Never even crossed my mind that they may be short of non-US directors to qualify for FPI status (I barely do any FPI work). That makes total sense.
Club Sale | It’s done!
- Thread starter JB08
- Start date
- Status
I don't know man. Not sure how ethical it is to sell gods, especially for those amounts.
I am not a native speaker, for sure thought goods was spelled with one o. Think you saved me from some future embarrassment…Why do they need to do that when they’re already well known for their products? They’re not trying to convince everyone they’re not murdering gays so don’t pay attention to that stuff happening in the warehouses.
Apple could just give away Apple TV for 2 full years and then charge everyone at the end of the subscription instead of buy United for the same price.
Apple or Amazon buying United is quite possibly up there with the worst business decisions possible.
I can't wait for new owners. Thier is no doubt the Glazers are the worst in terms of not knowing how to run a club. It's almost shocking the mismanagement. Anyone could of done a better job. They are used to the American model where their is salary caps and the state provides the stadium.
Imagine how easy it is to be a owner of a NFL team. You don't like the stadium. Threaten to move to another city. Salary caps in place to make sure you don't mismanaged your money. Guaranteed profits every year. Also contracts in the NFL arnt guaranteed. Don't know how the players in the NFL alow themselves to be screwed like that.
"Take Anthony Hitchens, for example. The linebacker inked a five year, $45MM deal with Chiefs in 2018 with around $21MM in total guarantees. Rather than carrying him at a $12.6MM cap figure in 2022, the Chiefs released earlier this month, saving upwards of $8.4MM. At the time of signing, Hitchens was one of the highest paid inside linebackers in the game on a per-year basis. But, because of the way his deal was structured, the Chiefs were able to escape multiple years and millions on the commitment."
Hitchens is currently a free agent.
The salary cap in the NFL is currently $208 million per team. Revenue from the TV contract alone is $309 million. Their is no risk being a NFL team owner.
Imagine how easy it is to be a owner of a NFL team. You don't like the stadium. Threaten to move to another city. Salary caps in place to make sure you don't mismanaged your money. Guaranteed profits every year. Also contracts in the NFL arnt guaranteed. Don't know how the players in the NFL alow themselves to be screwed like that.
"Take Anthony Hitchens, for example. The linebacker inked a five year, $45MM deal with Chiefs in 2018 with around $21MM in total guarantees. Rather than carrying him at a $12.6MM cap figure in 2022, the Chiefs released earlier this month, saving upwards of $8.4MM. At the time of signing, Hitchens was one of the highest paid inside linebackers in the game on a per-year basis. But, because of the way his deal was structured, the Chiefs were able to escape multiple years and millions on the commitment."
Hitchens is currently a free agent.
The salary cap in the NFL is currently $208 million per team. Revenue from the TV contract alone is $309 million. Their is no risk being a NFL team owner.
Last edited:
The top 10 advertisers include Sky, McDonalds, Tesco, and yes, Amazon, all pretty well known for their products I'd say. I'm not claiming Amazon or Apple will buy United, just that it's a possibility. I get people are upset about murdering gays but there are other reasons for buying things.
To be honest I think we either get bought up by an American consortium or a golf state, I seriously doubt the likes of Amazon , Apple etc are daft enough to dabble in club ownership.
Sports advertising is very big and lucrative business still. If you buy United presumably you'll secure at no extra costs, exclusive shirt sponsorship, can grant yourself stadium naming rights, plus have your company's name emblazoned unchanged on the advertising games for the entire duration of a home match.
Collectively at this level such things are worth hundreds of millions of pounds my itself each season.
Collectively at this level such things are worth hundreds of millions of pounds my itself each season.
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to buy a club for it though, especially when it costs 5bn+
you can just pay for it, and then you don't have the responsibility to keep the team competitive just to retain that value
it also kinda limits your ability to pay for it with other teams, too.. like if Amazon bought United they couldn't access the same advertising opportunities for our biggest rivals - and amazon products span all demographics
They could just invest the 5-6bn in treasurys and the resulting interest will be enough to fund all of the above. And there's no real reason why they need to advertise with a single club, they can sponsor as many stadium names as they want.
There's no way a tech company would enter a new, completely unrelated line of business like football. It's like Nike deciding to make Pancakes or Budweiser starting a social network.
Amazon have literally dozens of subsidiaries that have nothing to do with the core business. That's what large corporations do.
God's are very expensive. No way can one be bought for a hundred. Unless we're talking small gods. Like Terry Pratchett's Zephyrus, God of Slight Breezes.
New owners couldn't do that.
My theory is that whether he buys us or not Sir Jim is key to the whole thing.
It was only in the press in early October that Sir Jim had met with the Glazers at some point since he voiced his interest in buying us in the summer, but that the club wasn't for sale, and that they were very 'nicest people', or something along those line anyway, and yet barely a month on they suddenly announce they want out.
It's surely not beyond the realms of possibility that he made them a very good offer when he did meet them, maybe buy part now to fund the new stadium, with a cast iron guarantee that he fully takes over in a year or two, or/and just an offer to buy the lot now, which the Glazers liked, but didn't want to commit to until they had explored other avenues first, maybe Sir Jim has guaranteed the offer for 6 months or so, hence the speed this seems to be going at.
Just guessing obviously, but that's what this thread is all about now anyway, but I wouldn't expect Sir Jim to be giving any leaks to the press if it's somewhere near the truth, he's achieved what that set out to do already.
Seems like he hs been blown out of the water now doesnt it
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but 17% of 500 is greater than 23% of 350. I can't figure out what business sense it makes to choose less profit for the sake of slightly greater margin
Other than reading that they held talks with 'potential investors' form Qatar & SA, but that the 'nature of the talks were unclear', which is hardly evidence of Ratcliffe's offer been blown out of the water, if they are even properly interested anyway, so no, I would still think he's in with a real shout.
Now,that I could get behind, my swing is in a right shit state at the moment and don’t even get me started on bunkers..
I think he’s gone quiet now the serious business has begun. I think he’ll wait for others to play their hands before he gets involved - possibly in the hope of getting a knock down price.
He bid £4.25bn for Chelsea- I think he’d go a bit more for United, but maybe not £6-7bn. I think he will bid, and obviously details will emerge as the process accelerates.
What happened?
Outrageous! South Africa can't invest in United now. We have wealthy politicians whose children are going hungry. A little corruption goes a long way we always say.
Absolutely nothing. Just baseless speculation because Avi G has been to the oil states most likely.
Yeah, that's as plausible theory as any! That's the thing, no one really knows. However, you can only base a theory off of what facts are out there.
Almost every potential owner has no experience running a football club. There are many better/ faster ways to get rich than owning a football club. There really is no way to completely own the market in football because you need relatively competitive teams to play against you to drive ratings and interest.
I think you’re just looking at this from a conventional view rather than from a strategic point of view. Apple, Netflix and Amazon, even Facebook to some extent, are in the content business. Sports are just another form of content. These guys are driven by stock price, earnings and dividends. I guarantee you, IF they are looking at United, a huge pillar of the business case is subscriber base. Apple TV, Amazon and Netflix are all subscription driven. How many subscribers do you expect to add based on the United content you can deliver?
Even though it’s a 6b acquisition, buying a single team is a pretty narrow viewpoint. Why do that when you have the cash to buy broadcasting rights for the entire PL? Champions League? Amazon has already bought NFL broadcasting rights for Thursday night games…
I agree with this. Pandemic aside, valuations in sports and entertainment continue to soar and typically have higher valuations and PEs than traditional verticals.
I’m struggling to find an example where a sports team was sold at a loss… maybe in UK and Europe where there is promotion/relegation, but not in the US where the teams are essentially franchises.
There are a lot better investmests if you just want dividends for sure. But owning a team like United is an ego / big dick thing. There is a huge premium over the conventional valuation methods…
Great point, and I 100% agree.
It would of be done to obtain subscribers, if they are after getting as many fans as possible to subscribe, they should buy the broadcasting rights for the Premier League/Champions League instead. If they are after MUTV content and subscribers, buy a license to those rights.
The only reason for Amazon (or any other streamer) to buy Man Utd is for competition reasons. If they own us, nobody can outbid them for carrying Man Utd unique content. I 100% think there is a market here. I have not at all kept track with these sports documentaries. Was it HBO that started with the 24/7 thing back in like 09 or something? Its basically a documentary that won an Emmy in which they follow a sports team or athlete 24/7 leading up to a big event and where you get unprecedented access. I am sure there are a ton of examples around the Premier League, I've not seen any of them. But they are definitely on to something. How many Man Utd fans would sign up to a streaming service for 7-8£ a month to watch a show giving you unprecedentedly access to Ten Hag and behind the scenes with the team, say early in the season. Tactical preparation before game, discussions with players etc. Definitively "trade secrets" to some extent, but like this is entertainment. How many would sign up for a streaming service that had a show following us behind the scenes during the January transfer window? 300,000 are paying a yearly fee to be a member of the club, and you barely get anything for it unless you visit Manchester to watch games, right? Around 68m on average watch our games. Would a million sign up to watch content like that? Three millions? If its the first of its kind, its probably more than that. I don't know what the going rate is for a streaming service to get a million viewers -- but its a lot.
I think these type of things are coming for sure. But they aren't quite here yet. MUTV have tried for ages, but they can't really be creative enough.
But that is "it" for Amazon and the other streaming services. They would buy us to stop anyone else from getting perpetual exclusive rights to Man Utd broadcasting rights outside of competition games. Amazon paid 250m USD for the rights to the Rings of Power series and 400m USD to make the first season. I have no idea how many new subscribers they got from that series, it was seen by like 25m per episode, but some of course had prior subscriptions and many surely canceled their after only watching that series.
The upside with buying Manchester United isn't even there yet. How many new Prime subscribers would they get if they just bundled MUTV with Prime? 150,000? Its not worth a 9bn investment (including investment in the squad and infrastructure). But at the same time -- if they bought us and did it properly, I actually don't think they would regret it. Lets say you build up a football group like Manchester City have done. Get us, team up with Beckham and buy Inter Miami and Zlatan (who I think owns a team in Sweden), perhaps a Serie A team, a team in China, South America and a few other places. You definitely gain a lot from synergies like the City Group does. Its front heavy from an investment POV, but it shouldn't be a black hole requiring a lot of capital injects after 5-10 years. Add the streaming dimension where you create top notch behind the scenes content for each club. Pre-season tours. Get all the die hard fans to become Prime subscribers. The group of teams more or less breaks even. Maybe you can add 5 million subscribers yearly after say a couple of years. This is not tapping into the potential in Asia. But the "USP" this would have for Amazon that would make the investment add up is that all this is more or less "perpetual". A Lord of the Rings series is one off. Sure it will keep drawing subscribers and add depth to their content offering for years. But not to any big extent after a few years. Create a very successful football group with a extremely big fan following -- you have bought content that will draw subscribers for 100 years. If you buy the PL rights for 5 years, you own nothing after 5 years and a week.
Do I think it will happen? Think odds are very low, I wouldn't rule it out, but...
I think it goes beyond a financial play. Amazon could buy United to add on to what is called a Platform Company:
A platform is a business model that creates value by facilitating exchanges between two or more interdependent groups, usually consumers and producers.
In order to make these exchanges happen, platforms harness and create large, scalable networks of users and resources that can be accessed on demand. Platforms create communities and markets with network effects that allow users to interact and transact.
The world’s six most valuable companies by market capitalization (Amazon, Apple, Alibaba, Microsoft, Alphabet, Facebook) and 70% of the $1 billion+ unicorn startups (Didi, Airbnb, Uber) operate digital ecosystems that match buyers & sellers and gain enormous market share from network effects.
McKinsey forecasted that 30% of all global economic activity ($60 trillion) will be mediated by platforms and ecosystems in 10 years time. Yet, only 3% of established companies worldwide have adopted an active marketplace strategy.
If Amazon does it its purely a strategic play for now.
I think the big issue around Ratcliffe's prospects of successfully buying us is his history of being miserly around Premier League club valuations. Firstly, he's been on record numerous times as stating that he believes Premier League clubs to generally be overpriced. Secondly, he actually missed out on entering the bidding process for Chelsea at all, due to being too preoccupied with waiting for their valuation to drop further.
Contrast this with how American consortiums are said to view the valuations of Premier League clubs, whereby they supposedly consider them to offer great value vs US sports franchises and within current currency exchange rates.
We know from the process that Raine employed for the sale of Chelsea that their first round for Manchester United will likely be to receive closed, firm bids from all the interested parties. We can also be pretty certain that the Glazer's main criteria for advancement from this stage will be bid value. Therefore, I would suspect there's a very good chance that Sir Jim Ratcliffe will be outbid fairly early on.
Ultimately, the only thing I think we can say for certain regarding this sale is that there will be numerous profit-hungry American consortiums bidding for ourselves. As to whether they are successful will depend entirely on whether an Amazon, Qatari prince or alternate left field buyer emerges from the shadows to blow said American consortiums out of the water.
I agree he will be outbid fairly early on but I also dont see the business case for an American consortium buying us. At prices being touted its really difficult to extract any value because our revenues and profits are way below the price it would take to purchase us such that just investing in bonds would be more lucrative and there little wiggle room for a potential buyer to use credit, we are already struggling with a billion pound debt yet we still need major investments to catch up with the competition, imagine if an owner takes out a 5bn loan requiring interest payments of up to 250m per year!
Such an owner would have to be pretty confident that he can get the revenues up to maybe a billion pounds, keep the wage bill below 500m and maintain those revenues at that level for a long time. I doubt that even Real Madrid are pulling in that kind of money and they are consistently operating at another level compared to us.
The only way for someone to buy us is if they aren't doing it strictly for business. Maybe someone like Musk, a Shiek for a vanity project or some big company with money to burn looking to build synergies for their media business and exploit our name that way. A Glazer like model is no longer possible at the prices being demanded by the seller.
And how many of those major brands own football clubs?
And consistently this is an argument against a US consortium. I also don't see a viable business case for them buying us.
I can't see past a ME investor. It all depends on the Glazers greed.
As a business that pays for itself it doesn't really make sense because the price that the Glazers have set is at least 7 times our annual revenue and this is a market where you need to pay high wages and spend highly on transfers each year. Look at Liverpool, they built a good team but slackened on strengthening for a few windows and suddenly they can't keep up and their one CL and one PL wins now feel like underachievements for the team they had.
And United still need massive investments in the playing squad, maybe 300m in one window then maybe 80m per summer window from then on in that is if the signings don't flop. Factor in expenses on the stadium, training ground and facilities for the women's team we cant really pay for all of that from our own earnings, something Americans will impose on us.
What I see happening is that there are a few interested parties with the capacity to buy the club and then fund the major rebuild needed on the squad and infrastructure. I see such investors or investor coalescing around a more palatable individual like Musk or Beckham then bringing in a few silent partners to make up the appearance of a consortium and then buy the club then slowly rearrange the shareholding structure of that consortium to reveal the real owners over the coming years.
Unless if the Glazers climbdown and settle for a valuation around 3 billion and that is highly unlikely.
Great points.
All-in-all, at the prices quoted, this would be a vanity project. "Usually", an underperforming assett such as United, would be very undervalued, and then with some investment, you'd begin to see some real returns in the short - midterm.
Our problem is, we're underperforming and still looking at going for record prices. We are such a unique club. Really difficult to make a genuine business case for the "money men" to purchase us. It has to be a vanity project.
What a way to describe someone.
But that's just ridiculous confirmation bias. Our current owners could be set to make a £4bn+ profit on their 2005 acquisition.
Looking at that profit margin and claiming nobody will see the club as a 'viable business case' is absurd.
Too many people are starting from a preference of oil state ownership and working backwards to retrofit the facts to make that seem like the only possibility. Even to the point of watching a venture that's set to give current owners billions and billions of clear profit and pretending that such a business couldn't possibly be viable or attractive to anyone else
Which is why I fear that this could drag on and affect the preparations for next season and next season itself. If the likes of Amazon, the Qataris and Saudis don't bite then we'd fall into the zone where we are hoping for a wealthy and competent consortium but such buyers would ideally wait for the Glazers to bleed a bit more so that they climb down to more realistic valuations in the region of 3 to 4 billion which I feel Joel and Avram will struggle to accept.
Give me a business case for a consortium, then. You talk a lot but don't back it up. Tell me how United is a viable use case for a consortium?
They will set us back further and further. For some reason, now feels like a water shed moment for us. With so many teams around us either changing hands, or looking to change, we have an opportunity to capitalise and begin to be the forefront of things, again.
We're the most valuable sports asset on the planet about to provide its current owners with the biggest profit ever seen made by anyone in the industry by some considerable distance.
If your starting point based on that is to claim you don't see a viable business reason for anyone to be interested in buying us then I'm not going to be able to help
Of the non oil potential buyers who do you think has 5 billion in cash, which will negate the need for borrowing at rising interest rates and a further 2 billion to sort the infrastructure and the squad?Again without borrowing because the interest rates for those funds alone easily dwarf the profits we are currently making?
The Glazers benefited from excellent timing because then we were actually undervalued, we were perennial winners, with little to no competition and had a phenomenal manager in place. Those factors helped them grow the value of the club and exploit our name but through their incompetence the trophies are gone, the record sponsorship deals have dried up and we now struggle to qualify for the CL let alone be involved in the business end of that tournament.
Still the Glazers want their pound of flesh and their valuation doesn't make business sense for anyone looking to make money. If have 7 billion lying around its more lucrative to buy bonds than to invest it in United with all the uncertainties around us - our revenue is heavily dependent on us achieving a minimum sporting threshold, which needs a lot of money to maintain.
Why do you think FSG want out? They have been more successful than the Glazers and have a top manager in place. Its because they can see where this is going and they know that pretty soon wage inflation will also catch up with them and wipe away all the profits.
- Status