Sponsors Beware: AC Milan Fans Are Boycotting You!

AC Milan sponsors beware, be very very aware. You're in for a surprise! Let's all analyze, shall we!

On February 12th, 2010 Fly Emirates signed an agreement of more than 60 million euros with AC Milan becoming their new main sponsors."We are proud to sponsor a club as prestigious as AC Milan" said the airline's divisional senior vice president, Boutros Boutros, "Emirates has demonstrated its unstinting support for the world of sports, while extending our relationship with one of the leading iconic football brands."

Prestigious? Leading? Iconic brand? Who? AC Milan? How funny. It was all this and more until the unwise and rather stingy leadership of the club adopted an austerity policy.

AC Milan's executive vice president and managing director, Adriano Galliani said "When Emirates became one of our sponsors, the relationship that linked the two companies grew and evolved, thanks to a common vision and common objectives".

What common vision and what common objectives?! Fly Emirates wants to grow and invest whereas Milan wants to stay put and retrench. Fly Emirates seek customer satisfaction while Milan decided to dissatisfy their customers and instead insult and humiliate them.

CEO Galliani said that the "evolved" fans will understand this and that Milan is doing well on the market. The "evolved" fans will renew their subscription. This implies that fans who were not happy with this new policy are not evolved! Now, all "unevolved" fans are boycotting Milan's sponsors and Berlusconi's private companies. In fact, they decided to boycott anything related to Milan.

Do these actions matter? Of course they do! This group of paying fans have reached 30,000 Italian members and another group of non-Italian fans has reached 4,000 members and growing. The biggest proof of their effective actions is that the seasonal ticket campaign‬‪ faced more than 50% drop in demand. This was the action taken by those fans during the last couple of seasons.

Once those fans from all around the world boycott the sponsors, the results will be a catastrophic drop in sales similar to those of the tickets.

These groups on facebook are composed of influential fans. BERLUSCONI VIA DAL MILAN! MANIFESTAZIONE IN VIA TURATI! is the Italian group while the international group is AC Milan Revølutiøŋ : Berlusconi it's time to spend or leave!

My message to sponsors is to simply take action. The sponsors have power over Milan and they can strongly influence them into investing in the ongoing transfer market. The sponsors need the fans to stop the bad publicity and end the boycott. Sponsors have to realize that Milan's spending in the transfer market is a winning situation for all.

Great companies other than Fly emirates have put their trust in Milan such as Adidas, Sky, Nivea, Audi, Intesa Sanpaolo, Tim, Dolce & Gabbana, Ricoh, Chronotech, AWS, Adecco, SONY, Bavaria, MSC Crociere, Nutrilite, Liotondol, the Berlusconi owned Mediaset and the list goes on and on. All these face the risk of boycott.

I end this article on an important note. HH Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates Airline and Group said that "We like to give sports fans something to shout about and this exciting shirt sponsorship deal certainly does that." I urge him; no, I beg him to rethink this statement in the light of the total disappointment of AC Milan's fans.