Manchester United supporters planned a protest on Sunday against Aston Villa, with fans encouraged to walk out in the 21st minute. The action came amid scrutiny of the club's ownership.
Manchester United's recent form
Manchester United's 3-2 comeback win over Roma ended a nine-match winless run. The club were just above the relegation zone in the Premier League and exited the Carabao Cup against Brighton.
Michael Carrick was given extra time to impress after crisis talks among the club's hierarchy following a 3-0 loss to Bournemouth. During the loss to Bournemouth on 25 October, supporters sang Carrick's song as he left the pitch, followed by boos for the players.
The planned protest
Fans were encouraged to walk out on the 21st minute to represent “21 years of failed ownership”.
The ownership arrangement
The Glazers handed control of Manchester United's football department to Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS in February 2024 when Ratcliffe bought 27.7 per cent of the club from the American family.
Avram Glazer insisted that Manchester United's commercial power had not diminished and compared the club to the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees.
Sale prospects and commercial revenue
Sir Jim Ratcliffe could reportedly buy the Glazers out of Manchester United in 2029 amid interest from other parties. The Glazers are reportedly waiting for the right time to sell Manchester United.
Stefan Borson, a former Man City financial adviser, said on Football Insider: “They can try and auction it again. It is for sale; everybody knows it’s for sale. I was told that there is a process. But I don’t know whether that’s true or not. You would think that would leak out. I think it’s going to be very hard to sell it, given that they ran a process not that long ago and it doesn’t seem to me that things are materially better than they were. The squad needs a lot of money spent on it. And the stadium is an enormously expensive project. And they’ve also already got quite a lot of debt. So I don’t see that it’s likely that there’s going to be huge appetite to bid for the club again right now.”
Responding to those comments, Borson said: “I’m not sure it’s true, to be honest, because if you look at commercial revenue since 2016 all the way through to 2022, there was no growth at all in commercial income. Now, what did happen in fairness to them is in the post-INEOS period, they do seem to have increased commercial revenue, but that’s largely been the change of how they’ve operated their retail function. What’s happened is they brought a lot of the retail in-house, which means that you get more commercial revenue but have more cost associated with it. So it’s a good headline, but it’s not actually true. So in terms of the growth that clubs have had across the period, it’s simply not true that on-field performance has had no impact.”
