It has been a busy few weeks for our club and for MUST. Here is what’s going on.
As we indicated in our open letter to Sir Jim Ratcliffe, we are pressing United to freeze ticket prices and not implement policy changes without consultation. It is a total abuse of fans’ loyalty to make them pay for decades of mismanagement and debt since the Glazers’ arrival, especially at a time when (mens’) results on the pitch are the worst in 50 years. We have been stating these views robustly, at every opportunity in all of our discussions with United, whether directly or through our reps on the Fans’ Forum or FAB.
Price rises at this time along with punitive ticketing policies, imposed without consultation, is the kind of short-termist thinking that has little upside yet could cause huge damage. It could easily tip fan sentiment and have an impact in the ground, plunging the team and the club into an irrecoverable tailspin.
Down the other end of the East Lancs, dialogue delivers
We were encouraged by the recent announcement from Liverpool FC (on ticketing we’re fighting the same fight) that they are freezing ticket prices for next season. As unpleasant as it is to acknowledge, Liverpool have been a far better team than United in recent years, which has put them in a strong financial position. Nevertheless, that there was no change was itself a huge accomplishment by fans. Liverpool fan groups put this down to “staying in the room,” however hard discussions with their Club get, which reflects our own views on dialogue. Here is an excerpt from an email sent to the Premier League Network by a Liverpool fan rep:
We broke off all dialogue with senior management of the club following the takeover in 2005, but we now recognise that was a mistake. Our fans were left with no independent representation, no voice at senior management level for 8 years, until dialogue was tentatively resumed in 2013 after Ed Woodward reached out to us. While the club hears fans’ views, we can’t guarantee that they will always act upon them. What we can guarantee, though, is that if we are not in the room, decisions will be made without the fans’ voices being heard. Then we are essentially giving them licence to do whatever they want. However, the new INEOS regime has led to the replacement of nearly every senior executive at United, so much of that historical understanding of fan issues has been lost.
Over the years, this dialogue has helped United management learn what fans’ views are likely to be and make better decisions. To the point where they wouldn’t even table some of the worst sorts of ideas because they knew they would be rejected and appreciated the arguments why. So it is the deeper understanding built over time through dialogue which often passively delivers the best results by preemptively killing off the worst proposals. However, with this new ownership & management, we’ve had a reset. We have had to start again. It’s frustrating, of course, but we can choose to either engage and rebuild or we can give up and walk away. We won’t be giving up.
Dire financial straits
On Wednesday, the Club released its latest set of financial results and, it’s fair to say, it was a litany of horror which lays bare the scale of the financial mismanagement we have seen at Manchester United.
Amongst the low-lights revealed in the figures are:
- A pre-tax loss for the three months of £38m
- The Club spent £14.5m on giving Erik Ten Hag and Dan Ashworth contracts and sacking them both within months
- £18.8m in debt interest payments over six months, taking the total interest costs since the Glazers’ leveraged buyout to more than £1bn
- Without the Ineos cash injection of £80m, the club would be down to £15m cash
- £210m drawn down on the Revolving Credit Facility (club “credit card”) leaving total debt at £731m plus over £300m in transfer fees owed
United has amongst the highest revenues in world football, and yet we see huge financial problems in these results, driven by £19m in debt interest payments (over six months), mismanagement including paying £14.5m compensation to a manager and sporting director only given contracts a few months earlier, a disastrous record in player trading over the last decade, and now dreadful performances on the field making matters worse with every league place we fall costing a further £4m in prize money.
In this context, it is clear that ticket prices at United are plainly not the problem with the recent £66 changes raising less than £2m. This shows big increases in prices would be futile and counterproductive, making only a trivial difference to the financial challenge whilst hugely harming fan sentiment and worsening the mood in the ground which inevitably feeds through to even worse team performances.
Our message to the Club is clear – fans should not pay the price for a problem that starts with our crippling debt interest payments and is exacerbated by a decade or more of mismanagement. It’s time to freeze ticket prices and allow everyone – players, management, owners and fans – to get behind United and restore this club to where it belongs.
We made this case strongly to the media throughout the week and got lots of press coverage, with many outlets leading the news with our view of the results rather than the Club’s one. The BBC was a good example of this here –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c0eg87njdr7o
Wrapping up
It gives no United fan pleasure to see our club in this state of decline. Decades of mis-management and lack of investment under the Glazers have led us here and the legacy of their takeover debt is still costing us tens of millions more every year having now surpassed an incredible £1 billion. Utterly disgraceful – but rewind to 2004 and you’d have heard MUST (the Shareholders United) telling fans exactly how damaging this debt laden takeover would be. Sadly not enough listened then but few are in any doubt now.
Every single one of us wants the club to get back to winning ways. Every single one of us wants United to be commercially successful and profitable so those funds can be reinvested. With the owners no longer taking dividends, this money can be used to the benefit of the club and fans—but that only happens when the football turns around. In the interim, the medicine we are being asked to take is based on a choice. It is a choice the owners are making to not cover the blip in form until the football improves. It is a choice the owners are making to ask fans—once again—to pay for their errors.
We will keep fighting against this, advocating for a price freeze, and pushing back on unfair ticketing policies. However, we must set realistic expectations—we do not anticipate positive news when these first set of decisions are announced under the new regime. Our focus is on minimizing the worst possible outcomes. As we work to build understanding with the new management and ownership, we have no choice but to navigate the current challenges so that we can emerge in a stronger position to influence future policies and pricing in the long term.
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