Nouveau riche club ink deal with the folks behind Big Brother

Since becoming executive chairman of Manchester City last year, Garry Cook was been extolling his vision of a sky blue utopia to anyone who would listen. If his global domination plans come to pass, we will all enjoy tasty blue food at Manchester City themed restaurants, which we will drive to in Manchester City cars listening to Manchester City Band (the re-branded name for Oasis).

The Citizens have started taking baby steps towards embedding themselves into our lives by focusing their energies on the media. Today, the club relaunch their official website in English and Arabic (at the time of writing, it’s down thanks to a bug), and tomorrow, they will seal a deal with Endemol, the Dutch TV production behemoth that will help the club compete commercially on a global basis with the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester Utd.

Endemol Sport’s Managing Director Gregg Oldfield has explained how his company will help put sky blue shirts on backs all over the world:

“Manchester City is one of the most exciting clubs in the Premier League today. They have great global ambition and potential, and we both share the same vision in building a modern, multi-media experience for City fans worldwide.The Middle East is very important for obvious reasons and we’ll also target Asia and Latin America.”

Endemol produce some fine programming in the UK, including but not limited to The Sex Education vs Pornography, Coleen’s Real Women and the highly lauded Snog, Marry Avoid.

Their flagship show is Big Brother, so don’t be surprised if City players are eventually forced to spend their summers trapped in a house with nothing but whirring cameras and Craig Bellamy’s foul temper for company…

Have underwhelming signings destabilised City’s huge plans?

Manchester City chief executive Garry Cook has huge plans for his club: he envisions a sky blue utopia, where folks all around the world will drive Manchester City cars to work after eating their delicious Manchester City morning cereals.

The plans for global domination, however, have taken a huge hit this week, as Kaka turned down the chance to align himself with the empire, and club linchpin Robinho has reportedly reportedly had enough of being the league’s best paid player.

When the fiesty Brazilian snubbed Chelsea at the eleventh hour on transfer deadline day, it was upon the understanding that Manchester City were to become the new Galacticos, attracting world class players, much like the one who belongs to Jesus. With his refusal to come to England and Robinho’s subsequent hissy fit, however, it seems Garry Cook is going to have to move mountains to stop his club becoming a worldwide laughing stock; a team with all the resources in the world, but no “pulling power” when it comes to bringing in top class talent.

Perhaps City’s lofty

No one knows who they are, say advertising agency

Sounding more and more like a supervillain with every day that passes, Manchester City executive chairman Garry Cook (pictured above, probably thinking about money) this week revealed plans to turn the club into the ‘Virgin of Asia and the world’ - he expects to City-branded cars, restaurants, energy drinks and motorcycle helmets in the coming years.

His ambitious plans, however, may be thwarted on two counts: firstly, with the exception of the Eastlands faithful, no football fan in the world will eat a City burger, put City smoke alarms in their house or brush with City toothpaste. Secondly, according to the BBDO advertising agency, City are not among Europe’s top 25 most recognisable brands. In fact, in terms of mid- and long-term advertising revenue potential, they are beaten by Lille, Stuttgart and Benfica.

Here are the top 25, where the bracketed figure represents brand value:

Real Madrid ($1.498B)
FC Barcelona ($1.336B)
Manchester United ($1.299B)

Shinawatra’s best friend didn’t get the memo

Just a few days ago, City executive chairman Garry Cook was boasting about how Manchester City will be more popular than Coca-Cola around the world, thanks to the ten year plan of a disgraced former Thai Prime Minister. He also assured us that the Citizens were financially stable and uninterested in attracting additional investors:

“I was in Beijing last week,” began Cook, “sitting with [Thaksin Shinawatra] and the second richest man in China and other guys. They all want to be part of Manchester City. I’ve had representatives of companies from Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait on. Some of those representatives have actually phoned the supporters’ club because they couldn’t find the club number. So I get the supporters’ club secretary saying to me, ‘So the club is for sale, then, because I’ve got Anwar on the phone from Saudi Arabia?’ This club is not for sale.”

The man who wants a break-away league of 10-14 clubs obviously wasn’t kept in the loop on this one…

[Quote: The Guardian]