Search results matching tag 'Manchester City'

Manchester City to rebrand as United

1715701 — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:28:00 GMT

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and all that. The Mirror is reporting that Manchester City will next year be sponsored by Etihad – which translates as ‘united’, and should cause some amusement to their friends at Old Trafford.

What will be less amusing for the Red Devils is that the deal is worth a club record £45m over four years. While City don't exactly need the cash for obvious reasons, the deal does show the club's new status despite currently remaining hopeless on the pitch.

The paper also reports that City's kit manufacturer Le Coq Sportif is to be replace by England kit maker Umbro – that deal will net the club a further £15m.

Brands understand the passion of international sport. Daily Telegraph readers it seems do not.

1715701 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:07:00 GMT

Brands are drawn to sports for the same reasons the fans are.

It’s about elite performance, it’s about the competition, it’s about the drama and above all it’s about the passion. And where international sports are involved its about national pride.

National pride doesn’t mean being right-wing or racist – it’s simply pride in your nation.

Fuller's get it. The brewer runs great ads, by DCH, with emotive words from Shakespeare’s Henry V: ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends. Once more’. Stirring stuff.

The BBC even get it. It’s ads tell viewers that in the 6 Nations you don’t play the team, you play the nation.

But, it would seem, some Daily Telegraph readers just don't get it.

After the mediocrity of the past 1,2,3,4,5…6 years (yes, it really has been that long) England’s mauling of the French last week should have brought universal outburst of euphoria and optimism. Not so.

The players exuberant try celebrations were ‘grotesque displays of trumphalism’ to one reader. ‘The extravagant behaviour of some England players at Twickenham last week directly reflectss the extravagance of their new strip’, whimpers Vincent Gormally of Parbold, Lancashire.

Hardly. That Delon Armitage would kiss the English rose after scoring a great try against our arch rivals is hardly a hanging offence.

Let’s face it – it was not comparable to the increasingly ridiculous Robinho kissing the Manchester City badge after scoring against Chelsea just days after accidentally declaring his joy at signing for Chelsea….errr Manchester City. D’oh.

New York Yankees - sport's biggest brand says farewell to cathedral home

255762 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:51:00 GMT

Much talk over the last few weeks following Sulaiman al-Fahim buying Manchester City to rival Manchester United of what is the world's biggest sporting brand. Despite all the cash and interest surrounding the Premier League arguably the world's biggest sports brand is not a football club at all, but a baseball club and namely the New York Yankees.

You can hardly walk down a street in London without seeing a headful of teenagers wearing Yankees caps in all manner of colours (rather like Turtle in 'Entourage' who seems to have a full wardrobe of colours). It's sort of compulsory street wear with race and colour being no boundary.

This week, of course, marked a major moment in the club's history as it said good-bye to Yankee Stadium, which is to be demolished after 85-years of loyal service.

The Yankees reach into fashion and youth culture goes far beyond the realms of baseball and outstrips the ability of any other sports club, in football or baseball for that matter. Manchester United might come close (the two signed a marketing partnership a few years ago), but beyond that no one can touch the Yankees.

As part of that sporting brand Yankee Stadium has to be the world's most famous.There are certainly many that are bigger, but none as famous or that have had as much impact on their own sport and beyond. Maybe Fenway Park in Boston (home of the Red Sox) and Wrigley Field in Chicago (home of the Chicago Cubs) come close, but these are names about as familiar as Old Trafford, one of football's most famous statdiums granted, to people who have no interest in baseball.

But even Manchester United don't have something like Yankee Stadium that is variously known as the Cathedral of baseball and the "The House That Ruth Built" after ball legend Babe Ruth for whom the stadium was literally built and he hit the stadium's first home run in 1923.

There last days of Yankee Stadium, as the club literally move across the street to their new home and wave goodbye, even managed to get plenty of coverage on this side of the Atlantic where baseball and softball gets little attention. The Guardian, the Independent and The Times all gave coverage to the Yankees this week in what proved to be a good news bad news week for the team.

The very last game at Yankee stadium showed the team on great form as they beat the Baltimore Orioles and Yankees catcher Jose Molina was able to answer what a dying Babe Ruth told fans in a farewell address: "I'm very proud to have hit the first home run in Yankee Stadium. God knows who'll hit the last one". The answer was Molina. He hit a two run homer – the stadium's final home run in a night that also saw Johnny Damon hit a three-run homer.

The bad news for club was that it paid for its inconsistency as it failed to make it to the Post Season play-offs (for the first time since 1993) and a chance to make it to the World Series. A big knock for a club that has won the World Series 26 times, still 2009 will mean a new stadium and a new start - and what a start, a $1.3bn (£880m) stadium project with dimensions to match those of the original Yankee Stadium.

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Return of a champion

1715701 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:39:00 GMT

Amid all the madness of the Manchester City takeover, ‘The Messiah’ resigning from Newcastle FC and England’s footballers finally admitting they are too chicken to play in front of their home fans, some good news…

Today, Lance Armstrong, who recovered from cancer to win the Tour de France seven times, confirmed his return to professional cycling – and staggeringly to the gruelling Tour itself.

In 2005, Armstrong was named (in part due to his work but probably more due to our former editors love of cycling) as Marketing’s 100^th most powerful marketer.

Amstrong had inspired millions of people pay a US dollar for yellow LiveStrong wristband to support his charity, The Lance Armstrong Foundation. The success of the LiveStrong brand spurred other charities to follow suit – most notably MakePovertyHistory. But sadly the fashion passed and people stopped wearing the bands.

Armstong's return has little to do with winning Le Tour - at 37 its unlikely challenge for the Yellow jersey in 2009 - but is great news for the Tour, cycling, his numerous sponsors(including Nike, Oakley and Trek) and most importantly of all the cancer patients and survivors he aims to inspire around the world.