re: Why doesn’t FFP punish Man United?

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Malcolm Glazer was smart. He could see that Manchester United were undervalued when the first ructions emerged between Sir Alex Ferguson and the Irish racing magnates John Magnier and JP McManus. He knew that the rift between the United manager and the club’s largest shareholders provided a gilt-edged opportunity to pounce. In the ensuing years, Glazer has been proved right in almost every respect.

He placed Ed Woodward in charge of the commercial operation and watched revenues soar. The world was carved up into regions and sectors and an army of salesmen went to work leveraging the United brand to noodle partners, lubricant affiliates and pillow sponsors. How did they attain such success? A quick detour may provide some clues. A few years ago, researchers purchased some knick-knacks on eBay at an average price of $1.25. They then sought to resell these objects, but instead of describing their size, weight etc, they told a story about the history of each object. So, for a Missouri tequila shot glass, they described the motif on the side (the Hunt-and-Pecker) and observations about Missouri. “You need to get lost in Missouri or you never really were there in the first place. Even then you won’t be likely to meet the Hunt-and-Pecker.” The results were remarkable.


The shot glass, purchased for $1, sold for $76. The narrative associations seemed to attach to the object. A simple glass had absorbed a wider social context. Overall, 200 random $1 knick-knacks sold for a total of $8,000. “Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given object’s subjective value can actually be measured objectively,” the researchers said. Manchester United have an inspirational story. From humble origins, the club rose to become a big player in the early history of football. From the Munich air disaster in 1958, which united the world in grief, to the triumph at the 1968 European Cup final, United were seared into sporting folklore. The story under Ferguson grew, not least because of the hiatus that preceded him. The Fledglings, the Nou Camp, Fergie Time: these were not just sporting epithets but cultural reference points. Woodward hawked the United history for all it was worth. What commercial brands would not want to be associated with these images and metaphors? Which brands would not want to absorb this inspirational context? Glazer looked on with pride as the club became one of the great hubs of associational value, tentacles reaching out through endorsement contracts around the world.

Such was the euphoria in those heady days, when the genius of Ferguson was keeping the club in the hunt for trophies, that the owners had the temerity to boast about the “brand” they now controlled, and how it provided immunity from conventional economic laws. Announcements such as “we have been able to consistently increase match-day ticket prices at levels above the rate of inflation” represented a kind of corporate crowing. Although Glazer was smart, however, he missed something. People often talk about United’s financial leverage (the debt foisted on to the institution) but they don’t talk nearly enough about its philosophical deficit. The maximisation of commercial sponsorship, the hawking of the United story to anybody with a wallet, the transactional credo: it all overlooked a variable of real significance. We may call it purpose or mission. Consider a quality newspaper that becomes obsessed with optimisation targets. The executives receive data showing that shouty headlines and salacious stories lead to greater click-throughs and advertising, so start to push out more and more of these stories. Revenues rise. The markets respond positively. Underneath, however, something else is going on.

The newspaper is losing credibility. The commitment to quality journalism is sidelined. This isn’t visible in the click-through data, at least at first. Slowly the newspaper is heading towards a tipping point. One sign of the decline of United is that their FA Cup victory over Tranmere Rovers yesterday was seen, in some quarters, as a reason for optimism. The market has become saturated with their glitzy corporate pitches. More pertinently, the transactional philosophy has percolated into the football operation. Players increasingly view the club in the same way as the owners — not as a place to attain glory but a vehicle to attain riches. Alexis Sánchez departed after earning the GDP of a small nation. Star players are more interested in pay rises than trophies.

Agents and younger recruits talk of United as a place to earn a few quick bucks before heading somewhere more inspiring. My colleague Jonathan Northcroft described the club as a “gormless cash cow”, which captured the point neatly. A recent analysis in The Daily Telegraph noted that this isn’t just about football. The Glazer-owned Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL have experienced a similar trajectory, coming off a decade where they had gone through five head coaches, two general managers, declining attendances and not a single play-off appearance. One pundit said: “If you follow the odour, it leads to the offices of co-chairmen Bryan, Joel and Ed Glazer.” United haven’t yet reached a financial reckoning but they are set to be overtaken by Liverpool as the Premier League’s top earners.

Where John W Henry and Jürgen Klopp have a football vision, United have a commercial fixation. The Glazers have made plenty of cash and will, by implication, feel vindicated. It will be their successors who will be left to repair an aspect of an institution that neither the Glazers nor Woodward appreciate or understand: its culture.

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