Sponsorship

On 6 April 2006, chief executive David Gill announced AIG as the new shirt sponsors of Manchester United in a British record shirt sponsorship deal of £56.5 million to be paid over four years (£14.1 million a year).^[58] Manchester United now has the most valuable sponsorship deal in the world, due to the renegotiation of the £15 million-a-year deal Juventus had with oil firm Tamoil.^[59] The four-year agreement has also been heralded, by extension, as the largest sponsorship deal in British history, eclipsing Chelsea's deal with Samsung.

Companies that Manchester United currently have sponsorship deals with include:^[60]

• AIG – Principal Sponsor
• Nike – Official Sportswear Partner
• Budweiser – Official Beer
• Betfred – Official Betting Partner
• Key 103 – Official Radio Station^[61]

The club has only ever had three main shirt sponsors. The first and longest-running was Sharp Electronics, who sponsored the club from 1982 to 2000, which was one of the lengthiest and most lucrative sponsorship deals in English football.^[62][63] Sharp's logo was on the front of United's shirts during these 17 years, during which the team won seven Premier League titles, five FA Cups, one Football League Cup, one European Cup Winners' Cup and one European Cup. As this period was something of a golden era for the club, with a (coincidental) decline in fortunes happening once Vodafone became the new shirt sponsors in 2000, some fans now term this period – particularly 1993–2000 – as The Sharp Years. Vodafone took over in an initial four-year £30 million deal.^[64][65] The sponsorship was extended an extra two years and totalled £36 million. On 23 November 2005, Vodafone announced that they would part ways after their deal expired.

Similarly, the club has only had four independent kit manufacturers, the first being local sportswear company Umbro. Admiral took over in 1975, and became the first company to place their logo on a Manchester United shirt in 1976.^[66] Adidas followed in 1980,^[67] before Umbro started a second spell as the club's kit manufacturers in 1992.^[68] Umbro's sponsorship lasted for a further ten years, before the club struck a record-breaking £302.9 million deal with Nike. The agreement with Nike will last an initial 13 years, running until at least 2015.^[69]