Abstract
If our world can be considered, as Ohmae (1985) explains it, as a global village with “instant communication”, and that football is epi-central to contemporary globalization process (Robertson and Giulanotti, 2004), it can be said that the most valuable football brand is a global brand. Rugman (1986) criticized this fact because he considered football as a more regional than global game due to its position in American society with respect to the women sport, and nowadays “soccer” as it is called in this country is also a men's sport with a MLS championship that brings more and more people in stadiums.
Actually Manchester United is a medium-sized enterprise composed of nearly 600 employees with an annual turnover of circa £300million. But as a service firm, Manchester United operates in each country of the Triad as defined by Ohmae and even in emerging countries. Levitt (1983) said that consumers have worldwide the same tastes. It is also true for football if we consider the hegemony of Manchester United: a community which is a “fandom” of 333 million people (and more than 190 million in Asia) and its 200 branches of Manchester United supporter clubs in 24 countries2. Finally, there is only a lack in South America where the football market is saturated by the very loyal fans of legendary teams like River Plate in Argentina or Santos F.C in Brazil.
