When Malcolm Glaser and his brood of Glasers bought up Manchester United, they concluded that it was unlikely Vodafone would exercise its termination clause in its shirt sponsorship deal with the club. The deal, which was worth £9mn a year had another two years to run, but yesterday the world’s leading mobile phone network company terminated the agreement with the world’s second richest football club.
Apparently the decision had nothing to do with the teams failure to come to grips with high flying and spending Chelsea; it had nothing to do with the departure of Roy Keane, not yet the loss of its status as the world’s richest club to Real Madrid; instead, Vodafone has just been able to go one better and agree a sponsorship deal with UEFA to endorse the European Champions League.
For Man U, it leaves a problem. With sponsorship already in place from Nike, Budweiser, Audi and Ladbrokes how is it going to find a replacement for Vodafone that is not a competitor with one of the other sponsors?
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