MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 19: Harry Maguire of Manchester United looks dejected during the ... [+]
Manchester United’s season is just one game old and already some of its fans are calling for huge changes.
Anger amongst supporters was bubbling up before its Premier League opener against Crystal Palace and the subsequent 3-1 home defeat only increased the dissatisfaction.
The feeling wasn’t provoked by anything the club had done, although the performance on the pitch didn’t help, it is what it isn’t doing that has the fanbase riled.
The hashtag #GlazersOutWoodwardOut, which calls for the departure of both the Glazer family who own the club and its executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, has been trending intermittently on Twitter with every signing made by a rival this summer.
Dissent spiked once again as news emerged that Gareth Bale, often rumored to be a Manchester United target, was heading to Tottenham Hotspur, and another player, who was reportedly admired by those at Old Trafford, Thiago Alacantara, signed for Liverpool.
Dutch international Donny Van De Beek has been acquired by United, but, in what has become customary from the team from the North West, its pursuit of Jadon Sancho has become a ‘transfer saga.’
“We can compete with the biggest clubs in the world based on our revenue, but we don’t,” says Manchester United supporter and editor of independent fan website StrettyNews, Dale O’Donnell.
“It’s like the Glazers have a harness on the club and it’s restricting them from being its maximum best. Basically, they don’t prioritize what’s going on on the pitch, it’s purely business.”
In May, the Glazer family’s ownership of Manchester United hit the 15-year mark.
It is been an era of incredible financial growth and declining sporting performance, all played out against a backdrop of fierce opposition from a substantial section of Manchester United fans.
I spoke to O’Donnell, a staunch opponent of the Glazer family’s ownership of the club, to understand why fans are so quick to blame the family in charge.
The Glazers escape in a police van
Police clear a barricade to allow a van, supposedly carrying Joel Glazer, to leave Old Trafford ... [+]
To understand the depth of the anti-Glazer sentiment it is worth remembering just how much opposition there was to the American family’s purchase of the club when it happened.
Joel, Avi and Bryan Glazer left their first game at Old Trafford in police vans as 100 officers used batons subdue a crowd of 300 angry fans who blocked the exits chanting “die, Glazer die.”
Some supporters were so alienated by the takeover that they went and formed a new team; FC United of Manchester.
Many wondered whether the family, who also own the American Football team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, could survive in such a mutinous atmosphere.
But success in sport is always a powerful distraction and the three Premier League titles and Champions League trophy won in the first five years of the Glazer’s reign, kept the focus on the pitch.
The anger was always there though, and as the sporting performance has declined following the departure of legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, fan protests increased in scale and ferocity.
As the response to the opening day defeat to Palace demonstrated once again, fans were ready to blame the owners, before the team or the manager, particularly as the incumbent Ole Gunnar Solskjaer already had cult status.
But as O’Donnell points out, this rage against the family appears to have little impact on the people that matter.
“[The Glazers] just don’t care. They don’t care what people have been saying about them on Twitter, they don’t care about what people are saying about them anywhere. They’ve never taken the time to do an interview in 15 or so years.”
Other than an interview Joel Glazer gave in 2005 to MUTV after the takeover, there has been precious little communication from the family who owns Manchester United.
It is not uncommon, few owners in the UK speak to the media consistently, particularly amongst the largest teams.
The opinions of the likes of Manchester City’s Sheikh Mansour or Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich are rarely if ever, aired.
If supporters are behind an owner that lack of communication is accepted, but when it comes from one they oppose, it only fuels the dissatisfaction more.
The Glazers’ silence adds to the perception that they are “purely business.”
The lack of dialogue has been magnified by the club becoming, as O’Donnell says during our chat, “a corporate juggernaut” which draws more of revenue from South-East Asia than Salford.
United’s growth under the Glazers
VALE DO LOBO, PORTUGAL - JULY 1: Tim Howard, John O'Shea, Wes Brown and Liam Miller of Manchester ... [+]
When Malcolm Glazer completed the acquisition of Manchester United 15 years ago the club was valued at just under a billion dollars, it’s now worth around four times that.
The exponential growth has been driven by substantial increases in two of United’s revenue streams; broadcast income and sponsorship deals.
While the increases in TV revenue of nearly £4 billion ($5.06 billion) since 2005 have raised the income of all Premier League sides, the boom in commercial partnerships has been a Manchester United specialty.
At the time of the takeover, the club’s commercial revenue amounted to a third (29%) of Manchester United’s turnover at £48.4 million ($61.28 million). The biggest income source back then was matchday income (42%).
Since then a strategy of aligning the club with brands around the world has altered the revenue picture.
Cash now pours in from commercial partnerships with global companies and far outstrips what Manchester United earns from fans at games.
At its last financial results, sponsorship money amounted to more than double United’s matchday earnings at £275 million ($348 million).
Commercial partnerships account for nearly half (44%) of all the cash the Red Devils make, even outstripping TV income (38%).
The level of sponsorship revenue can only be matched by the likes Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, and is a distance ahead of domestic rivals like Liverpool and Manchester City.
“What United do off the pitch business-wise, I can’t criticize,” adds O’Donnell.
“They are maximizing the club’s commercial model, but at the same time they’re minimizing what the club can do on the pitch, for their benefit.”
The increased revenue has also resulted in hefty dividends, which benefit Manchester United’s majority shareholders the Glazers.
What riles fans like O’Donnell is that, while United fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich to monetize soccer’s global fanbase, the ownership of the Spanish and German sides is equally obsessed with winning the Champions League every year.
That passion is less apparent at Old Trafford.
Seasons without league titles prompt promises of squad enhancements from the presidents of these clubs.
O’Donnell points out to me that, United’s transfers not only take a lot longer than their rivals, new player announcements are also made into marketing spectacles.
This was epitomized by the announcement of Paul Pogba who was essentially revealed as a United player by kit manufacturer Adidas.
He says it gives the sense that acquisition of talent is about boosting the bottom line as much as it about bolstering the team.
“Liverpool won the league last year and, while I’m sure that hurt some of the players, the problem is that doesn’t hurt Manchester United’s board,” O’Donnell continues.
“They don’t know that it hurts every single United fan that we haven’t won the league title in so many years and Liverpool just went and broke their 30-year duck, with a good team and a good manager. That’s not easy for any United fan to take.”
Alternatives to the Glazer’s ownership
Bayern Munich's supporters react at Mercado da Ribeira in Lisbon as they watch a live broadcast of ... [+]
The difficulty for Manchester United fans who oppose the Glazer’s is the lack of viable alternatives.
They bought the club at a particularly opportune moment. It was relatively early in the upward trajectory of TV revenue, before the explosion of overseas ownership of English clubs.
At the time of the takeover, Chelsea had been recently acquired by a mysterious Russian billionaire, but Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City all had English owners, within five years that none of them did.
This spike demand for English soccer clubs means it now requires astronomical wealth to purchase a Championship club, let alone one in the Premier League or the most valuable club in the country.
The cash required to buy United puts them out of most investor’s reach.
Not that the fans want a rich overseas owner, according to O’Donnell.
“We don’t just want anyone to come in and buy the [soccer] club.”
“The revenue the club makes is enough to run [it]. We don’t need a sugar daddy, we don’t need a royal family coming in an attempt to ‘sports-wash.’
“We need someone who will let the club run and won’t need their big billionaire name all over it, but that’s hard to find. Someone like that realistically won’t be in a position to buy Manchester United.”
The dream scenario for O’Donnell is one of fan-ownership in the style of Bayern Munich, but he accepts that is unlikely.
“The ideal situation is that [fans] would have a say, but in 2020 how business works that’s not going to happen.”
