Kicking off a three-year sponsorship deal

General Motors (GM) has announced a three-year sponsorship deal with Manchester United, the world’s most popular football club, fixing Chevrolet as the team’s exclusive automotive sponsor.

The move came weeks after GM said it would no longer advertise on Facebook or at the Super Bowl, the American football championship and one of the country’s most-viewed television events each year.

Joe Ewanick, GM chief marketing officer said football, or soccer as it is known in the US, has a broad fan base around the world.

“More than 3.5 billion people follow soccer and only about 400 million people follow the NFL,” added Mr Ewanick, referring to the US National Football League, which controls the Super Bowl.

He declined to put a dollar figure on GM’s support for Manchester United, but he said the Chevrolet brand, long identified with American sports, now sells 60 per cent of its vehicles outside the US.

Though they lost this year’s English Premier League title, Manchester United has a record 19 league titles and is arguably the most popular sports team in the world, with hundreds of millions of fans across the world.

Mr Ewanick said part of the new sponsorship money will come from what GM would have spent advertising on Facebook and the Super Bowl, which has increased the price of advertising by 20 per cent for the 2013 championship. 

The money saved will also go to sponsorship of a China Cup Football tournament in China, GM’s key target market outside the US.