The Glazers would rather stay in control of Manchester United Football Club than take a penny less than £6bn.
That is according to The Daily Mail, who claim that the Tampa Bay family are dead set on smashing the world record for a club sale.
Chelsea’s acquisition by Todd Boehly and his consortium is currently the most expensive takeover to have occurred in football history.
Roman Abramovic’s sale of the Blues was valued at £2.5bn, with the buyers also committing a further £1.75bn towards investment into the club.
As reported by The Peoples Person yesterday, the Glazers have aspiration of getting over £8bn for United.
That is a valuation quite some way past the borders of the ridiculous, and would almost certainly rule out just bout every potential buyer on the planet short of a sovereign wealth fund.
Given such groups have never bid anywhere near that mark before, it could well rule them out too.
A bottom-line asking price of £6bn could be more palatable for would-be buyers, although even that price exceeds even the most generous valuations of financial experts.
In May 2022, Forbes placed United’s worth at $4.6bn (£3.73bn), while sports finance expert Kieran Maguire had this to say:
“If you compare the relative size of the profitability and revenue generated at Manchester United to Chelsea, I think a figure between £4 billion [$4.8 billion] and £4.5 billion [$5.4 billion] is appropriate, and if there’s a lot of interest that will drive up the price.”
While Maguire also said that £5bn was “not impossible,” he added that such a figure would very much be “the top end.”
The Glazer stance is therefore a troubling one for United fans, who have suffered under their ownership for 17 long years, during which the club has fallen behind its greatest rivals in terms of both infrastructure and on-pitch success.
In essence, the current ownership are threatening to extend their tenure unless someone offers them a £2.3bn markup on Forbes’ most recent valuation.
The hope, of course, will be that all of this is simply posturing. Even if the Glazers do end up getting their money, whoever gives it to them will need to be left with the resources necessary to turn United’s fortunes around.
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