Football is big business these days, which means most of the world’s biggest international brands want a piece of it. Indeed, with a global audience from over 200 territories tuning in every week to watch their favourite teams, there has never been a better time to sponsor a football club. But that hasn’t always been the case.
In fact, back in the early 90s and during the start of the first-ever Premier League season, there was a rather homespun approach to things.
A trip back in time to Bramall Lane on the 15th of August 1992 will show just that as Brian Deane scored the first-ever goal in the Premier League’s history.
On this occasion, Deane bundled in a header from close range to open the scoring against Manchester United and in doing so sent a sun-soaked Bramhall Lane into euphoria. This prompted an enraged Sir Alex Ferguson to head for the dugout to bemoan his team’s defending to anyone that would listen. Perhaps this was where Ferguson’s permanent red face began as Deane would slot home a penalty during the second half to seal all three points on a day that the Blades fans will never forget.
Whilst the latter may well be a bit of an overly simplistic conclusion given that you can’t typically make money without winning trophies, you certainly can’t argue the merits of the former.
Astonishingly, in 2018 Woodward secured 69 different sponsorship deals that yielded the club a staggering £235 million in endorsements for the season. The current kit deal that Woodward’s Manchester United has with Chevrolet earns the Red Devils £70 million a season alone and will run until the end of the 2021 campaign. It won’t come as any surprise, then, to learn that Manchester United generates the most money through sponsorships out of any football club in the world after hitting revenue records never seen before at the club.
With that in mind, Real Madrid can boast the same amount for a shirt sponsor as Manchester United, with the airline Emirates paying Los Blancos £70 million a year to fly their flag on the famous white shirt on matchday.
Fellow Spanish giants Barcelona are third on the list with an annual sponsorship turnover of £231 million. The Catalans owe most of this to lucrative shirt sponsor deals with Rakuten who shell out £55 million a season to have their names on the Barca kit.
As far as kit deals go, PSG comes in just behind Barcelona after negotiating themselves a bumper deal with Accor worth £50 million a season. Initially, Emirates were sponsoring the Paris giants but only offered £25 million per season which you would have to say is probably the going rate for sponsorship in France’s Ligue 1. Unsatisfied with this, however, PSG chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi shopped around and managed to shake hands with Accor on a deal that was double what they were getting from the Dubai based airline. Incidentally, in the process of doing so, Al-Khelaifi ended a partnership with Emirates that went back to 2006.
As far as the Big Five leagues in Europe go, the Premier League earns the most out of sponsorships as it generates over £1 billion a year from 440 different endorsements. The Bundesliga comes in second with 617 deals that generate £641.5 million and La Liga third with £592.4 million a season from various sponsorships. This illustrates how slim the pickings are for teams that aren’t Barcelona or Real Madrid, as the league is only third for sponsorship deals in Europe, despite having the two biggest clubs in the world playing in it.
Unsurprisingly, Serie A is fourth with the Italian league generating £383.6 million in sponsorship deals. But that is still above the amount of Ligue 1, with the French top-flight turning over £312.4 million a year.
When you add that all up, you’ll find that the Big Five leagues in Europe generate over £3.4 billion a year through countless sponsorship deals.
Those are eye-watering amounts and seem a universe away from the day that Brian Deane ran around a sunny Bramhall Lane advertising a local timber company to the world.