As plans for a money-spinning European Super League were torpedoed by enraged fans in April 2021, the American owners of Manchester United broke the silence that had become a feature of their almost two decades in charge.
“Our silence wrongly created the impression that we don’t care, that we aren’t football fans, that we only care about our commercial interests and money,” Joel Glazer, one of six siblings who together control one of football’s most famous clubs, told a fans forum. “And I can assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Now the football world is again waiting on the billionaire Glazer family to show its hand. Seven months since the family hired the Raine Group to review options for the 145-year-old club, kicking off a process that has attracted two deep-pocketed bidders, there is little clarity on its future.
“The Glazers are very slow decision makers who are deliberate in how they think about things,” said someone who knows the family, which acquired the club in a £790mn leveraged buyout in 2005. “Joel [co-chair] takes forever on any decision he makes [and] this is a huge decision.”
Joel has the largest individual stake of his five siblings — Avram, Bryan, Darcie, Kevin and Edward — and controls roughly 19 per cent of the voting rights.
Frustration at the protracted process is not confined to fans. Earlier this month, Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, a Qatari businessman vying with billionaire UK industrialist Sir Jim Ratcliffe to buy the club, threatened to walk away.
The lengthy timeline has only intensified the scrutiny that the Glazers have faced since the family’s late patriarch, Malcolm, led the purchase of the club in a deal that took it off the London Stock Exchange and saddled it with £580mn of debt.
After the Glazers returned the club to the public markets through an initial public offering in New York in 2012 each of the siblings secured a stake and voting rights, albeit of differing sizes. A dual-class share structure that gives B shares 10 times the voting rights of A shares has allowed the family to keep tight control of the club.
With the Glazers’ B shares automatically converting into A shares when they are sold, the structure has also permitted the family to sell stock without ever jeopardising their control.
The time it is taking to decide the club’s future has further inflamed a fan base that has long chafed under the Glazers’ grip. But it has also prompted speculation that the owners may be struggling to reach agreement over what to do next with a club in which Joel and Avram, both co-chairs, have been the most engaged. The other four siblings are board directors.
“There is clearly not cohesion in the Glazer camp,” on whether to pursue a full sale or find a minority investor, according to someone who has worked with the family for years. “But they don’t tell you what that is, so it is very difficult for anyone to help.”
Another person involved in the process said that the siblings are on the same page and willing sellers at the right price.
The Glazers, Manchester United and Raine declined to comment.
Despite the uncertainty generated by the bidding process, Joel has been involved in discussions about players the club may target in the key summer transfer window and is generally the more hands-on of the two co-chairs, according to people familiar with the matter.
Avram is described as more of a “classic chairman” by someone who has worked with him. The 62-year-old travelled to Qatar for last November’s World Cup, has attended three cup finals this season and has been to the annual meeting of the world’s business elite in Davos.
If Joel is a “sleeves rolled-up” executive, Avram is the “globe-trotting billionaire who gets doorstepped by Sky News”, the person said.
The remaining siblings have had less involvement in an asset whose high profile has made the family’s fondness for shunning the limelight harder to sustain. Since 1995, the Glazers have also owned the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the National Football League team that won the Super Bowl in 2021.
Edward Glazer founded US Auto Trust in 2018. The group, which owns Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover dealerships, is set to make $1bn in annual revenue this year, Edward told Automotive News in February.
Darcie, meanwhile, is more involved at the Buccaneers than Manchester United. The club’s website credits her for a role in the $160mn refurbishment of its Raymond James Stadium. Kevin works in property while Bryan is less involved in Manchester United’s commercial operations than he was.
Like 11 other powerful clubs across Europe that signed up, it was a desire to bolster its revenues that prompted Manchester United to back the ill-fated ESL, which would have radically overhauled elite club football by effectively guaranteeing members places in a pan-European competition each year.
As the plan collapsed in acrimony, Joel set out a wider defence of the family’s ownership, insisting that the dividends they paid themselves were a “modest proportion” of the club’s revenues and that its robust commercial operations meant it avoided furloughing staff during the coronavirus pandemic.
The club’s revenues have increased from £165mn in the first year of the Glazers’ ownership to £583mn in the 2021-2022 season, although they remain below the record £627mn set shortly before the pandemic.
But the last decade has seen Manchester United’s status as England’s pre-eminent club stolen by crosstown rival Manchester City who, powered by the riches of Abu Dhabi, have won five of the last six Premier League titles.
Fans’ anger has been hardened by the family’s resolve to keep a low-profile despite being major owners pushing in a sport that has turned players into celebrities and generates 24-hour a day interest on social media.
“They have a family philosophy: nobody does interviews,” said someone who has worked with members of the family. “If one of you gets the attention, no matter what, you start to feel it. That’s why they don’t talk to the media. It’s all about protecting the family.”
Born in New York to Jewish immigrants from modern day Lithuania, Glazer senior took over his family’s watchmaking business as a teenager, turning it into an eclectic empire spanning property, restaurants, fish processors and sausage-skin makers. Glazer also made money in junk bonds.
It was Joel who persuaded his father to pay $192mn for the Buccaneers. According to several people who know the family, the picture of the Glazers as financial leeches with little interest in sport is misplaced.
In a rare interview with a local magazine shortly after acquiring the Buccaneers, Joel, then 28, and Bryan described a close-knit family with a love of sports and hard work. “We were never spoiled as children; our parents always made us work,” Joel said.
Almost 30 years since that interview, it was the ESL debacle that prompted the Glazers to engage with the Manchester United fan base in a way they had not done since buying the club.
According to people familiar with the matter, the failure of the ESL also played a role in persuading the family to examine options for the club, including a sale, that they had previously refused to countenance.
Part of the allure for clubs of the ESL was a €3.25bn infrastructure grant, underwritten by JPMorgan Chase, that would have been available to spend on their stadiums and training grounds. Once considered one of the sport’s best stadiums, Old Trafford has been eclipsed by some rival grounds and is in need of an upgrade.
Initial talks in the summer of 2022 had focused on ways of raising money with investment firms Apollo and Ares Management but an agreement proved elusive.
Months later, the family appointed merchant bank Raine, which ran the auction of Premier League rival Chelsea last year, to consider an outright sale, find a minority investor and study other potential transactions.
In contrast to the scramble to sell Chelsea, a process that was triggered by the UK government removing sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich as owner, the Glazers have not faced a similarly intense pressure to reach a decision.
“There have been lots of shocks to the system for them,” said a longtime associate, referring to the pandemic disruption and the ESL controversy. They cautioned that it is harder to reach a consensus when there are “six people in a room agreeing what to do with such an asset.”
Despite Manchester United’s decline on the pitch since they were last crowned English champions a decade ago, the sale of the club could still deliver the Glazers one of the biggest financial returns in the history of the sport.
With investment in new players this summer critical in closing the gap to Manchester City, the pressure to make a decision is building.
Additional reporting by Arash Massoudi
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