Obsessive-compulsive sport sponsorship

The obsessive compulsive part of this is this blog's continuing preoccupation with football (even though the football season has ended and I promised not to write about it). Reports have surfaced that Manchester United has signed an £80 million shirt sponsorship deal with the Aon Corporation, a US-based insurance company. The deal will start at the beginning of the 2010/11 football season and is being hailed as the biggest shirt sponsorship deal in history. In the context of reports late last year when it was becoming clear that AIG would pull their deal with United, how do we read the Aon deal? Are United now established beyond all doubt as the world's leading football club brand? Are Aon being commercially naive, over-estimating the power of football to reach out to customers across the world? Is this the ultimate recession-busting deal, a testament to the power of sport and of football? In short, what is this deal all about?