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Soccer Thu Jul 15 2010
Manchester United Teams Up With Chicago's Aon
Typically when a company acquires one of its largest rivals in a nearly $5,000,000,000.00 (yeah, lots of zeros) merger, that's the company's BIG news for the week. Not so for Chicago's Aon. Aon did in fact purchase Hewitt Associates for 4.9 billion this week, but the corporation also teamed up with the most popular sports franchise in the world, Manchester United. United, the legendary football club out of jolly old England, for decades has dominated the imaginations of countless footie fans across the globe and will for only the 4th time in its long history switch kit sponsors and have Aon adorning the fronts of their unis.
Currently on a barnstorming tour of various Major League Soccer cities the United -- after an afternoon training session at the Chicago Fire's Toyota Park facilities -- rolled into Niketown to show off the new jerseys. The retro-inspired unis suggest throwback touches such as larger collars and the classic Red Devil logo as a nod to the 1970s era squads, while also combining the state-of-the-art technology of Nike's design teams. The jerseys are made from the same sustainable method that the Swoosh's World Cup unis were made from (eight recycled plastic bottles are rendered into each shirt) and are remarkably lightweight and breathable to enhance player performance.
For Aon the partnership is a tremendous coup as the company now will be having its identity ingrained in the minds of not not only the domestic UK market of football-mad fans, but soccer fans across the globe will be associating Aon and Manchester United and all for the proportionally reasonable price tag of $125 million. Get 'em while their hot, sports fans.