Richest club in the world signs richest sponsorship in the world

The City of Manchester Stadium is now Etihad Stadium as a result of a sponsorship deal worth up to 400 million ($642.4 million) -- a new world record for this kind of sports sponsorship -- between Sheikh Mansour's Man City and Etihad Airways. Man City chief executive Garry Cook is calling it, "one of the most important arrangements in the history of world football." Conveniently, it will also go a long way in helping big-spending Man City work toward breaking even to adhere to UEFA's new financial fair play rules.

The Guardian puts this number in perspective:

The 10-year agreement, which means City's ground is renamed the Etihad Stadium, will be worth more than twice the previous record, JP Morgan Chase's $300m (187m) [partnership over 10 years with] Madison Square Garden, while simultaneously demonstrating the growing disparity between the top clubs in English football.

To put it into context, the deal Arsenal struck with Emirates in 2004 was valued at 90m [$144.5m] over 15 years. Around 48m of that came via shirt sponsorship, with the naming rights worth only 2.8m a year. Chelsea and Tottenham have both scoured the market for a deal in the region of 10-15m [$16.1-24.1m] a year but found no serious interest. Newcastle have also been unable to find a sponsor since the club's owner, Mike Ashley, tested the waters with a short-term arrangement in the 2009-10 season that resulted in their ground taking the name of his sportswear business as the sportsdirect.com@St James' Park Stadium.

In addition to renaming the stadium, the! deal al so extends Etihad's existing shirt sponsorship by 10 years and goes toward developing Etihad Campus -- a large area around the stadium that will include a new training complex and sports science center.

Of course, an airline owned by the Abu Dhabi government giving such a ridiculous amount of money to a club owned by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family is going to raise questions. UEFA will likely investigate whether the deal violates their new financial fair play rules, which require clubs to break even if they want to participate in European competitions. They also require that there are no shenanigans in deals involving sponsors with close ties to clubs.

But before you go assuming that there had to be a favorable number of zeros added to this deal because of the Abu Dhabi connection, keep in mind that the royal family of Abu Dhabi and their companies tend to pay a massive amount of money for a lot of things.

Photo: Getty