January 18 – Italian bank Unicredit will not be renewing its official sponsorship of UEFA club competitions, including the Champions League, when its deal runs out at the end of the 2017/18 season, according to Unicredit CEO Jean-Pierre Mustier.
Unicredit is half way its latest three-year sponsorship as the Official Bank of UEFA Club Competitions and will have completed nine years with UEFA at the end of the current deal.
The first six years were sponsoring the Champions League before the sponsorship was extended to cover all club competition for the new deal, and in particular the UEFA Europa League. This gavesUnicredit a much larger range of marketing assets and promotional tools.
Unicredit is Italy’s largest bank but is scrambling to cut costs as the country’s banking crisis bites deeper. Mustier has already announced the cutting of 14,000 jobs and the closure of hundreds of branches in a bid to save €1.7 billion.
It also announced a fund raising of €13 billion in a bid to reposition the bank’s business.
Football sponsorship is not part of those repositioning plans. The bank is one of seven main sponsors for the Champions League alongside Gazprom, MasterCard, Sony, PepsiCo, Heineken and Nissan.
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