Obviously we will get another deal, but clearly some fans want us to lose as much as possible and they don’t realize how much it could hurt the club and not just the owners. I know this 200m won’t destroy us.
Guardian: Manchester United lose £200m training kit deal over fans’ anti-Glazers campaign
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
I think the glazers will have to work hard to win the fans around now. They should be making some big signings, investment in Old Trafford, a Glazer appearance at the next fan forum, and maybe VDS as CEO appointment. If other sponsors follow who knows what happens.
A sponsorship deal not happening being spoken about as possibly being the worst thing to happen to the club since Fergie leftI'm going to bed.
Only a mlily mattress I hope
Glazers out
The Glazers have since they bought the club showed complete ineptness at owning one of the biggest sport clubs. They have shown no interest for the club itself or the fans and the local community them selves in 16 years. They have put their own debt of purchasing the club on the club while taking dividends on top of it. No one would be bothered by the dividends if they had managed ownership of the club on a competent level. They have hired a banker with no clue about professional football clubs to actually make decisive sporting decisions. This alone is extremely incompetent as it dosn´t take being Albert Einstein to figure out this would lead to poor results long term. Both the sporting side and the financial aspect of this decision have had pretty bad results since they bought the club. They broke their promise years ago to communicate with the fans but never kept it. It is only when fans are actively trying to get rid of them that they have come out with a few words to the fans. They have not bothered to do this otherwise and it is strongest evidence that the club and the fans are irrelevant to them on a personal level as their history provide evidence for this. They also lied to the fans the one of the few times they communicated to the fans and this means they can´t be trusted as they have not taken any effort to communicate with the club fans on their own.
They have shown its only a matter of money to them so be relentless in targeting their only interest. Be warned though they WILL hire public relation companies to try influence the fans effort and attitude to their ownership in their favour or bribe key people in the fan organizer groups. This is standard practice in the USA from big companies. It is also something they do against employees that try to form unions so be ready for it.
I can only say well done to those that do the hard work at getting this organized and your work have shown results already. Don´t back down as you have a far bigger position than most people realize to force change through but it will take effort and time yet. All the peaceful fans did a wonderful job at standing up to the Glazers before the Liverpool game. Well done guys and girls.
They have shown its only a matter of money to them so be relentless in targeting their only interest. Be warned though they WILL hire public relation companies to try influence the fans effort and attitude to their ownership in their favour or bribe key people in the fan organizer groups. This is standard practice in the USA from big companies. It is also something they do against employees that try to form unions so be ready for it.
I can only say well done to those that do the hard work at getting this organized and your work have shown results already. Don´t back down as you have a far bigger position than most people realize to force change through but it will take effort and time yet. All the peaceful fans did a wonderful job at standing up to the Glazers before the Liverpool game. Well done guys and girls.
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How much money would they have to lose in sponsorships to make them shave billions off their valuation?
If you saw this news and thought it was bad, your first thought was how it affects our transfer business this summer. If your main concern is signings, you really don't understand the situation.
“the darkest hour is just before the dawn'”
This is a very important statement and it needs to be said every time the discussions take place. People need to realise how big business and corporate people deal with problems, there can be no place for sentimentality or sympathy.
You have some hoping for a revolution. Some content with the promise of an evolution. And then a bizarre spattering of Glazer bootlickers.
I personally am in the "revolution" camp and honestly, our ability to force the parasites out is being heavily under-estimated by many on here. It's going to be a long road but I genuinely think we're on the road to breaking their resolve. We cannot relent.
That's sort of what I'm getting at though, they may do it but it doesn't again speak to a well-run club that so many suspect that our recruitment plans have changed in the last fortnight because the owners want to shut up the protestors. Taking out a credit line to cover day-to-day costs (as they did last year) or taking on loans for major capital expenditure (i.e. long term improvements) is reasonable and our cash position wasn't going to be great given it had dropped significantly in the last accounts, we had significant current liabilities and have obviously had no fans all year but I'm not sure about doing it to buy a couple of shiny toys to change the opinion of them, particularly when usually targets and plans for the summer would be way down the line at this stage. In fairness you may be right that the risk of not doing it might mean it's actually a sensible decision from a financial point of view even if it looks haphazard from a football perspective.
I think a lot of us would be happy with evolution, but after 16 years we have accepted it is only the real and unavoidable threat of revolution that has any chance of seeing either happen.
Anyone who thinks accepting the status quo is the preferred option is a moron at this stage.
What’s your desired outcome here?
You hate the Glazers, yeah we all do. Except there are no suitable buyers positioned to purchase us and not seek a big return on that investment, though extracting more money than the Glazers do already.
In the meantime decimating our transfer business and in turn our ability to compete in the league and Europe will be potentially devastating to our club, regardless of who the owners may be in the future.
Not to mention that if we were to take a nosedive due to lack of investment and lost further sponsors it would make us far less appealing to the very few potential owners you long for.
I do hope you all know what you're doing here. I fear many dont
Its 20 million a season, if we win the Europa league and spend in the summer they'll get a much bigger one.
This Jamie Jackson is full of crap anyway.
This Jamie Jackson is full of crap anyway.
We've achieved more in the space of 2 weeks than we did in the previous 16 years, so this is absolutely the time to pile the pressure on. I want them out and would sacrifice any number of signings, sponsorship deals or congested fixtures to make that happen.
They've been a plague on our club for too long and forcing them out has to be the priority. Might as well aim for the best case scenario as settle for the failings of these neglectful, damaging leaches.
FreddieTHEReddie here now but nothing from AlexTHELion. Hmmmm..
Stopped a game from being played and now a sponsor has walked away. Fan power eh?? Glazers will be will be far more worried now.
In 3... 2... 1...
i can believe the issue the sponsor has with them being a local brand, and the issues that May bring.
i just don’t believe they would be signing a 10 year deal, and so the story really lacks credibility in my eyes.
I understand your reservations. The current state of affairs is at least familiar. Despite that, it's still worth remembering a few things...
Firstly, it's these shameless parasites who are lucky to have us and not vice versa. They're at the helm of the most popular club in world football and our allure would guarantee interested buyers.
Secondly, a few months of relative frugality wouldn't put a dent in how big we are globally. We're Manchester United for fecks sake.
Finally - Best case scenario, we get bought by a consortium / buyer who has witnessed the Glazers being driven out and does everything possible to keep the fans onside (like City and Chelsea's owners). The worst case scenario right now is that the Glazers have no choice but to radically alter their stance and fulfill some of the promises they made yesterday.
Either way, United aren't going anywhere in the long-term and they've done nothing but burden us.
Seriously, everything every poster has moaned about over the past 16 years relates in some way to their gross mismanagement of our club. Enjoy watching them feel the heat.
Good. Hopefully more sponsors pull out.
I won't be buying a Yanmar tractor until they're gone.
Yes
Easy now! Knobs on here will be calling you a fundamentalist or extremist
It's £200m over 10 years. £20 million is about 3.4% of annual operations income in a normal year with fans in the ground.
There are hundreds of massive companies with global outreach that won't care about fan boycotts. As long as the club is active with restoring its image through PR spin, a new sponsor will emerge, even if a bunch of angry reds stop buying their products.
Already cut Pot Noodles out of my diet, they are dead to me.
Oh, any anyone saying this is 'only' £200m over 10 years. IIRC, one of our biggest (if not the biggest) sponsorship deals with Adidas is someting like £75m/year (based on my quick google search). This is around 25-30% of that and it is by no means insignificant.
We had a revenue of $710m (again quick google search, no sophisticated currency conversion) and a market capitalisation (i.e. company value) of $2.7bn (based on the share price on Friday). That's around 4x multiple which is not unusual in valuing companies. Profit or EBITDA (basically cashflow generation) multiples are also key here but I don't have the desire to go that deep and you'd have to make a lot of assumptions based on how much of that £20m/year goes to the bottom line.
So if we assume we've lost $28m/year in revenue, that's a hit to the valuation of about $100m. This is not big in and of itself but reputationally it might damage the club's ability and bargaining power to get another brand deal.
We had a revenue of $710m (again quick google search, no sophisticated currency conversion) and a market capitalisation (i.e. company value) of $2.7bn (based on the share price on Friday). That's around 4x multiple which is not unusual in valuing companies. Profit or EBITDA (basically cashflow generation) multiples are also key here but I don't have the desire to go that deep and you'd have to make a lot of assumptions based on how much of that £20m/year goes to the bottom line.
So if we assume we've lost $28m/year in revenue, that's a hit to the valuation of about $100m. This is not big in and of itself but reputationally it might damage the club's ability and bargaining power to get another brand deal.
That isn't the worst case scenario. Not even close. The big issue here is that there are no seriously interested buyers. Its worth repeating too -
No. Seriously. Interested. Buyers
The main reason that there isn't is because the valuation of this club does not make us a worthwhile investment, so the chances are pretty good that the next owner will need some serious financial backing just to buy it (which puts more debt on the club), and then some even more creative ways of monetizing United - most likely a stadium rebrand will be high on that list. That makes me uncomfortable.
I'm not against what is happening here, to be clear. I'm just not on board with the viewpoint that this isn't a massive gamble that couldn't easily and spectacularly blow up in our faces and set our club back for a very long time. It might not, but it might.
Good. I have absolutely no sympathy for them. Never will going forward either.
Exactly this. If the only way to get rid of the Glazers is to inflict financial pain on the club, then people need to forget about big signings and challenging for the title in the short term. But Christ, if that’s all that matters to them, rather than supporting something happening to change ownership, then they really don’t understand the situation as you say.
How do you know there are no interested buyers?
A lot of people in this thread seem like they want to swim in the pool but never get wet aka wanting your cake and eating it.
You have to take risks in life to get the big win. And sometimes you won't. But getting the Glazers out OR at least forcing them to run this club properly won't happen by singing, dancing and hashtagging.
You have to take risks in life to get the big win. And sometimes you won't. But getting the Glazers out OR at least forcing them to run this club properly won't happen by singing, dancing and hashtagging.
It feels like this is a piece based on leaked info supposed to scare the protesters off, but if anything this proves the protest is very effective.
Typical guardian
"A sources close to"
"It is understood"
"Sponsor declined to comment"
"united lose 200m sponsor"
"A sources close to"
"It is understood"
"Sponsor declined to comment"
"united lose 200m sponsor"
I assume someone else will come in but at least it shows that the fan protest is having some effect.
People are acting like we are Ipswich and Ed Sheeran has just cancelled his tour
You mean typical reporting by any newspaper with sources that they won't want to reveal, ever?
Given this amazing detective work you've just showcased, I'd consider a run for the position of Sherlock Holmes when it next becomes available.