Manchester United Experience Opens at Venetian Macao
Written on February 21, 2008 by Macau
Asia’s first Manchester United merchandising store opened its doors yesterday to a throng of fans and media pushing for a glimpse of retired star Ole Gunner Solskjaer. Many of the more than 150 local and Hong Kong fans waited for more than four hours for the former English Premier League star to open the first floor of the almost 1,400 square metre “Manchester United Experience”.
The store, located in the Venetian Macao’s Grand Canal Shoppes, is the club’s first licensed merchandising outlet in Asia and will be run in-house by the Venetian’s marketing arm.
Manchester is one of the most popular sporting team’s in the world, boasting some 75 million fans, with a large proportion of them in Asia. The team played a sold-out friendly match at Macau Stadium last July and were the first official guests of the Venetian, which opened the following month.
The first floor of the store is filled with footballs, tracksuits, key rings and jerseys stamped with the team logo. The involvement of Nike, a major sponsor of Man U, also sees paraphernalia on sale from the other Premier League and European sides the company sponsors, such as FC Barcelona and Arsenal.
However the fans, a number of whom were ferried in from Hong Kong by the Venetian, were there to see Solskjaer. The Norwegian was signed by the club in 1996 for 1.5 million pounds and is now considered a legend. During his 11 years he scored some 126 goals for the club including a famous strike during injury time against Bayern Munich to secure the UEFA Champions League for Manchester.
The player is now employed by Manchester as an ambassador. “I received many letter from Chinese and Hong Kong fans during my career,” he said yesterday.
“This is not only going to be a Manchester United store it’s going to be a Manchester United experience.”
However fans had to pay for the star’s autograph yesterday. Anyone purchasing a minimum of US$112.50 of merchandise was invited to join a queue for an autograph, which extended outside the store.
The “experience” part of the store, a second and third level, is scheduled for opening in September and will include memorabilia and interactive sporting displays.
On the lower level Ronaldo jerseys can be purchased for US$116,- with a standard black or white jersey selling for US$57.50. Water bottles carrying the team logo sell for US$6.15 and key rings US$8.75.
With permission :: By Nigel Huxtable, Macau Daily News
Technorati Tags: cotai, macao, macau, rap, Venetian Macao
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February 21st, 2008 at
I believe there’s a slight error in your reporting of this… Although it may have recently closed, I believe there was for some years, a Manchester United mechandising store in Singapore… It was located at Orchard Parade Hotel…
February 22nd, 2008 at
You may well be right, a quick search on Google did say that there was a franchise in Singapore around 2000. Maybe some of our other readers can shed some more light to it.