Manchester United on NYSE – MANU is the ticker

General Consensus?

It’s been no secret that ever since the glazers took the ownership of Manchester United back in 2005, it has financially not been same, and after it was listed on New York stock exchange (NYSE) it would never be the same.  I will not bore you with basic financial numbers but initially upon listing the shares traded at $14 (£9) valuing the club at about 1.5 billion dollars.

The club is one of the biggest names in any sporting context and seeing that they are offering 10% of the stake to the outsiders does not make sense, not to me at least not in America. The money raised will go to the owners and towards wiping the debt, which is near about $ 500 million. The trouble is it will only write off a portion of debt and the large chunk still will have to be paid off and will have to be serviced too. So how club benefits in the long run remains to be seen.

With this deal the owners will gain a lot more than the entity of club itself, it will be 2014 before the club breaks even or goes into black.

Manchester United over the last year or so have signed lucrative deals with DHL, Turkish Airlines and more recently with General Motors (Chevrolet), one would think with deals like these a team like Manchester United should be doing really well. Apparently not well enough though.

For me the move is wrong on two counts one financially it’s fraught with danger and shows the vulnerability of the club financially. Everyone already knew but now it’s like an open book.  Also going to USA rather than Singapore or Hong Kong where the fan base is much more might have caused club a few million dollars here and there. On the playing field MUFC are the biggest club in England, which is widely mooted to have the best league which earns the most money through television and other sources. If MUFC have to look for alternate options to continue to compete on the pitch then it does not bode well for the other clubs. Not that MUFC fans even remotely care about other teams.

I personally don’t like this move but what can one do. However one thing is if the whole experiment goes wrong being Manchester United, there will always be a sugar daddy waiting in the wings, a la The Red Knights. Goes without saying watching this space very carefully.

Hopefully it does not come to that

Let us know what you think of this whole saga.

Comments welcome.