Qualcomm marketing boss on rationale behind Manchester United Snapdragon sponsorship

The US technology firm was recently unveiled as the club’s new front-of-shirt sponsor in a three-year deal reported by The Athletic to be worth $225m. The branding of Qualcomm subsidiary Snapdragon, which produces processors for an estimated 3bn devices globally, will adorn both the men’s and women’s team shirts from this summer.

“We chose to do it because it’s really the intersection of where our consumers are,” said Carmen True, the tech company’s vice-president of marketing, when The Drum caught up with her in Cannes.

And why Manchester United specifically? It’s all about the scale of the Premier League side’s fanbase, according to True. “They’re over a billion-strong globally and in the key markets we have… Manchester United is really unmatched. We’ve had a partnership agreement with them for a while and it has just been amazing.”

True said there were many opportunities to optimize its marketing media spend but added, “When we look at the value we’re getting for this, it surpasses anything we could do from an alternative media perspective.”

Speaking ahead of the July 1 unveiling of the new kit, True teased that the launch video features “an amazing anthem from a very famous Manchester United player,” whose name she was unable to share at the time (it has since transpired to be none other than Eric Cantona). “The film is just absolutely fantastic.”

True also said there is “a whole lineup of activities around this sponsorship” happening over the next year, including a special match at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego involving the Manchester United team.

“One of the unique values that Snapdragon and Manchester United have together is that this presents, from a global brand perspective, an opportunity to connect with fans all over the world and that’s very important to us as we build our Snapdragon brand. So you’re going to start to see activations more globally out there, but also it activated across our social platforms.”

Qualcomm was also launching its AI PC with Copilot+ and Microsoft, which is only available on PC devices with Snapdragon in them across all the major original equipment manufacturers. “Building the Snapdragon brand holistically is very important to us.”

The deal comes as British billionaire Ratcliffe and his Ineos team embark on a shake-up at Old Trafford. In February, Ratcliffe completed the purchase of a 27.7% stake in the club for £1.25bn.

The deal sees Ineos take charge of football operations and one of the first acts has been to commission a cost review ahead of the 2024/25 season. A club-wide redundancy program affecting around 250 roles has been proposed.

Change was already afoot within the marketing department, with United’s chief communications officer of almost two years, Ellie Norman, departing to become the new chief marketing officer at Formula E.