Standard Chartered is in its first season as Liverpool's shirt sponsor and since the end of it is nearing, the company is naturally asking what this football club could do to better help them. Yes, that uncomfortable feeling rumbling in your bowels right now means what is to follow will probably prompt a thousand independent blog posts that curse the day football and business started humping each other.
Said Standard Chartered executive Gavin Laws to the AP:
"The real power for what Liverpool could do for us, and I think for the English Premier League, is if there was a way they could nurture foreign players from Asia … a great Asian player?you see what Park Ji-sung does for Manchester United," Laws, the bank's head of corporate affairs, said at the SoccerEx conference.
"The markets in Asia and the Middle East are so nationalistic, they are very proud about their countries. (Matches) become huge events. One appearance from a player, say from Dubai in the Premier League, and you'd have the whole of Dubai watching it."
That's right, Liverpool shouldn't try to find a great Asian player to help them win, just to make sure their matches become events in Dubai and the Asian market, where SC does most of its business. And speaking of events, surely Standard Chartered isn't happy with Liverpool looking to be on the verge of another season outside of the spotlight and cash-generating splendor of the Champions League, right? Actually, not so much.
"The Champions League for us as a sponsor is not that important for us," Laws said. "By the time the games are played, the major markets we are interested in, everyone is asleep and in bed."
Clearly this man knows the business of football. No one in Asia cares about the world's premier club tournament because they're all asleep when the matches happen. Right.
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