Home » Man United set to drop to third place in Premier League revenue table

Man United set to drop to third place in Premier League revenue table

by Red Billy

Manchester United’s recent financial results say as much about the greed of the owners as they do about the effects of the pandemic on the club’s position.

Football financial expert Swiss Ramble has done a detailed analysis of the results on Twitter and revealed some interesting facts.

First of all, United’s drop in revenue cannot be fully explained by Covid-19 and in fact both Manchester City and Liverpool have closed the gap in that respect. The expert believes that ‘both clubs might overtake United in 2021’, leaving the Red Devils only the third highest revenue generators in the Premier League.

Swiss Ramble believes that this is mostly due to a drop in commercial revenue – the aspect in which Woodward and co are supposedly experts.

They registered £279 million in the first nine months of the year, but this is a hefty drop of £40 million on the previous period.

The analyst notes that while other clubs’ commercial revenue has increased, United’s has stalled.

‘United’s new £47m TeamViewer shirt sponsorship is much less than Chevrolet £64m, while The Hut Group pulled out of replacing Aon training ground £15m deal due to bad Super League publicity,’ he explains.

One of the areas Swiss ramble pointed out as a weak spot was player sales. The total incompetence of the club’s negotiatiors Ed Woodward and Matt Judge is clear to see in the graphic here:

As can be seen here, over the last six seasons, United have made the least from player sales of any of the big six, less than half made by the likes of Southampton and Everton and five times less than Chelsea.

The overall debt position makes for gloomy reading.

‘#MUFC debt is still very high at over half a billion pounds, even after all the refinancings by the Glazer family,’ he says.

‘It is only surpassed in England by #THFC £831m – and that was for the Londoners building their new stadium, as opposed to funding a leveraged buy-out.’

That debt means high interest payments – by far the highest in the Premier League, and ten and twenty times that of Liverpool and Manchester City, respectively.

Yet of course, none of this doom and gloom affected the dividends paid to the controlling shareholders, the Glazer family.

‘#MUFC have still found enough cash to pay shareholders (mainly the Glazers) a full £23m dividend,’ Swiss Ramble notes.

‘First half (£11m) already paid, while rest will be paid in July. United were the only Premier League club to pay a meaningful dividend in 2019/20.

‘Even though Joel Glazer attempted to justify the dividend payments as “a modest proportion of our five to six hundred million pounds of revenue”, it is striking how much the club has paid out here. Including the 2020/21 season, this will be around £135m in the last 6 years.

‘In the 5 years up to 2020, no owners in the Premier League have taken out more money than #MUFC’s £133m (dividends £112m, share buy back £21m),’ the report continues.

‘In stark contrast, some owners have put in significant funds: #EFC £348m, #AVFC £337m and #CFC £255m.’

It is a depressing picture and concerning for the future of the club. It can only be hoped that initiatives such as that of the #NotAPennyMore movement, who were instrumental in that HUT Group contract cancellation, can put enough pressure on the Glazer family to finally leave the club and allow it to be run by those whose interests lie in United’s success on the pitch.

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