According to the Forbes magazine sportsmoney blog, online gambling group Bwin's shirt sponsorship of the top Italian Serie-A football team AC Milan has been relinquished and re-issued to the Arabian airline Emirates.
The blog informs that reports from Italy disclose that AC Milan has agreed a four-year €50 million ($70 million) shirt sponsorship with Emirates, effective when Milan’s current deal with Bwin expires at the end of the current season.
Bwin’s deal was worth €12 million a year and when it was signed four years ago was the the fifth largest shirt sponsorship in European soccer.
Bwin’s sponsorship of Spain’s Real Madrid ranked third with U.S. insurer AIG’s sponsorship of the English Premier League’s Manchester United top in the shirt sponsorship stakes, the blog reported. A year ago Manchester United set a new record with its four-year €90 million deal with another U.S. insurance giant, Aon, which will replace AIG on the Red Devils’ shirts from next season. That deal, coincidentally, will run in parallel with Emirates’ at Milan.
Emirates sponsors teams and events across a range of sports from auto racing to yachting. In soccer, it sponsors the Arsenal football team in the EPL, Paris Saint Germain in France, Hamburg in Germany and Olympiacos in Greece. Since 2007 it has been a stadium sponsor at the San Siro, which Milan shares with Internazionale.
