Can Manchester United be turned around?
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Manchester United's home stadium

On the pitch, 2024-25 was one of their worst ever seasons, culminating in failure to qualify for a lucrative European spot. Overall, the cost will be in excess of £100 million. And off the pitch, financial difficulties. Britain's wealthiest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is now a part owner and has come in with a promise to turn the club around. He's got to get the next season right or he's very, very quickly going to become as bad as the Glazers, synonymous with the Glazers,

And I think it becomes really, really tricky for him going forward. The club has announced financial losses and is making redundancies. Yet it also wants to build a new multi-billion dollar, 100,000 seater stadium to replace the iconic Old Trafford. You need to build a narrative that will make it appealing for Sugar Daddy perhaps to come and say inject here 1.5 billion into the club or 2 billion. The finances and future of Manchester United. That's coming up on today's Business Daily.

Manchester United's co-owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is considering further redundancies at the club. Manchester United have told some staff working at their Carrington training ground that they'll lose their jobs in the second round of redundancies since Sir Jim Ratcliffe bought into the club last year. The much-anticipated meeting between Manchester United and Tottenham in the Europa League final. Both Spurs and United have endured, you can only say, pain in the Premier League season. Manchester United are prepared to make what they privately describe as disciplined investment in the squad. They finished 15th in the Premier League last season.

Last season, Manchester United finished in their worst ever position in the Premier League. It's been over a decade since they last won a league title and in that time rivals Manchester City have won seven titles.

Then there are the issues with the stadium Old Trafford, which has, amongst other things, a leaking roof. And stories coming out of the club of redundancies and cost-cutting measures like stopping staff meals. It's fair to say the club has seen better times. So how are fans feeling? Our reporter Neil Morrow went down to the final game of the season to find out.

I'm standing outside Manchester United's home since 1910, the Old Trafford Football Stadium. At the turn of the millennium, Old Trafford was seen as one of the most impressive stadiums in the whole of Europe. But times have moved on. Many of United's main competitors have either

completely rebuilt their stadia or renovated them to a much higher standard and that gives them access to the high paying corporate dollar. Make no mistake, in 2025, United is still a huge football club with almost 80,000 seats filled for every match. I've come to the final game of a difficult season for Manchester United to speak with some of the club's supporters. I'm Alex, I'm a Manchester United fan, I come from Warrington. Hi, I'm Katie,

I'm a Manchester United fan from Warrington. So it's been a difficult year, I think it's fair to say. Understatement of the century. I can't remember in sort of 30 odd, nearly 40 years of support of United that it's ever been really much lower than this. Everything is going a bit pear-shaped. It doesn't seem to be gelling quite as we hoped with the hierarchy. Obviously they've had to make some difficult decisions, which from a business point of view you can understand, but...

As a club, we're supposed to be a shining beacon for other clubs to look up to. It feels very difficult. They've made these decisions. On the pitch, it's been hard for months and months. And the Europa League was what we were all investing all of our hopes and dreams into. And obviously that didn't come off either. So it's left us with not very much to be optimistic about, really. It's the state of the club, just what we've become, how we've gone on the decline ever since Sir Alex has left.

Some of the things that the owners have been doing, I don't think that's right, but I think sometimes fans can be a bit irrational with their opinions and views over what the owners are doing because at the end of the day they are putting money into the club and helping the club go along and helping it stay alive. In the offside, not the places. You've only known Old Trafford. Would you like it to be renovated or would you like the new fancy...

circus tent design that's been suggested. It would be amazing to obviously come every week to such an amazing ground, like 100,000 seats, state-of-the-art ground, just the best, probably one of the best grounds the world will have ever seen. But I think there's just so much history at Old Trafford, it's just sad to let it go after all these years playing there. That's a view of fans at Old Trafford. United actually won that game against Aston Villa 2-0.

Also watching was Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Britain's wealthiest man and chairman and CEO of chemicals company Ineos, a company that generates $55 billion annually.

In February 2024, he became a minority shareholder in Manchester United, gaining control over sporting operations, effectively running the footballing side of the club. The club's majority shareholders remain the Glazer family, who took over in 2005, and in doing so, loaded the club with debt and have presided over, since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, a lengthy period of little success for the club.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe says he hopes his experience running a multi-billion dollar company can be used to turn things around. Here he is speaking to our sports editor, Dan Rowan. The nature of the challenge is what we thought it would be, but the scale of it probably is slightly bigger. We have got a club which was in a level of financial difficulty. Manchester United would have run out of cash by the end of this year, by the end of 2025.

After me having put $300 million in, and if we buy no new players in the summer, if we hadn't implemented all the cost programs and restructurings that we have done over the last 12 months...

So what's the reality? I asked Christina Philippou, Associate Professor in Sport Finance at the University of Portsmouth. Amanda,

United's finances aren't terrible. In terms of revenue, they do very, very well. They're definitely in the top two, three every year from English clubs.

They have started to make losses over the last five years or so. Their cash flow is pretty good for a club, where United do have, I guess, more problems than most are in terms of their high interest rates and their high levels of debt. You mentioned the debt there. Talk to me about that and how they've got into that position. Because when you think about clubs being in debt, you assume it's...

For example, Tottenham building their new stadium or when Arsenal moved to the Emirates. Or it's maybe clubs overspending in the transfer market. That's not necessarily the case for Manchester United. So Manchester United have a lot of debt. And a lot of that debt is still linked to when the Glazers bought Manchester United 20 years ago. Because they bought it through a leverage buyout, which meant that...

Effectively, the club took on a lot of debt, which they have to pay back in interest payments every year. According to research by the BBC, Manchester United has paid out $1.6 billion on debt interest, debt repayments, dividends and fees since the Glazer family's acquisition of the club 20 years ago. The BBC asked the club to comment. It said it would leave the accounts to speak for themselves.

So what does this financial situation mean for the club's ability to bring players in? They're not in a terrible position, right? They have spent a lot of money on player transfers in the last few years, a lot of them not particularly successful. Where Man U are lucky, say, compared to some of the other clubs, the fact that their revenues keep growing despite their on-pitch performance deteriorating...

means that there is still wriggle room for them to fix their recruitment and actually spend some money. We're speaking in the aftermath of Manchester United losing the Europa League final to Tottenham. How much have Manchester United lost out on by not winning that trophy and therefore getting into the Champions League? A lot, because there's the prize money from the Europa League fund

Then there's the Champions League qualification money that they kind of miss out on. They miss out on Super Cup qualification. Then there's Champions League money, probably about a minimum of 70 million ish.

Then there's the matchday revenue, which they're going to have to forego. Overall, the cost of not making Champions League football will be in excess of £100 million. You're listening to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.

Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility. There

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.

I love ravioli. Since when do you speak Italian? Since we partnered with SAP Concur. Their integrated travel and expense platform and breakthrough solutions with AI gave me time back to dive into our financial future. We expand into Europe in 2027, so...

I'm getting ready. Well, you can predict the future? I can predict you'll like that message. What message? Oh, hey, we all got bonuses. You can save for college now. I don't have kids. Hmm, you don't say. SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn more at Concur.com.

I'm Matt Lyons, looking at the financial future of one of the world's biggest football clubs, Manchester United. Sir Jim Ratcliffe's deal to buy a 25% stake in Manchester United has been completed. We've heard plenty about him already, so who is Sir Jim Ratcliffe? Sir Jim Ratcliffe was, if you like the local boy, made good. That's Matt Slater, senior news reporter at The Athletic. A lifelong fan, uber-successful businessman. Someone who had, certainly in terms of his business career...

had been almost hiding in plain sight for, you know, 25, 30 years because what he does, his business, Ineos, is very unsexy. But it is, by sort of almost any definition, a spectacular British success story.

He had been becoming more prominent. You know, he had like classic sort of billionaire behaviour, been spending his money on sport. And of course, he had tried to buy Chelsea about a year or so before. He didn't get Chelsea. And then, of course, Manchester United come along. It wasn't the, you know, the new broom sweeping the glazers away. It was a possibility.

a partial takeover. He demanded control of the football operation. So he is the guy making the big decisions and has been making the big decisions for over a year now, for 18 months now. But the glazes weren't gone. He has taken his old business approach by really drilling down on costs.

He's had to fire a lot of people at Manchester United. It's going to be 450. A third of the staff that he inherited, and he's done other sort of headline-grabbing things like cutting their meals at the canteen, clamping down on company credit cards and parties and what have you.

And at the same time, you know, this sort of tough, ruthless guy that turns businesses around has not turned Manchester United around. What then about building a huge new stadium for fans to watch that football? It starts with the most famous football club in the world. It brings you close to the pitch acoustically. It cultivates the roar.

And it's contained by an umbrella that harvests solar energy. Welcome back to Old Trafford. It's just behind me. And with me is Nuno Gil, Professor of New Infrastructure Development at Alliance Manchester Business School. I've brought you out on a classic Manchester day.

grey drizzly I've got soaks in the rain there's a cycle here so thank you for coming out with me my pleasure so we're here to talk about the new stadium plans for Manchester United 100,000 seat 2.7

a billion-dollar development called New Trafford, according to the designers Foster and Partners. What are your initial thoughts around the stadium plans? Because we can see from where we're stood, the sort of industrial land, where it's going to be built. Well, let's start with the cost. Manchester United as a club is not in great shape, as we all know.

And it seems that it would be difficult for them to borrow money at a reasonable interest rate that would not frustrate the club performance in football.

But to put money into the local development corporation, just a catalyst to get the infrastructure out of the way. And then you get the investors, the property developers, all the other initiatives will follow up. Well, let's go into a few different bits of that. I mean, you mentioned about almost the need for the local area to be redeveloped. Their own report says there'll be over 5,500 new homes, offices, public spaces, buildings.

And they're claiming it would add over £4 billion, so that would be nearly $5 billion, to the local area in terms of the economy and create nearly 48,000 new jobs. I mean, that's the kind of thing that is needed to get the government involved. This is, OK, it's an industrial area, but it's not derelict. You go around and you see a lot of businesses. They may be low-margin businesses...

But it will be difficult for some people. There are people that will feel very aggrieved to have to be displaced to another area. This is where you need to get the compulsory powers. Otherwise, there can be a lot of pushback. And importantly, Manchester United does not have all the land to build a new stadium. They will also need to acquire land. Land is not going to be cheap. We can see just from where we stood, the ship canal where, according to the plans,

They're going to bring in a lot of the parts of the new stadium, be pre-made, pre-built, bring them over and almost, in their words, like Lego, build the stadium like that. Five years, realistic? I think it is. I don't see why not. The purpose of the new stadium is very clear. So the design process will be way more straightforward.

Once you have the finance and the planning authority, it's something that the country knows how to do it. It's not rocket science. We are not sending someone to Mars. It's just a stadium. Figures from consultancy firm Deloitte suggest that almost half of Manchester United's revenue comes from commercial deals with the likes of Adidas, Cadbury's, cosmetics and grooming company Remington and logistics firm DHL. I wanted to know if the lack of success on the field

has started to affect the club's ability to make brand deals off it. Tim Crow and I'm a sports marketing advisor. Tim has, in his words, negotiated a lot of sponsorships for brands with Manchester United over the last two decades. Manchester United sort of exploded along with the Premier League and as a result...

they generated an enormous global fan base. The big worry with the lack of success, this consistent, sustained lack of success that they're going through, is that fan base going to fall away. You know, the number one thing that Manchester United talk about when they talk to the stock market, when they talk to investors, when they talk to

potential sponsors is they have a huge fan base. It's going to be difficult unless they do something quickly on the field and

to see that fan base do anything but go down. How long is it until the lack of success on the pitch starts to affect things off it, like sponsorship deals, for example? Though it's immediate. For example, there is a penalty clause in the Adidas contract, which means that if United do not qualify for the Champions League in two successive seasons, then there's a penalty there, and that's £10 million. That's a match of public record. So that's...

the hit on the bottom line is immediate. I mean, you mentioned the Adidas deal, say when that comes to an end and if you were looking to try and bring in a new shirt sponsor, how do you sell the club at the moment? Well,

I haven't had a client ask me to look at Manchester United for quite some time, for several years. They're never on a client's shortlist of teams that they would like to look at. Because they're just seen as being in such a tough spot. Clients like to be associated with success. They like to be associated with things that people have a good feeling about. It's quite risky.

Despite a poor season, Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim told supporters after the final game that the good days are coming. We either fight each other or we stick together and move forward. With one new player already signed this summer and several rumoured to be on the way, he'll be hoping, much like Sir Jim Ratcliffe, that he can turn it around.

And that's it from today's edition of Business Daily. It was produced and presented by me, Matt Lyons. Thanks to all my guests and thanks to you for listening.

Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility.

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.