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Man Utd could benefit from AIG collapse: analysts

Manchester United said it was “business as usual” yesterday after its main sponsor was bailed out — as experts said the club’s global power could even have seen it profit from an AIG collapse.

In a week of turmoil in financial markets, insurance giant American International Group was handed an unprecedented US$85 billion rescue loan on Tuesday by the US Federal Reserve in a bid to avoid a new global economic shock.

AIG’s shirt sponsorship deal with the European and English Premier League champions is the biggest in world soccer — a four-year contract worth £56.5 million pounds (US$100 million) signed in April 2006.

“It is business as usual for us,” a spokesman for the Glazers, the American family which owns United, said yesterday.

“Manchester United is financially strong. We have not been adversely affected by the credit crunch,” he said.

Indeed, the Red Devils’ pulling power in the lucrative Asian and Middle Eastern markets is such that a knock-on disaster from AIG was never a realistic prospect.

Had the insurance firm sunk, “I don’t think they [United] would have been overly concerned about it,” Drew Barrand, head of media with analysts Sport Industry Group, said.

“Because of the global commercial appeal that United have, you could interpret it that they wouldn’t have minded if the deal had been terminated half-way through,” he said.

“It would have allowed them to go into the market again and negotiate for a new deal that potentially could have earned them more,” Barrand said.

Barrand said it was not certain that AIG would maintain their contract with United, though the exposure it gives them and the likely punitive get-out clauses might deter them from pulling out.

Shirt sponsorship in professional English soccer dates back to Liverpool’s 1979 tie-up with Japanese electronics firm Hitachi and it is rare to see a jersey without a company logo on it.

Sponsors bring in about 20 to 25 percent of a club’s income, but while the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea can pull in up to £15 million a year, the average for teams outside the superclub echelon is around £1 million a year.
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