What next for the Glazers at Man United?
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Welcome to this Talk of the Devils Extra, part two of our special episodes marking 20 years of Glazer ownership at Manchester United.

In part one, which you should go back and listen to if you missed it before listening to this, we recounted the tale of how the takeover came to be with contributions from all different sides of the story. We had fan activist and FC United founder Andy Walsh, former Minister for Sport Richard Cabourne and leading economist and ex-United board member Jim O'Neill. We'll be hearing more from those three over the course of

this show but first let me welcome in my talk the devil's colleagues Andy Mitten and Laurie Whitwell and also joining us from the US is athletic writer Adam Crafton someone who's written of course extensively on business operations at Manchester United and has also recently been to Tampa to assess the Glazers impact over there.

Gentlemen, welcome. We're going to look at the club in 2025 in just a moment. But first, let's go back to 2005 again and listening to part one and the story of the takeover. Was there anything in particular that stuck out to you or maybe that you view differently now than you did back then? Andy, I'll start with you because you were actually a proper adult when this all happened back in 2005. And I remember it and you were still kids. Richard Caborn having reservations, I feel.

saying that what he did then was the right decision at the time, but now those decisions may not have aged well. The vindication that the fan protests of the time, the concerns of the time came to pass. I'm fascinated that 20 years on, a subject that you feel like you know inside out, you keep learning new details. Sometimes in our game, things sort of seep out years after the event.

But I thought that all three of the people we spoke to spoke in a real cogent manner. Laurie, you nodded. Yeah, I think the emotion that still is within people from that time is clear as well. Andy Walsh getting emotional and teared up about the fact that he didn't then go to Old Trafford and this club got torn away from him. And that's the case for a lot of people, I think.

But also this sense that when you speak to Jim O'Neill and Richard Cabourne, that perhaps it was inevitable that something like this would happen, you know, for all the fan protests, for the fact that, you know, Rupert Murdoch got chased away from Old Trafford, really, that something like this, when it's a free market and there's,

capitalist people out there that something like this would happen eventually. But obviously the exact entanglement of Rocca Gibraltar and the shares and Sir Alex Ferguson's disputes with different people, bringing it to the forefront that the Glazers would take over is still a special set of circumstances that people are obviously

the reverberations of which are still being felt. To me, it's just always that bloody horse, right? I mean, how one horse can have such an impact.

you know, on so many people's lives and the way that people feel is, when you think back, it's an amazing story. I remember, I mean, I was a kid at the time pretty much and you're, I remember just sort of being confused by a lot of it. I think I still am, actually. Yeah, but it was court cases and like the word shareholder when you're sort of a 10-year-old, 11-year-old, you don't know what that really means and why people are

so upset because you know at the time i mean the only thing at the time was yet i just remember united weren't as good for a couple of years i mean when you think now

to say they weren't as good in 2004, 2005, when they're only third in the table. So I remember thinking that at the time as a 10 year old. So all of this is just really useful to put it in context and help people, I think, of my generation to properly understand it and also understand, you know,

so much of what fans did at that time and how they were and weren't listened to. Yeah, it was certainly a complex football landscape back in 2005 in England. There was growing international interest, both on and off the pitch, ever-increasing commercialism. There was arguments over how broadcast rights were being sold, even rumoured Super League plans as far back as then, as Richard Caborn, who was the UK Sports Minister in 2005, now spells out. I think what has happened...

over this period, there was a change in the management culture of the Premier League. Ownership changed, but there was also a change in the culture. I mean, look at people like David Gill, for example. He's a football guy through and through and through, you know, went up to UEFA, but he's the type of people that were in those clubs. And I saw that. I saw that quite a lot around the Arnold Report when I had to go and meet all the Premier League clubs there.

I met the FA and then I went and met the Premier League clubs. Different choke and cheese. These were business people. And this is around the 2006, 2007. But that started to change. And I think that the fact that the business, sorry, the culture changed, that the knowledgeable people around football were actually going out of the game and more of the business was coming into the game.

and also the ownership. And it's quite interesting when you looked at that super league, because three of the three British players

Ownerships there the clubs were all American owned Blazers were at the forefront of that Joel was that he was one of the vice chairs Arsenal and Liverpool were the other two they were vices of this new Super League so you clearly got an American influence in there a business influence and a sports influence that that was as their structure from the US what they did not read was

was the reaction that they had. They totally abused the position of the Premier League. They really used where they got collective selling

they abused that self-regulation and they totally and utterly misread that. I think that actually they were shocked at the reaction that they got from the fans. But nevertheless, that's fine, that's politics. But underneath all that, I tell you, there's nobody who was disagreeing with it's now going to come under regulation. They have brought regulation on themselves.

because of the greed, because of the abuse. And when people abuse, you know, the trust that was put in them, and I put that trust in them, I'll be honest. You know, I said that back in 2005. I put that trust in football, in regulation, in the FA and in the Premier League, and they failed.

They absolutely failed. And if they don't get now ownership sorted, OK, I know there's a regulator coming in. Do you think the Glazers deceived you in that meeting then by saying that they weren't going to... And they didn't try and sell United rights individually, did they? No. But then the Super League is perhaps a version of that on steroids, really, because they're sort of taking the whole ballgame and trying to move it elsewhere. Do you feel a sense of...

That there was not whole truth being spoken to in that meeting? No, I think in that sense, I think that what happened was it was this change, this cultural shift of the Premier League and not being properly regulated by the Premier League and the FA. We've got the power to do that. And then they took this opportunity, as they saw it, to break up the Premier League as we know it and football as we know it. Let's make no mistake about that. It would have changed the whole scene of football.

And, yeah, Glazers were at the heart of it. Joe Glazers was at the heart of that as vice chairman of it. But I think that's 20 years on. We saw an opportunity in that intervening period. I think that, you know, that the Premier League did a great

you know, a very good job, I think, in terms of community. The investment that we were able to do through things like Football Foundation, the academy structure that they set up, it gave a lot of opportunities both to communities and to individual kids, some of them who were at the bottom of the economic ladder that came through on football. So, no, I don't think it failed. I think it got abused.

Strong words there, Laurie, to be fair, from Richard Caban. I mean, the idea that the FA and the Premier League have failed on this particular issue, what do you think of that? I think it was really interesting, particularly given his position as the sports minister at the time in 2005, and he certainly came under a lot of heat from fans. We obviously heard Andy Walsh, how strong he was in his condemnation of whether the government should have...

made a ruling on the Glazers taking over the club and launching all that debt onto the club. They certainly could have done something, couldn't they? Yeah. So then for him to sort of accept that in a way, I think, sort of look back in hindsight and think, well, okay, maybe it's the thin end of a wedge where then...

these kind of people that come in and feel it's acceptable to load debt onto a club in this way well what's then the next step it's all about money right so they are obviously going to try and do things that will help them get more money which is the idea of a super league where there's no promotion relegation like it is in the nfl where you get a guarantee of income and basically you just know that the money you're receiving can be

in perpetuity and therefore your asset is increased and it all comes down to the bottom line. It's so far away from what sport should be about, real organic emotion, up and down turmoil, having the impact of your decisions being felt full force as United are currently doing, I would say, even though maybe there's still a bit of insurance insulation from them having true reckoning on that. So yeah, I think it was really interesting from the

Richard Cabourne to kind of get into the weeds of that because he's obviously got 20 years since this point happened of reflections and I think it was perhaps credit to him to accept that, okay, maybe people won't say it's too late, but I think also for someone of his standing to accept that

those were issues that were then abused. And they brought on self-regulation themselves. We'll see whether the regulator does have teeth to match what people want, what fans want, because clearly if you left it up to the clubs at this point, I think they would take decisions based on what maximises profits. Andy, obviously we wait to see what the impact of a regulator in football is, but in terms of the moment back in 2005-2013,

If the Premier League and the FA, in the words of Richard Cabon, have failed on this particular topic, do you think the UK government failed as well? Yeah, I do. Richard Cabon said there were wider geopolitical issues, that if you said that if you tried to stop something like this, then it was sending a wider message out, not just to the sporting community, but investors looking to put money into the UK, which could be perceived negatively. It was like there are restrictions here,

There are barriers to entry if you want to invest in the UK, and that was against the prevailing attitude of the government at the time. But in answer to your question, yes, I do. One of the things I've learned in this podcast is Jim O'Neill saying, actually, it would still be possible for a Glazer Mark II to happen. I'm not sure it will be. We're under regulation. I don't think it would be.

Not to the extent because of the rule that was voted in in 2023, which limits the buyouts at 65% of the club's value, which in fairness isn't a million miles away from...

The Glazer deal, in all honesty. Honestly, everything the fans said came to pass. And people looked down on the fans. They said, look, you don't know what you're on about. You're just, you know, working class football fans. But they absolutely knew what they were on about. The fears about debt, for example, are more relevant today than they were 20 years ago. The fears about the direction of the club,

Issues like ticket prices, they didn't go away. And when there was the announcement about the Super League, that just showed a complete abuse of power. They got into the sweet shop and gorged themselves on sweets. And they did that until they almost exploded. And now you get in the idea of a football regulator coming in.

Adam, in that, there was also a suggestion that there's been a cultural shift in the ownership in the Premier League. I mean, to what extent do you think that's had an impact on how the last few years have played out? And US ownership as well seems to be a particular bone of contention for people. And if you look ahead to the start of next season, pretty much half of the Premier League will have some element of US ownership. But...

they're not all the same are they well I was going to say I mean you can't really bracket I don't think the Glazers with FSG no even though they'll share some ideas I think or the 49ers who were at Leeds I think are very different in many ways in their model or

The Wrexham owners are very different. ALK Capital at Burnley is vastly different as well, to be fair. Well, obviously that was a leverage taker, wasn't it? So we don't know the exact percentage of that, but that still happened, I think, before these rules got voted in by the Premier League. But it's a current modern example, isn't it? Yeah. So I think the Glazer one was particularly unique. What I would say, that idea Andy just mentioned about whether Britain is open for business...

I think you would have to say, you know, is the Premier League a stronger product 20 years on than it was 20 years ago as a result of a lot of changes of investment? Probably, you know, that's less about, far less, definitely not really about the Glazers, but definitely around the

you know, Manchester City and Aston Villa and Newcastle. It's undoubtedly more commercially powerful. It's got more of an influence across the globe now than it did back then. It's the real Super League. You know, I mean, there's a reason that the 16th and 17th best teams this season are able to still get to Europa League final. On the one hand, it's because their squads are a lot better than that and underperforming. But it's also because the overall quality of the league is really, really high. The fact Manchester United can be unbeaten in the Europa League this season is...

while barely able to win a game on a Saturday or a Sunday. Or a Friday or a Monday. Or a Friday or a Monday. We'll find out this Friday. It was a game on Friday. I think it shows the strength of the league. I think a team like Brentford or Bournemouth could quite possibly get to the semifinals of the Europa League or the finals of the Europa League now. So is the product stronger? Yeah, I think it is.

Do fans feel as connected to their communities and their clubs as they did 20 years ago? I think that's a very different question. So if the aim was to make the product as strong as possible, so Britain has a great global export industry in at least Premier League, then I think you'd have to agree with Kay Vaughan. But there's a lot of caveats that come with that. Yeah, and on that point in particular, clearly the Glazer takeover and others...

have been a highly emotive issue for football fans, certainly local football fans as well. The sort of us and them scenario of this type of takeover, the disconnect that people feel, the issues that can follow. And here's Andy Walsh talking about the specifics of that in relation to the Glazer takeover of Manchester United. To see somebody just take that, which is an emotional connection, and they exploit that for financial gain, it's frustrating.

It makes you angry and angry because you're helpless. The Glazers saw an undervalued business asset that they thought would just keep churning out cash. They did not understand the value of Manchester United. They still don't understand the value of Manchester United. And I would also say that Jim Ratcliffe really is showing that he doesn't really understand the value of Manchester United. A value that's been built since the late part of the 19th century

that's been built on the backs of ordinary people that then gets to a certain size because those ordinary people have made it such a success. And then these vulture capitalists come in to exploit the brand that they see has been built and forget about the core business, forget about the football. You know, people forget that the Glazers held a tight grip on the purse strings and wouldn't spend money in the transfer market. Then all of a sudden, go and spend money in the transfer market in a completely different

an unstructured manner that then puts the whole business into jeopardy. The incompetence that's been displayed is phenomenal. Yeah, Andy, it's not just the leverage buyout that saddled the club with hundreds of millions of pounds of debt, which they've been repaying ever since. It's also the issues and the decisions that have been made since that cuts deep with Manchester United fans and is a big reason why...

Andy Walsh felt back then that he wanted to split away, however hard that was, and form FC United and move his support in a different direction. Cuts deep to this day, Ian. The match-going fan base, the hardcore fan base, was split. You can argue about by what percentage, but in my little fancy, and I lost 30% of my writers, for example, not spoken to some of them since 2005. And you're getting it from both sides, right?

I'm disappointed you've not come with us. Why have you not walked away from Manchester United to form part of the protest? And on the other side, why are you giving those Judas FC start-ups energy? Why are you giving them the time of day? These arguments have gone round and round and persist to this day. And as I said earlier on in one of his podcasts...

I've met fans this season who haven't spoken to former friends since 2005. When you're talking about highly leveraged buyouts, where does community fit into that? Football clubs, whether it's Manchester United or Burnley or whoever, it is a community, it is a body of people. It's passion, it's loyalty, and the Glazers have very effectively monetised that.

But when they're passing and signing off all of these papers and going through market screening and talking about stock markets, what about the community of people who are directly affected by this? Chas Banks, who led Manchester United's Disabled Supporters Association, he actually said to Joel Glazer, when Joel started to speak to United fans around 2023, 2022,

He said, you forced me to sell my share in Manchester United. It wasn't monetary value to me, that share. It was emotional value. It was a feeling that I had a share in the football club I've supported and watched all of my life. And Joel Glazer seemed really taken aback by that. He was like, oh, right. It just hadn't entered any equation to them.

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Moving forward to November 2022, Manchester United released a statement to announce that a strategic review would take place into the path forward, stating the board would consider options including new investment or a sale of the club. It was a process which eventually led, of course, to Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos' purchase of 28.9% of United after fighting off rival interest from Qatar. Here's former board member Jim O'Neill in conversation with Andy.

There's a lot of people in the world with money. Manchester United's a trophy asset. What was the thinking behind the two going forward and why did nobody else get involved? I think in your question you've summed it up in a strange way.

Part of my highlighting of the dilemma is I'd call it the Adidas problem with what's the pop star guy that caused so much kerfuffle for them. Yeezy. Kanye West. Yeah. Yeah, the Kanye West problem. You know...

The guys at Reign tried to create the impression early on that there was endless people interested, including the likes of Apple and Disney and what have you. And way, way back when I'd actually had a conversation with Disney in the very early days of the

even before the Murdoch time, I think. If I remember correctly, they pointed out something which I think was turned to be very relevant here, that why would they want to own something

that would be so volatile and potentially very tricky to manage the reputational issues when they could get exposure to that theme and maybe it in some other ways, i.e. media coverage. And I think the Adidas situation with Kanye West kind of sums up the reality. So I would have thought any really major, very focused leadership entity

would realize that it almost irrelevant of the high price, which I'll come back to, owning that kind of asset could be seriously broader brand damaging. And so I think that would stop a lot of the people that are sometimes mentioned of seriously thinking about it, although they would have had some discussion. And so I think that brings it down to highly leveraged people or

genuine genuine cash rich very very wealthy people in the world when you think that through partly because of rising interest rates savvy people that run leveraged businesses know that that's got more difficult and then for the obvious names that have gazillions amount of money

For them, they'd have the same potentially brand damaging issues with a brand like Manchester United that an Apple or a Disney would have. So it would be my guess. And I'm saying that having discussed with many of these people about United over the past 20 years. And then you bring in the price.

I can't remember which smart business person said this to me, but somebody said, why would anybody want to put more than 10% of their wealth into owning something as crazy as a football club? So if you're getting somewhere near the implicit 5 billion, that effectively is the value that Jim Ratcliffe underwrote, even though it was only for a quarter of it, you're talking people that have got 50 billion to spare.

if they're being rational. So you're limiting it to a very small number of people, which in itself, at least in a brain like mine, raises why anybody would contemplate paying the price that has been paid, especially when ironically, or not,

It's still quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, and it's been nowhere near that price ever since. Adam, how damaging do you think owning Manchester United has been to Ineos and Sir Jim Radcliffe so far? About £1.5 billion worth of damage, if you talk about just what he's putting in. I don't think it's been damaging per se, because it depends really what

how they view it, right? What the objective of the ownership was. If the objective was to make the brand of INEOS incredibly popular and well-known around the world and all of that kind of stuff,

I guess more people know who Ineos are. I mean, does it make you more likely to buy a car? I'm not sure. Hand sanitizer, maybe. Hand sanitizer, yeah. Apart from that, I'm not sure Reckless ever really explained why he did it. He kind of says that he's...

a longtime United fan. You never really hear him talking about his times as a United fan, right? You never hear him talking about George Best and Bobby Charleston in the way that you might expect someone of that generation to maybe do. But he seems to be invested emotionally in it to a certain extent. What I think is clear is that there is a vanity and ego about him that makes him want to succeed. And I think that is...

both good news and bad news for United. I think it's good news in the sense that clearly you have someone who is very hands-on, very determined to make decisions. The only thing that could be a perceived negative in that is I think clearly just from an age perspective, he is in a hurry. He is a man in a hurry to have success at Manchester United as quickly as possible. You see that with the stadium, how quickly he's trying to get the

the support from the government to get that happening and get that done. And you see it with the team and you see it with the way that he's trying to manage the finance of the club and the speed of the decisions that are being made. I think it's too early really to know whether it's been positive or negative impact on, you know,

Ineos as a brand, but it feels to me a lot more about him as an individual than a kind of a broader kind of, you know, I don't think it's about washing Ineos' image or improving Ineos' image really at all. I think that just seems to be the vehicle as much as anything. Yeah, Laurie, we'll talk about the dynamic between Sir Jim Radcliffe, the Ineos figures at Manchester United and of course the Glazer family in a moment, but

How beneficial do you think it's been to the Glazer family, how this investment has played out? It feels like it's the best of both worlds for them, really, because they've individually been able to collect, I think, sort of $900 million, something like that, for their shares that Jim Ratcliffe bought. So they've topped up the personal change. They had to share it between themselves, the $900 million. Between six, it vastly reduced, doesn't it? But...

they've also still got 67% something like that of the voting rights of the club 49% of the actual ownership of the club so they've still got this and as to Jim O'Neill's point you know worth sort of 5 billion you know they've still got this kind of thing that's worth you know 2.5 billion to them at the moment so

for the, I think, 270 million that they put in originally to buy the club, which some of that might have even been leveraged itself against their American businesses, so the actual cash that they put in is unclear, to then already have turned profit several years ago through share sales and management fees and dividends, to then now also getting this amount of money from an individual, plus still having 50% of the club effectively. It's been phenomenally successful for them, and...

then okay you might say well the club is deteriorating you know in this particular season you know 16th at the moment in the Premier League if they don't qualify for the Champions League that takes a hit to their their brand their the asset that they've got there and as Jim O'Neill says you know the actual you

you know share price on the New York Stock Exchange has just plateaued it's still you know never really budged from that 2012 IPO offering so does that then impact what they're able to get for the club I don't really think so because they've already got a guy here who has kind of agreed to potentially buy the rest of the club at some point because that's what his original offer as far as the SEC filing is concerned was to do and

So, yeah, I kind of feel like they're onto a winner where they can kind of let Jim Ratcliffe have a go. But running the club, running the football operations, make all these massive cuts to the ongoing costs of the club where redundancies and things that they couldn't do because they obviously came in as bad guys and to then actually make people redundant would have been inviting even more vitriol onto them. So he's kind of taking the axe to the club in a way that they couldn't do.

let him give it a go you know the stadium same thing you know they they couldn't get their head around the finances for that and maybe ultimately it'll be too much for Jim Ratcliffe to solve as well but he's certainly coming with a huge amount of energy towards that new stadium and so I think they're happy to to let him have a go at it and see what comes of it yeah Andy none of this makes you think that the Glazer family are going anywhere just yet why should they from their perspective

They've got The World's Biggest Cash Machine was a title of a book by Chris Blackhurst, who was former editor of The Independent. The golden eggs keep being laid. They had to tweak the business model in November 22 with that strategic review.

Because Manchester United started losing money, which few people could expect. So that just shows on their watch how badly run the club was, how bad the recruitment was, how bloated the football club had become. And that was okay when Manchester United were reaching the final end of the Champions League season after season. But it wasn't okay when Manchester United stopped doing that.

The hit rate of successful transfers under them has been scandalously low. So that's how they had to go to market while still keeping some control. It's perfect for them. Looking at it from a purely capitalist perspective, what they've done is close to genius. Some of the things they did were so simple and hadn't been done before.

such as dividing the world geographically and saying, why can't we have a different sponsor in each part of the world for different parts of our football club? I remember being in India in 2009 and seeing Manchester United branded vodka

It was an Indian company with vodka, with Manchester United being attached to it. And I just thought, that is so clever. Because Manchester United have got a huge support in India and in many other countries, but they'd struggled to monetize it. The merchandise sales were negligible. There were no match tickets. There were rip-off counterfeits of the official club magazine. And suddenly they're going to market and like,

pay us this and attach your brand to our club. So commercially for a long time, they did very successful. But of course, everybody copied them and everybody caught up. And in recent years, other clubs have had a better product to sell, to go to potential sponsors and say, we are the current champions of whatever, whatever.

and attach your brand to our successful football club rather than one which is currently, what, 16th in the league? Manchester United are still huge, but the shine has definitely faded. I just wondered...

this season how much of that Manchester United vodka must have gone down in India during the Premier League games on a Saturday and Sunday it must be flying off the shelves I've had a bottle taken off me several times on my way into Old Trafford to be fair so yeah I won't be surprised if a few had been sunk

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Let's talk then about the relationship between Sir Jim Radcliffe and the Glazers because undoubtedly it's fascinating and hugely important in the aspect of running the club right now. The nature of Ineos' investment was only a partial purchase of course and it certainly seemed to benefit the Glazers from the outside much more than it did the Radcliffe side. So why did he proceed with it in that exact form? Here's Jim O'Neill again.

So, of course, as is known, until late in the day, that wasn't the plan. And Jim defaulted to that because his preferred plan, which was to only give the price he was offering to the Glazers that price...

and to not pay any premium to the market quoted price for those that own the publicly quoted price. And surprise, surprise, he found out that that would not be compliant with legal company rules. I think that told you that he couldn't afford to buy the whole club. And so in any case, irrelevance of the Qatari approach and stance is,

He defaulted to that because it's the only way he could get any involvement. And whether he knew or not at the time, and this is an important part of the story,

If I reflect back, what is it, 18 months on from that, I think he basically gave the Glazer family what they wanted, which was still to have significant ownership, but a very large amount of cash that could be split up between the six siblings and let's just say keep some of them happy that aren't too interested in Manchester United other than the ability to take money.

That dynamic is really fascinating, isn't it, Jim? What have you understood to be the relationship between those six? Obviously, we see Avram and we hear about Joel being involved, but the other four, not so much, although I think Ed was at a game recently. How does that all work, do you think? When I was on the board and towards the latter part of the negotiations, and in fact when they made the formal approach, there was a meeting between the family,

They all certainly weren't there. Avi and Joel were, and all their bankers. And there might have been two, actually, but they didn't really say anything. It was more their bankers talking. But it became pretty clear to me within years that there was mixed interests within the family. I think the whole so-called IPO listing in New York in 2012, I think it was,

was primarily driven by a desire to get cash out to keep some of the family members happy. If you go back and search as to what was going on, I think they ended up being allowed to take a quarter of the amount raised in that initial listing out. But if you delve, and I'm pretty sure that this is, well, I kind of know,

Their original plan, which would have been to list in other places, not New York, because this was, again, right in the middle of the heyday of global stuff in finance and companies. I think they wanted to take half of the cash out. That's one of the reasons why they couldn't get permission to launch in other places, including London. And I think that was driven by a desire by some family members, you know, let's get some cash out. And I think that was...

Very much part of why they announced this exploration of alternatives, including a sale in, what is it, November 23. So it's been there or thereabouts for at least a decade, if not more. How much attention do you think we should pay to the drag-along rights that the Glazers have got? How do you see this share between Glazers and Jim working out ultimately? My basic presumption is that it's effectively unstable.

You should ask others that weighed into these things more than me. But from what I understand, Jim's also agreed to basically give them the rights to sell it to anyone that would offer more than him. And so he doesn't really have any control. I think he can match it, can't he? I think he could match it. But let's just say my suspicion, if that was the case, then he probably would have bought the whole thing in the first place. Beyond their shares, you mean? Like the whole... 100%.

I can only presume the way we ended up with him taking this minority stake is because he couldn't afford to buy it all. Very revealing conversation or part of the conversation with Jim O'Neill that Adam in terms of the way that

Ratcliffe was able to get even a little bit of Manchester United under his control. Remember, this was only supposed to be sporting control that he was negotiating for. It's become a lot more than that, it seems, despite the fact that there are still some elements of the Glazer family influencing the shadows of the club.

Yeah, well, I was very confused throughout the process when we started to hear these rumblings that it was just going to be sporting control because in a modern day football club in 2025, you can't just siphon off football from the rest of the club. It's also interlinked. It's also interwoven, particularly when you're trying to

to assess and manage costs, one impacts the other. Something like data and analytics, you could use that to how you recruit football transfers, but you might also use it to work out how many packs of Quavers are we going to buy? How many do we need to buy for the next few years? How do we do all of that sort of stuff? Quavers, the US listeners are like,

potato chips and cheesy. Curly as well. I think that's an important thing to point out. I thought it was carrots in the canteen that we counted, Adam. Yeah, so I mean, that's a rubbish example. But what I'm saying is data analytics will be used across all sort of aspects of operations and business and football. So it never really made sense from that point of view. I mean, I think Jim is right, Jim O'Neill, I should say, is right in what he says about

If they could have afforded to buy more, I think they would have done. I think, I mean, can Jim Ratcliffe afford it? I mean, it looks like he can, you know, if you just look at what he's worth. What I wonder when, you know, when people, you know, and I think the hint has always been, you know, that there will be bigger equity as he goes along. I just wonder, and people keep saying this to me, why does he need to...

At the moment, all Ratcliffe really seems to be bothered about is being able to make decisions at Manchester United and be able to manage what's going on. He can do that at the moment. At no point really does it seem like the Glazers stepping in and saying, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. So if I'm Jim Ratcliffe, why am I going to spend another two and a half, three, three and a half billion to have exactly the same

as I currently do, other than just the vanity of being the majority owner of Man United and maybe being able to do a bit more around the edges. So that to me is a significant question at the moment. I mean, it's clear, however, the Glazers have not lost, they've not lost their grip on the club, right? They have...

I suppose, outsourced the management and operations. But, you know, I mean, we have in a piece that's gone out this week, I mean, there's two, I think, details that show they are still interested. One is that Joel Glaser recently asked Omar Barada, the CEO, and Mark Armstrong, the commercial guy who's coming from PSG, to come over and explain what's going on commercially in the United States. And there is also...

for a long time, the kind of most powerful man at Manchester United that no one's ever heard of, who is a guy called Mitch. First name only. First name only. I mean, that's how he's referred to, Mitch. Mitchell Nussbaum, who is the Glazers' long-time lawyer. And

He is now part of what is a kind of a chairman's council that has been set up, which makes him kind of the eyes and ears of the Glazers on the ground. He's kind of Joel's man, long-time lawyer. And for a long time, if anyone at an exec level at Manchester United wanted to get things done with Joel, they would go through Mitch to get that done. I think there was even a time where Richard Arnold, when the relationship was bad with Joel,

towards the end would actually always go through Mitch in order to try and make stuff happen. So they've still got their grip on it. And, you know, I think that's where the stadium stuff was really interesting because you had signatures on that statement. It was signed by Ratcliffe, by Alex Ferguson, by Brian Robson, but there was no signature there from any of the Glazer siblings. And that, to me, appeared odd, right, when you're talking about such a big plan for the stadium. So it makes you wonder...

how united they are on that project. It may mean nothing, it may just be the Glazers don't like putting their names to stuff, but it did make me wonder whether they're entirely unified on that. So Laurie, if Adam's suspicions are correct and there isn't a motivation for Sir Jim Ratcliffe to increase his stake further, and also the Glazer family are intent on hanging around...

What does this mean for the future of the club, being able to operate with this huge debt, which is still in place, of course, from the money that was borrowed for the initial takeover and, of course, the repayments then affecting the club year on year? How difficult is it for INEOS to move things forward in this current situation? Well, that's the huge thing, isn't it? Because...

To Adam's point, a stadium. How do you afford a stadium when you're having to already finance debt that was placed on the club 20 years ago that costs something like 30 million a year and is going to need refinancing in 2027 and we don't know the exact amount

percentages that that will then change to they might have to sort of pay it all off and get new debt i suppose that's one way but i think that does influence everything i suppose in terms of the dynamic between ratcliffe and the glazers how much that would change with a totally new ownership um in terms of the debt the only way is right if it was the qatari ownership and shake jassim and they just totally wiped all the debt and paid it all off you know that that was that's the the

the kind of magic wand, I suppose. And to Jim O'Neill's earlier point, that is where you get to these reduced pools of people that can actually afford the club. But it feels like that's all sort of past now, you know, the Qatari thing ended so badly. It felt to me that that's, you know, are they even going to come to the table again? I would doubt it. And so,

okay in terms of reckless motivation to actually buy the club outright he might want to take the club private you know he's done that with all these in-house businesses and so therefore you don't have to have scrutiny of quarterly accounts as per the new york stock exchange rules that's why we get so much information about united's finances four times a year because of the rules according to the sec so that might be one motivation for him and

is that why the Glazers are letting him do all this kind of stuff? Because they know he's the likeliest to actually then give them the money in its entirety. Clearly, you've got a bit of a split, haven't you, between Joel and Avram, who are a bit more engaged, and then the four siblings that have always really seen the club absolutely as a way of making money. There's a bit of cachet, isn't there, about owning Manchester United. You see Avram turn up for games and maybe get that glamour rubbed off in a way. So,

Do they really want to relinquish full control? It's fascinating to see. But yeah, as you say, then what does that mean for the workings of Man United? They've given Ratcliffe the reins and he's making a lot of changes pretty quickly. So you might just say, well, there you go. He's the guy and as Adam says, they've outsourced it to him. And that doesn't actually inhibit what United can do on a footballing perspective. But actually, yeah, wiping the debt and being able to be free and liberal with your finances feels like

a world away, if ever it's at all possible. Manchester United is a trophy asset. Owning Manchester United, or indeed any football club, is very attractive to a lot of people and has been since football started. In every small town and village, if you're the chairman of a local football club, if you're the person putting the money in, that is a situation which attracts kudos. And Manchester United...

a global football club, if that's on your business card, I am the owner of Manchester United. Well, what else competes with that? I'm the fastest man in the world. I'm the hardest person in the world at boxing. I'm the best footballer in the world. And I think with Jim Ratcliffe, and something he said to me in November, my parents would be very proud. There's definitely an element of ego, and that's fine. He was born in Manchester. He's in the later stages of his life. I think that's fair to say.

And if he could be seen as the man who helped make Manchester United great again, who helped deliver a redeveloped or new stadium, which is his preference, then that is probably incredibly attractive.

as he's owning Manchester United, not just for him, but for his company. I've seen it for years. Business people who make huge amounts in industries that the wider public don't really care about, they're not really interested in reading about the steel industry or the petroleum industry. They're absolutely interested in reading about football. And if your name's attached to that, in an idealised world, then that's a good thing. Suddenly you comment him.

Florentino Perez enjoys immensely being the main man at Real Madrid, far more than being a construction magnate. It's hugely attractive to people. No doubt more people know now who Sir Jim Radcliffe is than they would have done when he took over Manchester United. There's no question about that. And Adam, more people know about the Glazer family and the Glazer siblings now than they would have done back in 2004.

and five in England, but in America, they were already having an influence and you've been over to Tampa, which is very interesting because reading your piece,

In fact, just paint us the picture of the relationship between Tampa and the Glazer family, because it is so different to Manchester. I think that's the place to start. Yeah. Well, it's different and similar, I would say. Undertones of similarity. Yeah. Yeah. And the undertones kind of become the overtones, I think, by the end of the piece. And yeah,

It's fascinating. First of all, if anyone lives in the States, I feel like I'm now part of the Tampa Bay Tourist Board, but it is a gorgeous place. It's a shame in some ways United have never been there.

on tour for Laurie and Andy's sakes but a deliberate choice by the Glazers not to show the other half surely it's got to be it's got to be how they're living I don't think it's that I think it's possibly just other markets make a little bit more sense potentially but we'll come to that in a minute so

I was on my taxi into towards my hotel as I'm going down the street. On the right, you see this museum, this children's museum, which says Glazer Children's Museum.

Go down the next street and there's the Shanna and Brian Glazer Community Centre, which is a kind of huge leisure centre, gym, recreation space. And Brian is one of the siblings and his wife. So they've got their name on that. You then go an hour out of town and you've got the Glazer Playground down by the pier. So straight away, it's kind of interesting to me because, I mean, could you imagine if there was a Glazer name building?

in Manchester. Presumably none of the windows have been put in for a start. No, you know, and also, you know, I went to this children's museum actually on one of the mornings to see what it was like. And it's an amazing place, by the way. It is a kind of science-y, maths-y, arts and crafts, um,

Neurodiversity Affirming Initiatives. It's a really cool place and they put in, I think, $5 million of their own pocket 20 odd years ago in order for this to get built. And there's a lot of investments locally that they have made. But what was interesting was you have these community spaces where their names are. And that to me, immediately means they can't be hated, right? They can't be hated by a vast swath of the population in the way that they appear to be in Manchester. However,

If you go back to the mid-90s when they acquire the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it was $192 million. At the time, that was the biggest price ever paid for a sports franchise. And they were losers. Losers in the biggest sense of...

of losing, right? They weren't winning Super Bowls. They were nowhere near it. The players weren't being paid properly. The city was desperate for a team that competes. Malcolm Glazer came in though and he said, if I'm going to stay here in Tampa,

I want something back. And what I want is a stadium that is fit for purpose. And that's the Raymond James Stadium that was built. And this is where all the undertones slash overtones of what might sound more familiar to Manchester United fans begins. Because he basically said, what I want is a sparkling stadium. His argument was you need that in order to be competitive as an NFL team to drive revenues. In many ways, that's very forward thinking. It

in terms of what we know now about stadium revenues and how that helps teams compete. But what he said was, I want the city and the local county to pay for this. Not areas around the stadium, like we're here with Manchester United now, but the stadium. So initially what they came up with this was planned that they would sell half the stadium seat licenses. And if they sold half the stadium seat licenses in advance, then Malcolm Glaze would put in half the money and there would be a split.

But they didn't sell them because seat licenses at the time were quite a new idea. What it then meant was, I want the city to pay the whole thing or I will relocate the team. And the threat was there from, they were looking at, I think, Orlando, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Hartford, Connecticut. And, you know, speak to people in this piece, people who covered these meetings at the time where they say,

Malcolm, Joel and Brian would storm out of local council meetings late into the night and basically give the impression of we're off because we're not getting the deal. So what ended up happening was because local politicians were so scared of being the people that lost the NFL franchise in Tampa,

they paid for it. And they paid for it by what was called a community investment tax. And this was done by referendum. So people voted for it in 1996. But what they did was they looped in

the stadium with things like funding for police, firefighters, education. So it kind of became, well, if you're voting against this, you don't care about public safety, you don't care about firefighters, all this sort of stuff. What he would say, however, is they tried that same tax the year before on a referendum without the stadium in and it didn't pass. The year later with the stadium in,

It did pass. So people care about their sports teams in America. And they got the stadium paid for, right? This is the crazy bit. And this is the deal that they did with the Tampa Sports Authority, the Buccaneers and the Glazers about what they would pay. To lease the stadium, they pay $3.5 million a year, a fixed price since 1996. No inflation.

As an idea of how small that is to use this stadium, the annual NFL revenues, national revenues last year were $402 million. You're talking about less than 1% of their costs. And to operate the stadium...

They basically don't have any of the costs. Even weeding the field, sodding the field is taken on by the council and the city. The naming rights for the stadium go entirely to the Bucs. The parking goes entirely to the Bucs. The vast majority of ticket revenue goes entirely to the Bucs. I think last year it was something like 1.1 million went to the city. The rest goes to the Bucs.

It may be a lot more normal in the States, by the way, these kind of arrangements where cities pay for stadiums. But it's an extraordinary deal for the Glazers. By any measure, numerous people I spoke to described it as a sweetheart deal because they were so scared of losing them. So there's a lot, a lot of really good deals that they got out of this. And really that enabled them to have the revenues that then enabled them to have the leverage to buy Manchester United. That's what happened there.

What's becoming interesting now is this stadium is in need of major repairs. Now, as part of that original contract, what the Glazers managed to negotiate is that the city is responsible for maintaining the stadium to the standard of NFL stadiums of a similar vintage. So essentially, there's $500 million worth of repairs now necessary. The Glazers will likely argue the city should pay for this again.

The city will go back and argue, well, of a similar vintage, right? So how much of that is needs and how much of that is wants? And I think when there was renovations in 2016, 2018, the Bucks ended up paying, I think, around 160 million and the city paid around 29 million because a lot of it was what was viewed as decorative rather than essential to the bones of the stadium.

But if there is now 500 million of capital repair obligations up for grabs, I think that means the Glazers might need some more money. And I wonder whether some of that may have come out, it may just come directly out of the books revenues. But it does also open the question of,

you know, does some of what was sold with United a couple of years ago, does that come into question? Does some of them look to sell a bit more? Maybe. So this upcoming negotiation could be significant to Manchester United fans for that reason. Sorry, that was a very long answer. It certainly was, but it's something to keep an eye on, undoubtedly, from the way that you've spelt it out. I mean, Andy,

There's maybe a bit of a lesson in there about what's coming for Manchester United and a new stadium and everything else that goes with it. But fundamentally, what do you think happens next for the club and the ownership? I don't think that that much changes. I think the Glazers would be quite content with the current status quo. Jim Ratcliffe would probably like to increase and there is an obligation or at least a chance to match should the

Glazers sell more of their shares but why should they? They've got effective control over Manchester United in the best case scenario the team become good again move up to like 12th in the league something like that Old Trafford is redeveloped or a new stadium is built Manchester United should be far better than what they are even though the club is saddled with the debts brought on by the Glazer takeover

But I could have said similar pretty much at any time in the last 10 years. I'm an optimist, but I feel quite unoptimistic when I think about the future of Manchester United. At some point, I do think the size of the club will be the saviour of the club. I do think Manchester United will be great again.

I just do and nothing will ever make me change my mind on that. Laurie, can you change his mind? No, I think United will. I agree with Andy. The scale of the club, the fan base out there, there's too much going for it to make it keep...

treading water in these lower regions of the Premier League. But I do think it's a fascinating dynamic between Ratcliffe and the Glazers, just these ex-cos that happen. Normally in Monaco, it's suitable to Ratcliffe. The Glazers are always happy to make those trips. The fact that he said the club was going to go bust by Christmas is very critical of

of them and you know you know technically should be something that's written in a in a report to the new york stock exchange rather than that sort of vocalized and certainly runs counter to a lot of what people uh would think of the situation um so these are little sort of

teasing moments I suppose to kind of work out okay is that going to become something bigger is it harmonious clearly they all were on the same page in terms of changing the head coach although clearly that was something I think driven by Jim Ratcliffe really rather than the Glazers who customarily have given managers quite a lot of time so they're little sort of touch moments I think to sort of just keep an eye on and see how these kind of things develop because yeah it's a very tangled web and

I think a lot of eyes are on the club and how it all unravels or hopefully not unravels, but how it all becomes, plays out is something to keep an eye on.

Well, I don't know about you. I'm already looking forward to the podcast marking the 25th anniversary of the takeover, which will be around before we know it, I'm sure. Anyway, we'll leave it there. Laurie, Andy, thank you. Adam, thank you very much for coming on as well. If you want to read more about any of this, there is a series of articles across this week delving deeper into every single aspect of the Glazer family ownership of Manchester United 20 years on from the takeover.

on The Athletic right now. But thank you so much for listening to this special extra edition of Talk of the Devils. Let us know what you think. Get in touch. You can email us devilspod at theathletic.com. But thank you again and we'll see you on the next one. Take care. Bye-bye.

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