UEFA Europa League Man United Ajax - Videos - Images #mufc

I am looking forward to the Tottenham game this weekend coming. Arsenalhammered Spurs today and Scott Parker was sent off so this game is going to be massive! We must win this game to keep the pressure on Man City so I hope Wayne Rooney is back from his sore throat. I cannot believe that Tom Cleverley has injured his ankle again. He has missed most of the season now due to this, we just can't seem to keep players fit at Carrington these days. Our injury list has been a constant problem foor us all season long. Oh well, at least we managed to win at Norwich thanks to goals from the two legends; Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs.

Manchester United's revenue increased to £175million in the last six months of 2011, the Barclays Premier League club has announced.
United, who are second in the table behind neighbours and bitter rivals Manchester City, released their financial report for the fourth quarter of 2011.
The figures showed that the club's total revenue at the end of 2011 stood at £175million, an increase of £18.5million on the figure of £156.5million, which United declared at the end of 2010.

The club have experienced increases in matchday revenue - up from £52.4million to £54.5million, media revenue - up from £53.7million to £60.9million, and commercial revenue, which has risen to £58.6million from £50.4million.
The club, who were taken over by the Glazer family in 2005, have a debt of £439million as of the end of last year, down from £508 million the previous year.
The reason behind the decrease in the club's debt is because United have bought back some of the bonds that were sold as part of a £500million refinancing exercise at the start of 2010.

United also reported that total operating costs rose sharply from £96.9million to £110.8million.
Net player capital expenditure jumped from £11.7million £47.9million due to the summer signings of David de Gea, Ashley Young and Phil Jones and general capital expenditure rose by £10.4million, thanks partly due to the cost of refurbishment of the club's hospitality boxes at Old Trafford.
The figures show the Red Devils currently have a bank balance of £50.9million.
The club are expected to experience a decline in income over the next six months after dropping down to the Europa League from the Champions League.

By Keith Weir
LONDON (Reuters) - A rise in commercial and media revenue helped English Premier League champions Manchester United to report growth of almost 8 percent in first half earnings on Tuesday, underlining the cash-generating power of the American-owned club.
United, the most successful soccer club in the English game, said earnings before tax, interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) increased 7.7 percent to 64.2 million pounds in the six months to the end of December.

Though United's on-field supremacy is being challenged at home by crosstown rivals Manchester City, backed by cash from Abu Dhabi, and they suffered an early and costly exit from the Champions' League, Europe's premier club competition, their brand remains attractive.
Deals with kit supplier Nike, shirt sponsor Aon Corp and delivery company DHL, which sponsors the club's training kit, contributed to a 16 percent rise in commercial revenue to 58.6 million pounds.
Total revenue grew to 175 million pounds in the period, up 11.8 percent. Media revenues contributed 60.9 million pounds, up 13 percent, while matchday revenues at 55.5 million made up less than a third of the total.
United now employ almost 700 people, up almost 100 on a year ago. However, staff costs account for only 43.7 percent of revenue, a relatively sober figure in the spendthrift world of British soccer.
A recent report by Deloitte put United in third place for soccer revenues in 2010-11, behind Real Madrid and European champions Barcelona.

Images from HQworld.net

Loading

Manchester United's Asian Commercial Plan - United Direct in China. #mufc

BEIJING, PRNewswire

 

One Creative announced today their thoughts on the development of Manchester United's Asian plan. When the United team were travelling to America and Europe, club leaders were working towards their commercial growth in Asia. Developing the three-way earning model, focusing on match earning, media earning and commercial earning, the club hopes to get the most out of the Asian market. Both the recent launch of United's Chinese website and their tour of Asia, playing friendlies in Hong Kong, China and South Korea emphasise this ambition.
Website Launch is the First Step
During the Chinese website launching ceremony on July 14, 2005, United's Business Development Manager Vange Kourentis said, "Although we can not copy fully Manchester United's earning model in Asia, some of it can be adhered to, such as commercial alignment and digital commerce."
Mr Kourentis and Mr Chen Qi Yu, CEO of China.com, also announced together that the Traditional Chinese website and Simplified Chinese website were to be launched formally at the same time. Prior to its formal launch United fans could still view website content.
According to the terms of the agreement, China.com has been appointed as Manchester United's exclusive partner and provider of Internet and mobile applications and services for the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, and its exclusive partner and provider of Internet applications and services for Hong Kong and Macau. Their responsibilities include the website and management.
Based on the website introduction, United's Official Chinese Website manunited.com.cn will offer all of the latest Manchester United news, including latest team news, exclusive player interviews, match statistics, scores & match schedules, team and player profiles, as well as membership information for the Official United membership club -- "One United" -- for Greater China football fans. Interactive features include chartrooms, downloads, online games and an e-shopping platform.
In recent years, Manchester United has launched the "MU Fans Federation," "MU Sky," and other websites, which have already become "money making machines" for the Club. According to data, website earnings of United reached GBP700,000 and GBP1,400,000 in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In 2004, their internet earnings reached over GBP2,000,000. Reasons for the increase here include more and more people using the Internet, as well as the on-line football gambling and e-business increasing rapidly. "We made a significant amount of money through internet business last year," Vange Kourentis said.
Manchester United's Money Earning Method
It is well known throughout the industry that there is no lack of famous football clubs in England, including Chelsea, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal. However, Manchester United is the super earning machine of them all. It is a real global power and international brand.
The total earning of United achieved GBP1.691 billion, with pre-tax profits of GBP27,900,000. The gross profit is GBP58,300,000 before deductions from inflation and the pay out of team members. Due to bad match results, United lost GBP14,000,000 in the rebroadcast of the Champions League. In the beginning of this year, the earning report of Deloitte shows that Manchester United's earnings is No.1 of all football clubs. This being for the eight consecutive year.
Recently, Manchester United CEO David Gill said, "Our aim is to become the best football team forever, both on the pitch and off it. We are the most successful football club."
Asian Commercial Plan
United's Commercial Director Andy Anson, said, "According to United statistics, United has some 94,000,000 fans worldwide, with 20,000,000 fans in China." At the same time, United stars C. Roanaldo and Wayne Rooney held online discussions with Chinese Football fans through the Official Chinese website. He said football fans are the biggest assets of Manchester United.
"The number of fans has reached 40,000,000 in Asia. Asia, especially the Chinese market, is looked upon as the most important market in the world by United." According data from the Chinese Football Association, Chinese football fans number 110 million. United will aim at this group first.
Andy Anson also said, "We hope to develop the whole series of commercial corporation and services. The next step -- we want to provide our product and services, including Visa cards and the Manchester Untied official Football Fans Club. We are also looking for more business partners. In China, China.com is our business partner. All our successful cooperation provides the most popular product and services, and they can help us to become a kind of sizable and fashionable economic domino effect. Depending on all of them, we can provide a full series of products and services."
According to their commercial plan, they may consider financial services to be the next step. United could provide some financial services to the Japanese market, such as VISA cards. They could also provide content services and media management by cooperating with TV & radio stations, Websites and publishing companies.
Of course, there is another reason to speed-up United's interest in the Chinese market. On the morning of the 17th May 2005, American magnate Malcolm Glazer held a 75.5% interest in Manchester United, with a higher stake pending. United has now become the private estate of Malcolm Glazer. For the family, the urgent affairs of United are to repay the billion-dollar debt that it took to purchase the club.

Loading

EU Court of Justice rules TV agreements breach EU Antitrust laws. ** Video ** #mufc

Nike Manchester United  Home Soccer Jersey 11/12 - $79.95 Sport your pride for one of the most popular soccer clubs in the world when you show off this Club replica performance jersey from Nike. Featuring an embroidered Manchester United crest on the left chest and moisture-wicking Dri-FIT technology  this jersey will keep you cool while you're cheering for victory!

The Premier League’s geographic restrictions on broadcasters such as British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY) showing its soccer matches breach European Union antitrust rules, the bloc’s highest court said in a ruling that may still limit what pub and bar owners can show customers.
The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that territorial licenses are “contrary” to competition law “if the license agreements prohibit the supply of decoder cards to television viewers who wish to watch the broadcasts.” While the court said anyone can watch such broadcasts, pubs can’t show the feeds via foreign decoder cards without the permission of the copyright owner, such as the broadcasters and the league.
The Premier League, home to some of Europe’s most successful clubs including Manchester United and Liverpool, started a three-year 1.8 billion-pound ($2.8 billion) U.K. television contract in August 2010, and receives a further 1.4 billion pounds from the sale of international broadcast rights. The ruling offers something for the league and the U.K. pub owner who tried to show local matches from a Greek provider.
“On one hand now it’s very blunt and very clear that absolute territorial restrictions on how right holders license their exclusive rights are not permitted,” said Daniel Geey, a lawyer at Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP in London. “The Premier League will get some comfort that the actual feed that goes out, which does contain copyrighted aspects, cannot be shown without the right holder’s permission.”

Red, White and Blue Pub 

 

The EU court case was triggered by two cases pending at the U.K. High Court. In one, Karen Murphy, the owner of the Red, White and Blue Pub in Southsea, England, faces a criminal lawsuit after buying a decoder card that allows her to show league games from Greek television. BSkyB, the U.K.’s biggest pay-TV operator, said the cards are “illicit” because they’re being used outside their specified area.
The current system is “not a fair, free choice,” said Murphy today in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp., adding she paid about 800 pounds a year for the Greek service compared with the 700 pounds a month that a Sky package would have cost. Sky and the league would “do anything, obviously, to protect their income.”

Audio-Visual Rights

The Premier League said that the judgment “makes it clear that the screening in a pub of football-match broadcasts containing protected works requires the Premier League’s authorization.”
“The Premier League will continue to sell its audio-visual rights in a way that best meets the needs of our fans across Europe and the broadcast markets that serve them but is also compatible with European Law,” the top U.K. soccer organization said in an e-mailed statement.
BSkyB spokesman Robert Fraser declined to immediately comment. Shares of the Isleworth, England-based company fell as much as 4.3 percent after the ruling before recovering. Shares closed down 2.7 percent at 239 pence in London trading. Sky Deutschland AG fell 7.9 percent to 1.631 euros in Frankfurt.
“This could drive a coach and horses through Sky’s business model for broadcasting of Premier League matches,” said Stuart Adams, a partner at law firm Rouse.
“This is going to lead to more football on the telly for fans to watch, and less money for clubs to lavish on the salaries of their top players,” said Adams. “That will please most fans. But it will also lead to smaller clubs going out of business which is not good news for fans at all.”
In the future, the Premier League may end up selling to BSkyB, which could then market it across Europe, said Guy Bisson, an analyst at IHS Screen Digest in London.

Pan-European Right

“Sky would bid for it as a pan-European right and then, through this ruling, sell it in all EU markets,” he said. “It may raise awareness for some people in England who want to get it cheaper, but do they really want a Polish-language pay-TV package?”
The court’s ruling “strikes at the heart of the business model that many an industry is built on -- particularly the broadcasting and entertainment industries,” said Tom Scourfield, a partner at law firm CMS Cameron McKenna LLP, who specializes in intellectual property and media law.
“Is this good news for consumers? Possibly so, if it involves greater choice in the market, but the true issue is the value of those rights and how they are distributed,” said Scourfield.

Copyright-Protected Material

Even if a U.K. bar showed a feed of a soccer match via a Greek broadcaster’s decoder card, without any of the copyright- protected aspects, such as the credits, there would still be the broadcaster’s logo on the screen.
“Practically, the feed comes with copyright-protected material” and “ it would be very difficult to separate the two,” Geey said in a telephone interview. “It will be interesting to see how the English court reconciles those two issues.”
While today’s case mainly focused on the use by pubs in the U.K. of Greek satellite decoder cards to show Premier League games, “there now seems to be little to stop individual members of the public from appropriately acquiring cheap EU decoder cards from Greece or another EU country and watching the games in their homes,” said Graham Shear, a partner in the litigation department of Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP in London.
The cases are: C-403/08, Football Association Premier League Ltd, v. QC Leisure and C-429/08, Karen Murphy v. Media Protection Services Limited.

Report from Bloomberg.com

Nike Manchester United  Away Long Sleeve Soccer Jersey 11/12 - Royal Blue-Black - $94.95 Sport your pride for one of the most popular soccer clubs in the world when you show off this Away long sleeve jersey from Nike. Featuring an embroidered Manchester United crest printed on the left chest and moisture-wicking Dri-FIT technology  this jersey will keep you cool while you're cheering for victory

Loading

Marketing deal from Malaysian financiers comes ahead of IPO float on Singapore Stock Exchange. #mufc

 I've had a great week following United, the trip to Leeds was epic!  Apart from their fans chuckin' stuff at my head that is.  The atmosphere once inside the ground was fantastic and my throat has only just recovered from the singing.  I wish we could have continued the run into the Stoke game but yet more injuries ( Wayne Rooney and Chicharito) and an extremely dogged and physical performance from Stoke meant we could only get a point.
  Ah well, I'm off to Old Trafford on Tuesday for the Champions league match against Basel.  C'mon The Reds!

 The English Premier League has always been very big among Malaysians. Well established teams like Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal have their fans here, and let us not forget the ‘hottest’ team, Manchester United. Everyone loves a winner, and Malaysians are no exception. Manchester United has a near god like status here among Malaysian fans, so it is not surprising to find Malaysian brands linking up with English Premier League teams in terms of advertising.

The most recent addition to Malaysian advertisers in the English Premier league is none other than Mister Potato. Yes, the potato chip maker has decided to grab some publicity by tying in with Manchester United! But no, we won’t be seeing any jerseys with Mister Potato’s face on it anytime soon, the advertising will be on digital boards at Old Trafford, Manchester United's homeground.

The plan comes as the Premier League team plans an initial public offering in Singapore to raise $1 billion later this year, three people familiar with the IPO plans said last week. A stake of up to 30 percent may be sold, said one of the people. The club wants to cut financing costs and raise money that could be used for players. It spends about 45 million pounds ($74 million) a year to service a 500 million-pound bond.
The club, which Forbes magazine estimates is now worth $1.8 billion and Deloitte LLP says is the richest in revenue behind Real Madrid and Barcelona in a list published in February 2011, has about 190 million of its 330 million fans in Asia.

“The multitude of local events we run with global and local partners, and a prospective forthcoming tour of Asia in 2012, necessitate expanding our footprint both with people and office space,” Manchester United said in a statement earlier this month. “This is consistent with the huge appeal of Manchester United in the region, borne out of nearly 40 years of visiting.”

 Strategic Shift
 
The deal with Mamee Double Decker will allow the use of Manchester United’s Red Devil logo and images of star players such as Wayne Rooney and Javier Hernandez, according to one of the people familiar with the plan.
Under the U.S.-based Glazer family, the team’s owners, and former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker Edward Woodward, the team’s chief of staff, Manchester United changed the way it deals with sponsors in 2008 to capitalize on its global appeal.
The club has signed regional and sector-specific deals as well as preserving the rights of global partners, allowing commercial revenue, excluding shirt sales, to grow 10-fold to 40 million pounds since June 2008.
The team’s principal sponsor Aon Corp. (AON) agreed to pay 80 million pounds for the right to have its name emblazoned on the team’s shirt for four years. The contract with Mammee Double Decker, will be the latest to be signed with an Asian company,

Asian Sponsors

Existing sponsors from Asia include India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. (BHARTI), South Korean tire-maker Kumho Tire Co. and Thai beer brand Singha. In August, the club signed PCCW Ltd. (8) as its official telecommunications and broadcast partner for Hong Kong.
The team has won four Premier League titles and appeared in three Champions League finals, winning in 2008, since it was bought by the Glazers in 2005. A decline in performances on the field won’t affect its income from sponsors because none of the contracts carry success clauses.

Overall commercial revenue is close to passing 100 million pounds for the first time, which would bring it in line with the team’s broadcast and match day income. The club has 70 employees in a London-based commercial sales office and plans to relocate to a larger property. It’s also seeking to open an office in Asia. The team is seeking global partners in the energy, information technology and mobile-phone industries.
The club’s revenue puts it in third place globally for sales behind Spain’s Real Madrid and Barcelona. Last month, Premier League rival Arsenal announced record sales of 379.9 million pounds on property sales. Yet, the sales for the team’s soccer activities declined by 1.3 percent to 222.9 million pounds.

Story from Bloomberg.com

Images from HQworld.net

Loading

Marketing Official Merchandise from Amazon. Manchester United Shirts and more. #mufc

This is just a little update noting that I have decided to add Manchester United products from Amazon.com to my site.  So if any United fans swing by and fancy buying the official latest Manchester United home or away shirt then they can directly from Amazon through my site!  Hopefully this should make some happy customers, I even have seen signed memorabilia on Amazon and the links are here on my page!  So that's the announcement done. Back soon with more news soon....

Loading