It is 10 years to the week since the Glazer family confirmed the hostile leveraged buyout of Manchester United for £790 million. In the process the Glazers loaded the club with debt, alienated supporters and began the long road to inevitable mediocrity. Over the years Rant, both in it’s original guise (RIP all that content, thanks for nothin’ 1&1 Internet), and here since 2009, has written extensively on the takeover and it’s consequences.
Indeed, so extensive has been the coverage that another earnest article on the Glazer family’s fatuous regime is unlikely to be comprehensive. More than 50 reasons to still LUHG is a little better…
1. The hostile takeover. Nobody wanted it. Not the fans, not the United board, not Eric Cantona, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer nor David Beckham. Roy Keane did, because it made him “a few bob”, but probably not Sir Alex Ferguson, although the Scot said nothing and would go on to make millions from becoming the family’s most highly paid advocate.
2. The leverage. It wasn’t a takeover the family even funded, such as those at Chelsea or Manchester City. Instead, the Glazers borrowed almost £600 million from Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, together with those mysterious Payment-in-Kind (PIK) loans, which bore interest rates in double figures. Yikes.
3. That debt. Talking of which, the debt eventually rose to £788 million – significantly larger than United’s annual revenue. Successive buy-backs, refinancing schemes and the 2012 IPO have removed the PIKs and reduced the overall corporate debt to a more manageable level.
4. But it’s still not gone. As it stands there is £380 million worth of debt on the club’s books costing something like £20 million in interest per annum. True, much of the cost is written off against tax, but there is no upside either. After all, United was a debt-free institution before the Glazers arrived.
5. £1 billion sucked out of the club. The Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST), with the help of the indefatigable Andy Green, calculates that the family’s ownership has cost the club around £1 billion over the past decade in interest, debt repayments and other associated fees. Some of this figure has been recovered in taxes unpaid to the UK exchequer and dividends not realised, but the cost to the club’s finances still runs into hundreds of millions.
6. Death and taxes. They says only two things in life are inevitable. One came for Malcolm Glazer, although the family has dodged tax for much of its 10 years at Old Trafford. Debt is sometimes the capitalist’s best friend, but they’ve been stealing it from you, the taxpayer, for years.
7. Lack of investment 2005 – 2014. Whatever the extravagances of the post-Ferguson era there is little doubt finances restricted United’s ability to compete in a market forever changed by Manchester City and Chelsea’s free spending. Ferguson denied it, David Gill denied it, the Glazer family and their spokespeople denied it. You know better. Right?
8. “There’s nae value in the market.” There are some people who believed Ferguson’s excuse for this lack of comparative spending. The vitriol directed Rant’s way for pointing out the error of the Scot’s way was inevitable. For everybody else Ferguson’s take on the financial situation amounted to a gross lie. One directed at supporters. It was unbecoming of a Knight of the Realm.
9. The ‘Ronaldo Money’. On a similar theme, did anyone really believe that the ‘Ronaldo Money’ was ever earmarked for spending in the summers of 2009 and 2010? One would have to believe that Antonio Valencia was the best possible option available to replace one of the finest players on the planet. He just happened to be cheap. Honest, guv.
10. Michael Owen. Bebe. Antonio Valencia. Alexander Buttner. Value. Need we go on?
11. David Gill. ‘Safe Hands’, safer wallet. Gill has now retired to the luxury of life as a ‘consultant’ to the Glazer family and a FIFA Vice President safe in the knowledge that while he talked a good game back in 2005 – “debt is the road to ruin” – in reality Gill earned millions by negotiating the club’s way through a complex matrix of refinancings. Debt was indeed a road: to becoming a multi-millionaire.
12. Lack of transparency. Then again there has been very little transparency in the Glazer family’s financial shenanigans over the years anyway. The aforementioned PIK loans were refinanced secretly somewhere in the US, while the 2012 IPO included a move to register the parent corporation in the Cayman Islands. Home of the tax-free offshore account.
13. Ticket price rises. The inevitable fall-out from high levels of leverage was a significant hike in ticket price rises during the early years of the Glazer regime. Indeed, prices rose some 50 per cent between 2005 and 2010, with subsequent price freezes reflecting the relative lack of importance that ticket revenue holds as commercial and broadcast income grew.
14. Compulsory cup tickets. Want to watch United reserves and youth versus Scunthorpe for £53? Can’t make the game due to work or family commitments? Great! Here’s your ticket, whether you want one or not. Credit card already debited.
15. Those consultancy fees. Sure, “it’s their business and they can do what they like with it,” but the millions extracted by the Glazer siblings in superfluous management fees always exposed the ownership for what it was: not a “passion for Manchester United,” but a cow to be thoroughly milked.
16. “Franchise.” Yes, they did use that word.
17. Disenfranchisement. There is some irony in that acquiring the “franchise” the Glazer family has excluded thousands from the club to which they felt they belonged. Shareholders forced to sell against their wishes. Ticket prices rises that kept many away from Old Trafford. The youth for whom watching United is now a luxury not a way of life. FC United supporters who could take it no longer.
18. Cutting off supporters from communications. There was a time, post Rupert Murdoch’s failed attempt to buy United in the early 2000s, when supporters had a strong voice at the club. True, Peter Kenyon and David Gill may well have paid lip service to this group, but a voice of sorts was at least heard. No longer, although Ed Woodward has made some limited moves to redress this balance. The Glazers have offered one interview to the media in 10 years at the helm.
19. Where’s the next generation coming from? Which brings Rant to a wider point. Price rises and the ‘Blue project’ over in east Manchester threaten to undermine United’s local support for generations to come. It costs, at a minimum, £150 to take a family of four to Old Trafford on match-day. Unsustainable economics for most.
20. Stratford End Flags. “Tufty is a c*nt,” some people say. Rant couldn’t possibly comment on that, but the organisation does appear to be suspiciously friendly with the Old Trafford hierarchy. And the management allowed that banner.
21. The family’s business history. It’s embarrassing. From junk bonds to low-rent strip malls, failed fish food corporations and family feuding – it’s an episode of Arrested Development. Without the jokes.
22. The Glazers haven’t spent a penny of their own money. Through all of this not a penny has been spent by the family itself, even in the post-Ferguson, post-austerity world. Every penny spent is money generated by the club, not the family. The only financial relationship the Glazers have with United is to milk it for profit.
23. Cheap, embarrassing, sponsors. Mister Potato. Nissin Noodles. Kansai Paints. The Hong Kong Jockey Club. Globacom, the telecommunications company of record in Benin. Bakcell, the telecommunications company of record in Azerbaijan. Yanmar. Apollo Tyres. Gloops. Kagome. Blue chips they are not.
24. Yeah, this really happened
https://instagram.com/p/s8a06EwDtf/
25. And while we’re on it… the narrative around commercial genius is largely exaggerated. After all, the Glazer family did not negotiate the huge rise in broadcast revenue that has come the Premier League’s way in the past decade. Nor did they drive the UK telecommunications market towards greater consolidation, with the convergence of telco, media, mobile and broadcast industries driving the value of sports rights ever higher in an otherwise highly commoditised market.
26. The Glazers do earn some credit for exploiting United’s commercial worth to the fullest, if credit is the right word here. But the worldwide rise in the sports rights and sponsorship market has also been exploited to a huge, possibly even greater extent, at Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and even Manchester City. The Glazers are not outliers, nor even pioneers, but riding a very lucrative wave.
27. Man they be ugly. Uncle Malc and the Glazer siblings fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Rant wouldn’t like to call this carpetbagging dump of a family ‘trailer-trash,’ but dang if they don’t have webbed-feet then we’re not called United Rant!
28. Seriously ginger too. Not that there’s anything wrong with gingerness, you understand.
29. That pony tail. Have some dignity, man. There’s nothing on God’s good earth that is less dignifying than a balding middle-aged white man who thinks a pony-tail ensures his ‘cool’ remains intact. No way daddy-o. No exceptions. Unless your name is Samuel L Jackson.
30. Papa Glazer never set foot inside Old Trafford. He loved the club, just not enough to hop on a plane from Tampa to Manchester and show face at the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ from time-to-time. Did he not long for a warm Old Trafford reception?
31. Absentee landlords. Come to think of it the Glazer spawn rarely attend more than a handful of games each season anyway. Surely it’s more fun than watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Even under David Moyes.
32. The ‘sister club’. Which brings us to the Bucs – the runt in the corner everybody pretends doesn’t exist. Owned and abused by the same family, Bucs fans are just as angry with the Glazers as United’s supporters. Over the past 12 years the Bucs have secured just two play-off spots, while attendances have fallen. The Glazers, at once stage, were forced to buy their own tickets to stop a media blackout demanded by the NFL when stadiums are half-full.
33. The Old Trafford pies universally suck. Remember that short-lived Jamie Oliver campaign to improve school food? Admit it, you were shocked that a school dinner could be produced for 17p and still be fit for human consumption. Old Trafford’s pies probably cost less to manufacture, but still retail at £4. Warmth is optional as, apparently, is meat in the ‘meat and potato’ travesty.
34. Champions Lager. The worst. To bastardise the peerless John Oliver: “it tastes like the urine of a scared rabbit” and the “ghost of a dead lemon.” The Singha now served at Old Trafford isn’t much better.
35. Gloablisation. Or should it be called de-localisation. The search for new sources of sponsorship revenue. The profile of the Premier League. Global media reach. Whatever the cause, the result is an Old Trafford supporter base that is decreasingly local and increasingly tourist. This is a sensitive subject of course. The way of the world, or the sad demise of 125 years of local tradition?
36. Dividing the fans. Talking of the fans: has there ever been a more divisive subject among supporters than the Glazer ownership? For those fervently committed to anti-Glazer activism over the past 10 years – whether that’s financial analysis, Green & Gold scarves, or match day boycotts – the bone-headed ‘support’ for the family has boggled-the-mind. And no this is not an anti-American agenda. Nor, most certainly, is it anti-semitism either.
37. Revisionism. This week’s public relations campaign to rewrite the history of the Glazer regime in the face of recent transfer market spending is classic revisionism. After all, the club is spending its own money, not the Glazers’. Money earned for being Manchester United. Paid for, directly and indirectly, by the supporters.
38. FC United. FCUM is a wonderful institution – a permanent reminder of football’s more sacred days. It is a club owned, run and operated by the fans, for the fans, without profit, but with much love. As it should be. This year FCUM will move into a new stadium, financed largely by supporters, but it took the alienation of thousands of Reds to make all that is FCUM. There is a bittersweet taste to that.
39. Fergie turning on the fans. Genius coach; bastard man, not least because of Ferguson’s fervent support for the Glazer family. Bought and paid for, Ferguson was never less than emphatic in lauding the Glazer regime even during the years of austerity. But did he really have to tell supporters to “f*ck off to Chelsea” if they didn’t like it? No. No he didn’t.
40. David Gill turning on the fans. See above. Rinse. Repeat.
41. New York IPO. It is one of capitalism’s crueller ironies. United, formed by the workers of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, as a local institution for local families, is now traded algorithmically by computers in a data-centre in Hoboken, New Jersey. It is perhaps the inevitable outcome of globalisation. None of this makes it any less morally corrupt.
42. Registration in the Cayman Islands. Home of tax-dodging billionaires and Tory donors, Grand Cayman has long-held a laissez faire attitude to business transparency and standards. No questions asked, none answered. The perfect spot for the ultimate registration of United’s parent company.
43. Taking £75 million out of the club and lying about it. That IPO was supposed to be used to write down debt. At least that was the Glazer promise. Instead the siblings took millions for themselves, probably to pay down the refinanced PIK loans.
44. And then they did it again in a second release of capital last year.
45. That mysterious incentive scheme. Did Ferguson profit? Did Gill? The IPO also welcomed a new ‘Equity Incentive Reward Scheme’. Share options to the uninitiated. Somebody is making bucketloads of cash.
46. Ed Woodward. Rant has no doubt Woodward is a brilliant marketeer. He may even be a decent man wrapped in the vapid shell of a management consultant, but he’s the worst kind of football executive. Customers, not supporters. Market exploitation, not lifelong passion. A media company, not a football club.
47. Endless tours. Summer tours were once fun; they still are to an extent. But where a quick trip to Scandinavia, with all the joys of Oslo that it would bring, was once the fair now United’s summer is replete with long-haul destinations. More than 20,000 miles of travelling during the last two summers. As Louis van Gaal has discovered, it is a far more about marketing than “preparation time” for the new season.
48. The official website. Is it the Glazer family’s fault that ManUtd.com is just so dog awful? Probably not, but the business practices certainly dictate that a ‘digital season ticket’ now costs in the region of £40 per year and the only way to read some content is to sell your personal data to the club.
49. The lob-sided stadium. There was once a plan, taken seriously at the highest levels of Old Trafford, to extend the south stand beyond its current single-tier base. The train track behind the stand is problematic, but the club had begun to embark on buying property in Railway Road in anticipation. That property was sold some time ago and plans shelved.
50. David Moyes. Not only did the Glazer family believe that they continue winning on the cheap with the Scot, but they actually let Ferguson hand-select his replacement! The man whose due diligence on Bébé extended to a single phone call from Jorge Mendes. Moyes was a disastrous appointment, whose wholesale failing as a manager of United’s standing reflects very poorly on his employers. It cost United more than £60 million and counting.
51. Marouane Fellaini. In a pre-or-post Glazer world would United have even countenanced purchasing this lanky, talentless, lump. And for £27.5 million? Not a chance. Fellaini is an outward sign of the failure to modernise United’s recruitment policy and processes – this is in part due to Ferguson’s lengthy reign, but the United hierarchy has not made enough progress either.
52. The women’s team. Last, but definitely not least, United once boasted a proud, if largely unsuccessful, ladies’ team. One of the Glazer family’s first acts as owners was to deconstruct the team because it did not fit with “the core business.” In 2013 the idea of bringing back the team was apparently mooted; the promised “assessment” did not bring back United Ladies.
Excellent rantage! I feel infuriated all over again. 😉
Well done Ed.
An excellent piece.
what happened to the other 50? Tut tut Ed!
Good stuff mate.
790 million quid I think it was, ed.
Fuck…..
You are wrong, Ed! Glazers have been the most wonderful owners for us. Because we won a few PL titles and a CL title under their stewardship.
That’s according to some of our degenerate fans on Twitter.
Can you believe that? If anything, we missed out on a few more CL titles because of their thrifty spending. Fergie refused to spend citing lack of value – how the F*** was Bebe, Owen, Obertan, Tosic etc. value? Valencia and Young?? when our rivals were buying Silva, Mata and Hazard. For years, our midfield had been neglected and crying out for a good box-to-box player. We kept buying cheap wingers and forwards, and we had to implode when Fergie left, and we did.
The Glazers have been spending lately, because they realize they will stand to lose a lot more if we do not play in the CL or win trophies. They are spending the money they should have 5-6 years ago. But they are spending the club’s money, not their own. Waiting for the day those old bastards sell the club!
@Lucas_MUTD
Btw, a very good article, Ed.
Excellent read and well laid out format. I’ll admit i was not the most informed on the extent of damage these thugs have inflicted on the club. I am now!
You’ll be on Bleacher Report soon.
History will show that Fergie’s battle with Magnier and McManus resulted in the Carpetbaggers from Florida seizing the opportunity which eventually enabled them to ‘buy’ the club. It was Fergie’s greed, stubborness and arrogance which led to the downfall of this club. In fairness the Glazers have repayed him handsomely and he became one of the family. Never forget Fergie was warned by the club Chairman at the time not to get involved in the battle with the Rock of the Gibraltar which he subsequently ignored, gentlemen he has a lot to answer for !!! A superb article which we should all keep close to our hearts when thinking about the Glazers and their immoral desire and lust for money
Agree. The Coolmore mafia was never interested in football, only in making money. Fergie’s relationship with them and the consequences of its deterioration over Rock of Gibraltar’s ownership, opened the door for the Glazers. Ferguson’s brutal self interest is matched only by the Glazers’ greed.
Fergie has loads to answer for. Never ever recognised it though did he. He’ll die insisting the Glazers are wonderful owners, counting their money
I agree with most of what you have to say on the Glazers’ matter, Ed, but I think calling Ferguson a “bastard man” and Fellaini a “talentless lump” is a a step too far and is ranting purely for ranting’s sake. Frankly, I’ve had enough of this tedious ranting of yours… Before you suggest so yourself, let me, as the Glazers would put it, take a hike on my own accord. So long, Rant.
First ever comment. Last ever comment. Here’s how much I or I would guess anybody else cares…
Can’t say I disagree with any of that. I bailed out in 2006 and haven’t set foot in Old Trafford since, and I’ve followed the team since the early 60s. I really don’t care for modern football in general with its rampant commercialism and astronomical costs but this seems magnified at United to the nth degree.
Comment Only the Chinese, or the Arabs can save MUFC now ! they seem to be dragging their heels” for some reason.Buying below average players and hanging onto the Deadwood” seems to be the norm” these days.While our Nemesis” clubs do summer business ” we piss about and end up with the likes of Sanchez and others! The Glazers are not going to move a inch untill they are made a offer, they cant refuse !