Yankees United With Manchester

The top two sports teams in the world want more wins and more money. So to get them, the Yanks are linking up with a bunch of Brits.

It's as American as hot dogs - and prawn sandwiches?

The New York Yankees, the franchise of Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio, forged an alliance Wednesday with Manchester United, the most storied club in European soccer.

While the teams, the richest in baseball and soccer, don't yet know what their partnership will turn into, they think working together with sponsors, selling each other's licensed goods and promoting Manchester United's 2003 tour of North America is a start.

If YankeeNets LLC, the baseball team's parent company, forms its own TV network, it will have ready programming in Manchester United, which in August regains the right to televise its games on tape delay.

And for now, it links Spice Boy David Beckham - the Manchester United star whose son is named Brooklyn - with Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens and Bernie Williams in a marriage fueled by Yankee dollars.

"We don't want to for one moment think that Manchester United is going to produce baseball teams. We don't expect the New York Yankees to produce soccer teams," said Manchester United director Sir Bobby Charlton, one of the club's greatest players.

"We are getting together in a business way so that we can maintain the type of standards that our club has got used to and our fans have got used to," he said. "We don't sell our soul, we're not in the process of selling our soul to another sport."

Manchester United, worth about $900 million, has dominated English soccer recently, winning six of the last eight Premier League titles. The Yankees, valued at about $600 million, are North America's closest equivalent, winning four of the last five World Series and 26 overall.

YankeeNets owns the Yankees, the Stanley Cup champion New Jersey Devils and the NBA's New Jersey Nets. It also has a similar marketing alliance with the NFL's New York Giants, losers of last month's Super Bowl.

But on a global scale, Manchester United is much larger.

"We believe that the sport of soccer - football, as it is called on the other side of the ocean - is ready to really burst into the right way," YankeeNetchairman Harvey Schiller said, "and I think that the things that we have planned with Manchester United in the days, months, years ahead will help to grow the sport in this country in the way that it probably should grow."

Manchester United was criticized by some fans for putting finance ahead of sport.

"Football should not be run solely to suit the needs of foreign broadcasters and overseas marketing juggernauts," said Oliver Houston, head of a Manchester United shareholders group.

"We hope the alliance between the prawn sandwich and hot dogs is a success, but urge as ever that any increases in revenue be plowed back into the football club."

YankeeNets has thus far avoided Major League Soccer, which claims to have lost $250 million in its first five seasons. Schiller said YankeeNets is talking with the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, who want a soccer stadium built.

Schiller pledged to work with the U.S. sports leagues, which hold the licensing rights to his teams. And Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon said he would work within the framework of the Premier League and England's Football Association, which hold many of his team's rights.

But he did not mention the Union of European Football Associations, which repeatedly has clashed with large clubs over how to split money from the European Champions League.

Manchester United's stock price increased 13 percent to $1.65 during midday trading on the London Stock Exchange before closing at $1.54, an increase of 5.4 percent.

Manchester United has been increasingly involved with U.S. companies, agreeing in November to a $440 million, 15-year licensing deal with Nike that starts in August 2002.

The Yankees are in the fourth season of a $95 million, 10-year agreement with Adidas but its uniforms are manufactured by Russell Athletic.

YankeeNets also is trying to form its own TV network but is bogged down in a lawsuit with Madison Square Garden Network, a division of Cablevision Systems Corp., which owns the baseball rights through this season.

Under Premier League's $1.6 billion, three-year contract with BSkyB that starts in August, Manchester United will have the right to televise games 48 hours after they are over and regains rights to its archive and the Internet.

The soccer team already has its own pay cable network, MUTV, which it co-owns with BSkyB and Granada, and MUTV could strike a deal to televise Yankees games.

Trans World International, a division of the International Management Group, bought U.S. rights to the Premier League and sold them to Fox Sports World, a division of News Corp., which like BSkyB is controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

The Football Association Cup's U.S. rights are owned by the Interpublic Group, but games are televised only to bars and restaurants on a pay-per-view basis by Setanta Sport. The European Champions League is televised by ESPN, a diision of The Walt Disney Co.

Manchester United's 2003 tour could happen around the time of the FIFA Club World Championship, which the U.S. Soccer Federation is trying to bring to the United States that summer.

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