Ronaldinho may be laying off the soft drinks for a while. Something tells me Coca-Cola and Pepsi lose their luster when they force you to lose out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Sun reports the soccer star, who has a sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola, was giving a harmless press conference at his new club Atletico Mineiro, a team that is currently sponsored by Pepsi. So it makes sense that a can of the stuff was sitting precariously in front of Ronaldinho as he doled out answers.
As answering cliches with more cliches makes one a bit parched, it makes even more sense he would reach out and take a sip, a rather expensive one:
The buck-toothed star will lose £1,000,000 in unpaid earnings after he was spotted with the rival firm’s drink as he spoke to journalists at his new club, Atletico Mineiro.
The star’s £500,000-a-year contract with the drinks giant had been scheduled to run until 2014.
The £1,000,000 converts to roughly over $1.5 million, making this the most expensive Pepsi swill I have ever heard of.
This report from No Guts, No Glory claims the amount lost is $750,000. I say it’s all the same to me who will never see that much anyway.
Of course, this is one company being utterly ridiculous just to get out of an awful deal. The soccer star is not what he used to be on the pitch, and he has been rumored to be hitting the party scene rather heavily.
“As well as below-par performances on the pitch, the star has been dogged by allegations of unprofessional conduct, reportedly appearing at parties and nightclubs,” The Sun reports.
I imagine the sight of him in front of a Pepsi can was the perfect out for a company tired of paying an exorbitant amount to a fading star. But that doesn’t it make it not wholly insane to rip a contract from the man for merely sitting in front of a Pepsi can and allegedly sipping on it.
The team is sponsored by Pepsi, and the report issues that cans may in fact be there at all times.
Talk about entrapment.
I guess the lesson here is be careful what you drink, especially if you are a star athlete on the way out of his respective sport.