Hot property, but plenty to play out in sale of Manchester United

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the first potential buyer of Manchester United to have gone public with his interest – is favourite to take over?

Manchester United fans hold up an anti-Glazer banner in the crowd in August last year. Picture:

Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the first potential buyer of Manchester United to have gone public with his interest – but does that mean he is the favourite to take over the club from the Glazer family? We look at the big issues around what could be the most expensive purchase of a sports club in history.
WILL UNITED BE SOLD?

Raine, the merchant bank hired by the Glazers to oversee the sale of a stake or the whole club, is understood to have had contact with groups from the Middle East, US, Asia and now Ratcliffe, the billionaire born in Greater Manchester.

Despite United’s allure, valuation is one obvious issue. There is a belief at Raine that United could attract more than £5bn ($8.9bn) but that is twice what the American Boehly-Clearlake consortium paid for Chelsea last year (with an additional promise to invest £1.75bn over 10 years). The world record for any sporting franchise is the $US4.65bn ($6.7bn) paid for the Denver Broncos in the NFL in 2022, so £5bn-plus is unprecedented.

United’s revenues of €689 million ($1.07bn) put them fourth in global football according to Deloitte (behind Manchester City, Real Madrid and Liverpool) but the club has long been a financial freak – a profitable football club – and there is no sign of the Premier League bubble bursting. But how high will bidders go? And what will the Glazers settle for?

United’s listed value hit a record $US4.8bn on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018 but is now closer to $US3.75bn after a small rise this week once Ratcliffe confirmed his interest.
DOES RATCLIFFE HAVE THE MONEY?

His personal wealth, as owner of 60 per cent of Ineos, the petrochemicals giant he founded with two friends in 1998, is estimated at between £6bn (Sunday Times) and £11bn (Forbes). Ineos makes about £53bn in annual sales.

There are personal and professional reasons for Ratcliffe’s interest in United. United were the club of his youth – he was born in Failsworth. He was at the Champions League final in 1999 when the club clinched the Treble. “Three minutes you never forget in your lifetime,” he says.

There has also been a huge shift in Ineos’s profile and how it has used sport so that the firm is no longer, as Ratcliffe once said, “the biggest company in the world you have never heard of”.
WHO WOULD RUN UNITED?

An intriguing appointment last month was the hiring of Jean-Claude Blanc as chief executive of the sports arm of the Ineos business. Blanc spent more than a decade as a chief operating officer at Paris Saint-Germain during the club’s transformation into one of the richest in the world thanks to a Qatari takeover. He previously worked at Juventus as the chairman and chief executive.

Ineos says Blanc’s recruitment was not directly related to a bid for United, but he would bring considerable experience of running huge sports organisations if a deal did proceed.
IS RATCLIFFE FAVOURITE FOR UNITED?

Fans are seemingly drawn by the prospect of one of Britain’s richest men, a local self-made man, but Ratcliffe can expect stiff competition and could even be regarded as an outsider. Middle Eastern riches have been pouring into sport; US investors will have seen the Chelsea takeover and be keen to follow.

Ratcliffe has said he does not want to be “dumb money” in football, squandering a fortune like so many owners, and while he was willing to pay the asking price for Chelsea he does not have the bottomless wealth of sovereign funds, though state-backed involvement of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Dubai is complicated by their existing interests in Newcastle United, PSG and City.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The upswing of United’s fortunes under Richard Arnold, who replaced the disastrous Ed Woodward as chief executive, and Erik ten Hag as manager is well timed for the Glazers and means they may be able to sell a resurgent side, reassuring potential purchasers.

Any sale of a stake or the whole club would have to be approved by six Glazer siblings, which adds complication, though they can be sure to emerge much richer for any deal.

Fans want the Glazers out but they are under no obligation to sell, and it could depend on the scale of bids. Until bidding starts, expected next month, one source believes it is too early to say if the club will be sold by the end of the season.

The Times