The World Cup in Qatar has entered its third day as Manchester United’s press office announced that its American bosses are probing a final match they have long refused to consider: potential sales of the famous English football club.
Every day since that November morning, the spiral of speculation about who could buy United, one of the world’s most famous and most valuable sports teams, has accelerated.
A British billionaire was quick to confirm that he plans to take part in the bidding. An American hedge fund kick the tire. Report on an offer from Saudi Arabia causing the club’s share price to skyrocket.
But that is from Qatar, where there have been rumors for weeks that investors are interested in adding United to the country’s expanding sports portfolio, where bid details are official. first appeared. And just like that, the battle for the club’s future, the battle of different visions of what form Manchester United would emerge after the auction, took place.
The official word of Qatar’s specific interest came in a statement Friday night: an all-cash offer – believed to be worth up to $6 billion – by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al- Thani, a lesser known royal but his power may be more in his hands. served as president of a major Qatari bank and was influenced by his father, a former prime minister, who helped put their small country on the international map.
Sheikh Jassim’s statement lays out populism, or at least what sounds like a Gulf billionaire’s vision of it. Committed to investing in United’s stadiums and their teams without adding a single dollar of debt, his five-paragraph statement is like an exercise in ticking the boxes in the proposed proposals. designed to win the support of anyone eager to see the return of the Glazers, the family that have controlled the Premier League giants for nearly two decades.
But Sheikh Jassim’s proposal for a “debt-free” takeover does not hide the financial strength behind the offer that would make United, in an instant, Qatar’s most senior-owned asset in the world. Earth.
His public offering surprised other bidders. Raine, the investment bank that handled the acquisition of United’s board of directors and the Glazer family, has asked potential buyers to refrain from any public statements, perhaps to entice as many offers as possible. well, or at least to avoid scaring any pursuers.
Qatar’s offer changed that and quickly prompted another contractor, Jim Ratcliffe, a British petrochemical billionaire based in Monte Carlo, to confirm first privately and then publicly. that he had made an offer to buy a 69% stake in United, which the club owns. the Glazers.
Ratcliffe candidly offers United fans an English-language alternative to the prospect of owning the Gulf. Born in Manchester and a lifelong United fan, Ratcliffe promised to give “Manchester back to being Manchester United,” to revive a club not for foreign interests but for its “proud history and roots in the northwest of England.”
Competing offers immediately split United’s fan base, with many overseas supporters openly searching social media for deals they hoped would see Qatar’s rich pockets carry. give back to Manchester United what billions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates have done for its neighbour, Manchester City. That sentiment does not appear to be shared by many of the club’s match supporters, with concerns raised by fan groups in the UK about everything from human rights to sports integrity.
The latter could prove to be the more formidable obstacle, because Sheikh Jassim and Ratcliffe could face scrutiny under rules set by European football’s governing body, UEFA, that ban teams has the same owner participating in the top continental tournaments such as the Champions League.
Ratcliffe already owns OGC Nice, which plays in the French top flight, and has withdrawn part of its fortune to fund its push to European qualifying.
Sheikh Jassim will face the challenge of convincing football managers that his interests are different from those of the Qatari ownership group running longtime Champions League contender Paris St.-Germain. Sheikh Jassim’s father, along with the country’s former emir, was one of the architects who built Qatar’s vision as a player on the global stage, and one of the driving forces behind the move. promote the flashy shopping of display properties like another British institution, the department store Harrods, and the Shard, the tallest building in England. The father’s close connection to the country’s leadership has raised suspicions that his son’s pursuit of United is purely a personal investment.
Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim may soon face other challenges as well. The deadline for Friday’s bids is a deadline devised by United’s bankers to create urgency. Other bids may already exist, and new (and possibly higher) bids may still be presented.
But there is one thing that all auctions – public, secret or imminent – can benefit from the near-universal consensus among United fans of all backgrounds, that the club no longer run by the famously unpopular Glazer family. The family bought the team in one highly controversial deal in 2005, where it used the bulk of the purchase price over the club, meaning United spent hundreds of millions of dollars paying for family ownership.
That deal, while angering supporters, turned out to be hugely profitable for the Glazers. Through fees and dividend payments, the family has secured a return much higher than the initial direct investment (a fraction of the purchase price of approximately $1.4 billion at the time). there). The club’s value has skyrocketed, with media reports suggesting the family is currently seeking up to $7 billion to part with it.
That price would significantly narrow the pool of potential owners. At least one potential buyer told The New York Times last week that anything close to that number was “crazy” and said his team walked away because they believed United, still in business. debt of nearly $600 million, not worth more than £3 billion, or $3.6 billion.
In Raine, however, United bosses entrusted the job of soliciting offers to a bank with a recent track record of finding buyers willing to outbid the market price. The company, led by New York banker Joe Ravitch, made £2.5 billion (about $3 billion) last year when it sold to Chelsea. But it was a more forced sale, one that stemmed from the British government’s sanctions against Chelsea’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovichshortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Glazers do not face similar pressures. Their call to bid for United was merely an attempt to “explore strategic alternatives for the club.”
That means whatever the billionaires offer, whatever they promise, wherever they call home, Manchester United will only be sold for a price the Glazers are willing to accept.
