“Manchester United” has collected a competition – Newspaper Kommersant No. 31 (7476) dated 20.02.

The competition for the right to acquire Manchester United, which its current owners, the Glaser family, put up for sale last year, will involve at least two strong competitors. One is British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos, and the other is a consortium led by Qatari entrepreneur Jaseem bin Hamad Al Thani that has officially announced it is bidding for a football asset that could cost the buyer a whopping £5bn.

Last weekend came the so-called soft deadline for applying for participation in the competition to acquire Manchester United. Since 2005, the club has been owned by the American Glazer family, which spent £790 million on the purchase of one of the most famous football brands. However, after a while it turned into a rather problematic brand. Since 2013, after the retirement of legendary manager Alex Ferguson, Manchester United have not won significant trophies, and its financial situation cannot be called perfect. According to Manchester accounts, last season the club lost £115.5m (£23m more than the previous season), while debt increased by 22% to reach £514.9m. repeatedly staged protests, urging the Glazers to leave. The Glaser family actually put Manchester United up for sale last November, announcing that they were considering various options for a “strategic development” of the club, including attracting a new investor or owner. The deal was entrusted to the investment bank Raine Group.

After the soft deadline has passed, there are at least two strong rivals in the fight to buy Manchester United.

The first in mid-January in the competition entered petrochemical corporation Ineos and its head, British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, who in 2022 tried to gain control of Chelsea after Roman Abramovich’s decision to part with the asset, but lost to the group of American Todd Beuley. This weekend, he formally confirmed his participation in it.

Mr. Ratcliffe will have an extremely powerful opponent. On the bid to acquire Manchester United officially announced and a consortium led by Sheikh Jasim bin Hamad Al Thani. He is the chairman of the board of directors of the Qatari bank QIB, as well as the head of the investment fund Nine Two Foundation, through which, apparently, he is going to control the club. The consortium said in a statement that the fund plans to return Manchester United “in its heyday” and invest in all areas related to it – football teams that are part of the club structure, the stadium, work with fans.

After the appearance of two applications in the history of the sale of the English giant, there are several extremely intriguing moments.

The first concerns the position of some human rights organizations regarding the possible transfer of Manchester United into the hands of representatives of Qatar, a country that was actively criticized for various human rights violations even before its home last year’s World Cup. One of these organizations – Fair Square – even expressed in advance in letters to the president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Alexander Ceferin and the head of the English Premier League Richard Masters “serious concern” in connection with the interest shown by Qatari businessmen in the club.

The second point is, of course, the cost of Manchester United. Ineos and the Sheikh Jasim bin Hamad Al Thani consortium did not provide any figures in their statements. But, according to the opinion expressed in an interview BBC well-known football finance expert Kieran Maguire, the deal for the Manchester club could be more expensive than last year’s deal for Chelsea. Its total amount was £ 4.25 billion, with club shares directly worth only £ 2.5 billion, and the rest is the funds that Todd Boehley pledged to invest in the development of Londoners.

So, Kieran Maguire suggests that the price of Manchester United will be about £5 billion.

He explains this by a sharp, about two-fold increase in the club’s share prices recently, the presence of rather large debts that will have to be closed, as well as a colossal fan base that increases the attractiveness of the asset. The Glazers themselves claim that Manchester United have about 1.1 billion of them worldwide.

Finally, the third intriguing moment is the composition of the contestants. Its terms allow Manchester United management not to disclose the names of those who applied. Leading British media resources – BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph – have little doubt that in fact the list of contenders for the club is not limited to Jim Ratcliffe and Jasim bin Hamad Al Thani, and it may still contain at least three potential owners. As a rule, these are two American consortiums and one from Saudi Arabia.

Alexey Dospekhov