ended, the paper notes, 287 people in India had watched the event.

Those kinds of numbers have some thinking that India “will become the largest football-consuming nation in the world,” the paper notes. Those kinds of numbers and that kind of interest, of course, have businesses looking to capitalize. The Times reports that “several English football clubs are entering into licensing arrangements with Indian partners to deliver a complete football lifestyle experience.”

Manchester United, the Premier League’s version of the New York Yankees with the most league titles (19) and a steady stream of big-name players, has been the most aggressive in India, partnering with Future Group-owned Indus League Clothing to create “exclusive ManU branded stores” that’ll carry everything from jerseys and refrigerator magnets to slippers for the more refined fans.Continue reading...

In the late summer of 2012, the sporting world’s eyes will be upon London where the XXX Olympics (oh, behave!) will kick off with much fanfare and probably a good many shots on the television of the Queen’s Guard marching about seriously.

If all goes well for Olympic organizers, it’ll also feature a stadium with a new name. The Daily Mail reports that the Olympic Park Legacy Company is “looking to raise about £10million ($13.5 million) a year in naming rights for the three main arenas in Stratford after the 2012 Games.”

With the Olympic ceremonies alone estimated to be valued up £5b, it could be an unprecedented platform for brand exposure. That's why London 2012 organizers are seeking sponsors to sign on the dotted line and place their names on the new Olympic Stadium, aquatics center, and velodrome. The stadium alone should raise £6m ($8m) annually, the Mail reports.

The West Ham United club of the English Premier League are looking to move into the stadium after the Olympics end, the Mail notes, which would make it part of the growing numbers of teams that play in a branded stadium.Continue reading...

English Premier League club Newcastle United caused a stir by announcing it sold the naming rights for its historic stadium, St. James' Park, to British retailer Sports Direct. In England, a country where soccer stadiums could be mistaken for places of worship, this is scandalous.

However, rising player wages and billionaire owners like Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour are making money more important than ever in the British game, as the New York Times notes.

Sponsorships, of course, generate significant revenue for sports teams, yet American sports teams have generally avoided covering their jerseys in corporate logos, even though rival soccer teams around the world (including American ones) don't seem to mind. Manchester United even has two shirt sponsors: Aon (game jerseys) and DHL (training kit). Spend enough time around a Premier League stadium and you might mistake it for a NASCAR race.Continue reading...

London is in the midst of some of the city’s worst rioting of all time and it was unfortunately timed for the city’s Olympic organizers. Less than a year away from the 2012 Games, the city is now hosting International Olympic Committee execs and reps from close to 200 national Olympic committees as well as testing a few Olympic competitive sites.

“There’s no doubt that this is a very bad day, a worrying day, for Olympic organizers in London,” commented Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics, to the New York Times. “They planned to protect London from conventional terrorism. But of all the things they might have thought might happen, I’d be surprised if civil insurrections was high up on their list of expected risk factors.”

Because of the violence, the city has canceled two international soccer matches that had been scheduled this week, and are considering the postponement of the first set of games in the English Premier League, the Times reports.Continue reading...