Mobile phone giant Vodafone Group is ending a four-year shirt sponsorship deal with soccer club Manchester United, which is worth about £9m sterling a year.
The world's largest mobile phone company by revenue and the Premier League soccer club said in a joint statement that the deal would be terminated two years early at the end of the 2005/2006 season.
Manchester United fans urged Vodafone at its annual investor meeting in July to end a sponsorship deal with US billionaire financier Malcolm Glazer, who seized control of the 127-year-old soccer club earlier this year.
Glazer has infuriated fans who say he knows nothing about British soccer and will milk United's profits to pay back vast amounts of debt he used to buy it.
