Umbro were part of Nike until they sold them to a brand marketing group called Iconix in 2012. They're making a bit of a comeback however and now make West Ham's kit. In the same way that Warrior overpaid for the Liverpool kit to get a foothold in the market, maybe we could do a similar deal with Umbro, who would be delighted to get a prestigious name like us on their roster.
Don't let Netflix, BBC 3 and Amazon Prime hear you say that! :-)Something like this was never about shirt sales its about property, media, brand awareness and footballing expertise.
IMHO any move from Nike would be to Adidas as that ties in with the MLS contract for all teams and sadly I think Umbro wont ever be seen on City players again.
It will be very interesting to see if this deal moves City TV from web only to something more significant on cable and satellite. If ever there was going to be a club/clubs with enough content to justify such a channel its us.
And considering local planning wont be an issue how many CFA's does China need? I reckon a dozen would be about right.
And then there is Thailand, Indonesia and Japan that need a CFA too.
Something like this was never about shirt sales its about property, media, brand awareness and footballing expertise.
IMHO any move from Nike would be to Adidas as that ties in with the MLS contract for all teams and sadly I think Umbro wont ever be seen on City players again.
It will be very interesting to see if this deal moves City TV from web only to something more significant on cable and satellite. If ever there was going to be a club/clubs with enough content to justify such a channel its us.
And considering local planning wont be an issue how many CFA's does China need? I reckon a dozen would be about right.
And then there is Thailand, Indonesia and Japan that need a CFA too.
I was thinking about the Nike / adidas thing the other day. As you say, MLS is mandatory to have adidas. Just to make things more complicated, the Chinese Super League are all supplied by Nike. There is no easy way around this.
http://www.footyheadlines.com/2015/01/nike-beijing-guoan-2015-kit.html?m=1
I think you're seriously underestimating the importance of the deal. We'll see a significant increase in revenue fairly quickly, not through merchandise sales over there but via a raft of commercial deals with Chinese companies. Expect some big sponsorships to be announced in 2016.
Just done a little digging on the Chinese Super League and it seems a few of the teams are actually named after their owners, often big Multinational companies. Others like Shanghai Shenhua have the brand name of their owners on the badge. SO I don't think there is going to be any major opposition if we bought an existing club and renamed them "City".
I also discovered that CITIC who make up part of the consortium that invested in us own a club in Beijing called Beijing Guoan FC. They appear to be the only team based in Beijing (population 11milion plus) and have a 65k seater stadium.
There are 2 top flight teams currently based in Shanghai (population 25m plus) so there's plenty of room for another if we wanted to start a Shanghai City FC from scratch.
I think we'll see an impact within a year. Not from huge spike in supporter numbers, but from top level Chinese sponsors and corporates jumping on board.
As I say, it's hard to be sure, but their fans seem somewhat unhappy about the idea, although their biggest fear seems to be that we will remove the word "Guoan" from their name, which they see as essential to keeping their team's identity. Funnily enough not a single comment was made about the colours changing (since they play in green) but since every single one of their ultras groups seem to have the word "green" in their names, I'm not sure how they'd take it.
this is the interesting,bit for me,,5/6 years ago there was a discussion on here regarding middle east investment and other p/l clubs,a poster talked about khaldoon saying nobody in that region would go into direct competition with sm, 6 years later not one p/l team has secured investment from that part of the world, unreal when you think about it, now does this deal mean that china is in effect "boxed off" to the rest of english football,if so that is as huge as the actual investment it self if not biggerAbsolutely. Agreeing deals with China is a long and personal process. I know that Manchester Airport having been meeting for years to secure their first direct flight to mainline China. Unless other clubs are someway down this line already and have played their cards right, similar deals for other clubs may be a long way off and may be very difficult now given the Chinese poilitical ties that this deal was set upon.