The England striker, celebrating his 25th birthday on Sunday, can afford an even more lavish party than usual after signing a five-year deal this week that is widely reported to earn him 200,000 pounds per week.
It makes him United's top earner ever and they will need him to deliver on the pitch and off it to get their money's worth.
United's best player last season was also conspicuously absent from an advert in this week's matchday programme for Swiss luxury watch maker Hublot, which instead featured Ryan Giggs, Dimitar Berbatov, Nemanja Vidic and Javier Hernandez.
"One of the things United will be seeking to do in order to offset the cost of his contract is to use him for commercial purposes but as the Hublot advert kind of demonstrates, the Rooney brand has in many ways got limited appeal," Simon Chadwick, professor of sports business at Coventry University, told Reuters on Sunday.
"It doesn't augur well for the club and what the club are going to have to do is think very very carefully about how they use Rooney now.
"He will need to go quiet now for six months to a year and his advisors will have to re-launch the Rooney brand. It will have to be much more stable and conformist.
"We will perhaps see Rooney re-emerge in a year's time, in commercial terms at least, as a stable family man with children and all the kinds of stories we've seen will have to disappear if his brand is to be commercially successful."
"For Wayne to fulfil his commercial revenue-earning potential off the pitch, he will need to fulfil his considerable playing talent on it in future years," Paul Mace, managing director of independent sports communications agency Macesport, told Reuters in emailed comments earlier this week.
"That, I suspect, is going to be his biggest challenge." By negotiating the pay rise - in a way that has offended fans along the way - Rooney has ensured a secure financial future for himself but handed his club a few headaches.
Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, quoted in British newspaper The Sunday Times, said his club "would seriously consider" a cap but that it might have to be worldwide to stop players moving to countries with no restrictions.
"In some ways, given what has happened over the last six mont
