The announcement of a €35 million deal to bring Jose Mourinho and Manchester United together has reportedly been delayed by 24 hours over sticking points within individual image rights clauses and Mourinho’s personal endorsement deals.
One of the most visible deals he has is with Jaguar which would likely be seen as too much of a clash with United’s main shirt sponsor General Motors.
Football is at the pinnacle of the pyramid that is the sports business and such challenges that could never have been foreseen a few short years ago are now becoming a major area for negotiation.
Players are more obviously in the line of potential conflicts but Mourinho’s reputation and personality have given him something of a rock star profile when it comes to endorsements and it will be interesting to see how this is resolved.
Another potential source of delay lies in the fact that when he was sacked as Chelsea manager in December the club retained some of his personal image rights that had been assigned as part of his contract.
“While those rights are of limited future value to Chelsea, they are of major interest to Manchester United who will want to immediately exploit the rights to raise Mourinho related commercial income to help fund his appointment,” said Sport for Business member Ciaran Medlar, Head of the BDO Sports Advisory Unit.
“Chelsea would be in a very strong negotiation position to sell or sub-licence the rights for a significant sum to Manchester United or indeed to Mourinho himself.”
“It will put other managers on notice to ensure that the release or return of their image rights are part of any termination negotiations.”
The announcement of Mourinho’s appointment is likely to come today.
It will be interesting to see what car he is pictured on Sky Sports news driving into the Carrington training ground at the start of pre-season training in the summer.
