Manchester United hopes to further expand its relationship with US tech company Qualcomm, the club’s chief executive said on Tuesday, after signing an extension to the chipmaker’s sponsorship of the team’s kits earlier this year.
Reached in August, the deal with Qualcomm, which has a significant presence in Ireland, secured the New York-listed company’s Snapdragon semiconductor brand as the Red Devils’s primary front-of-shirt sponsor until 2029. In a first for an English Premier League team, Snapdragon’s branding is also featured on the back of the jersey.
Man United’s latest kit, the second to feature the Snapdragon logo, was launched in July with a video featuring ex-Man United captain Eric Cantona and former manager Alex Ferguson.
“We’re going to be working together for another few years, at least, hopefully more,” said Man United chief executive Omar Berrada on Tuesday in Lisbon.
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The French executive, who was named to the top role at the club earlier this year, was speaking at Web Summit in the Portuguese capital, where he appeared on a panel with Qualcomm’s chief marketing officer Don McGuire.
Mr Berrada said the launch video generated a “staggering” 55 million media “impacts” when it was first released during the summer.
Across football, from players to management, people working in the game are “becoming a lot more savvy” about the role tech companies can play in helping to spread the game but also in improving performance and on-field results, he said.
“I’ve seen examples in my career where we’ve had tech companies fully integrated into the performance side, and players actually want to learn more and reach out directly to the partner so they can have more individual stats on them as a player,” he said.
“That’s just a tip of the iceberg of where I think we’re heading on the performance space, which is why I believe that tech companies are going to be absolutely essential to helping grow the game,” he said.
Qualcomm is also helping Man United to “think ahead” about new technologies and how the club can put them to use in its stadium in the future, whether that is a renovated Old Trafford or an entirely new stadium, Mr Berrada said.
“As we think about potentially making investments into our current stadium or maybe even building a new stadium, we want a partner like Snapdragon to be fully integrated in the design discussions,” he said, “so that when thinking about creating new experiential spaces within the existing stadium or a new stadium, that they can help inform us.”
Qualcomm, which announced €140 million in its research and development facility in Cork, employs around 450 people in the Republic and has reportedly approached Intel to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker and its operations in Leixlip, Co Kildare.
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