Manchester United nearly declined to play Australian A-League All-Stars citing sponsorship issues

Manchester United refused to take the field citing sponsorship issues

Manchester United had declined to take the pitch, citing the Coca-Cola advertisements on the giant screens, in the match against Australian A-League All-Stars which they won 5-1 at the ANZ stadium in Sydney, Australia.

According to Foxsports Australia, the match, which happened in front of a sell out crowd of 83,127 people, narrowly escaped a cancellation as the organisers finally relented to the pressure mounted on them by the commercial department of Manchester United.

They concurred to supersede all the Coke ads with Mount Franklin water, which despite being a Coca-Cola Amatil product is still not a straight competitor to Pepsi. Coca Cola is one of the main benefactors of the stadium that created the agitation.

It could be explained by what followed up later as Manchester United signed a two-year multi-million sponsorship deal with PepsiCo to be their soft drinks partner in the Asia Pacific region last week.

An ANZ Stadium spokesman said: “Man U’s commercial department threatened that the team would not run out if the Cola-Cola sign stayed on the big screen.

“It wasn’t discovered until the team arrived at the ground.”

The Football Federation of Australia was also involved in the negotiation with United and their representatives played a major part in arriving to this win-win situation.

An FFA insider said: “There was a fairly heated discussion which involved FFA as well.

“The odd part is that there were lots of Man U people at the stadium, three nights earlier for State of Origin and nothing was said about the signs.

“They could hardly say they were caught by surprise.”