Online casino and poker company Mansion is slated to ink a record-breaking sponsorship deal with UK soccer giant Manchester United. Mansion beat out Etihad Airways, mobile giant O2, and LG Electronics to win the deal. The cost of replacing Vodafone, the team's previous sponsors, will cost Mansion £60million (~$104.3m) for four years of sponsorship benefits. Man Utd lawyers have reportedly taken the weekend to look over the contract, and the companies are expected to finalize the deal early in the week. The Mansion/Manchester deal breaks the record previously set by Chelsea, whose five year sponsorship agreement with Samsung added up to £50m (~$86.9m).

Apparently, Mansion is a fan of the number 60 million. A few months ago, Mansion set out to establish another new record with its MansionPoker.net Pokerdome Series, a poker game show that would boast a winner-takes-all $60 million prize. Hopefully, Mansion's sponsorship deal with Manchester United will run a bit more smoothly than its Pokerdome efforts. As recently reported in Poker777, the Nevada Gaming Control Board has claimed that the Pokerdome, Pokerdome, the trailblazing poker arena that is being built for the series, requires a “nonrestricted gaming license," which would likely tie the project up in so much red tape that the project could never come to fruition.

Source: Poker777 Staff

Sunday, 2 April 2006