Is this the start of a new era for Manchester United? That’s not quite right. With all the fuss about the club’s “restructuring” after Jim Ratcliffe bought a 25% stake—all the talk of job cuts and tightening the purse strings, squad turnover, meetings between Ratcliffe and Erik Ten Hag, and new energy on and off the field—it’s been easy to forget that the Glazer family still has full control over the club’s finances. The stock of Manchester United is split into Class A and Class B shares. The people who own Class B shares, which have 10 times the vote rights of Class A shares, really run the club. Ratcliffe bought a quarter of the club’s Class A and B shares for about $1.6 billiоn. But even after the deal is passed, the Glazer family will still own most of the Class B shares and have control over the board and the votes. If this is the beginning of the Glazers’ exit from their interest in Manchester United, it is an oddly slow one.

This move is smart, but it’s also a Ԁirty bit of financial magic, like when the credit default swap was made. The Glazers’ 18-year control of Manchester United has been terrible for the team. In the last ten years, United has gone from being the leader of English football to a mid-table club relying on a late-career comeback from Jonny Evans to make the Europa League. The Glazers, on the other hand, have made a lot of money off of their control, even though the club is losing money and is in a lot of debt. Since the Glazers bought the company in 2005, a total of £166 million has been paid out in dividends, with most of that going to the Glazers. As part of the new deal, Ratcliffe and the Glazers agreed to stop paying dividends for three years. However, Ratcliffe’s investment in the club will not affect this cash flow or the corporate structure that supports it in the long term. The club’s 2023 annual report says, “Our board of directors has complete discretion regarding the declaration and payment of dividends, and the holders of our Class B ordinary shares [three-quarters of whom remain members]

Ratcliffe will give the club an extra $300 million to help clean up the mess the Glazers made on the field as a thank you. The Glazers were the first big US investors to put real money into sports teams in Europe. It looks like they are coming up with new ideas all over again. They are the first to offer a type of non-exiting exit that gives them all the benefits of ownership without any of the responsibility. They “sold” the club and put Ratcliffe in charge of football operations, but they didn’t lose what was most important to them: the money that Manchester United brings in for the Glazer family and the power to keep giving it to themselves. The Glazers have gotten a great deal all around.

A lot of the time, investors are judged by how well they finish, just like players. The profit an investment makes, which is measured by its price when sold compared to its price when bought, is the standard measure of success. Recently, the slow flow of US money that happened after the Glazers bought Manchester United (the Kroenkes bought Arsenal, and Fenway Sports Group bought Liverpool) has turned into a torrent. If 777 Partners’ deal to buy Everton goes through, exactly half of the Premier League teams will be owned by Americans. All of Europe’s big leagues now have institutional money from the US. For example, the new partial owner of PSG is the private equity company Arctos Partners, which is based in New York.

What does American money want with sports in Europe? At the start of the US takeover of the Premier League, a lot of people thought that the Americans were interested in English clubs for one of two reasons: as ego projects or as investments that would pay off. As an investment reason, vanity seems to have faded: few American club owners go to games or get involved in the drаmа on the field, most of the operational and footballing duties are given to experienced professionals, and even someone like Todd Boehly, who at first seemed so eager to “get involved” and run Chelsea like it was his fantasy football team, is less visible to the public. But these investments don’t look like they’re made with money that needs to be made back. It’s unusual for big investment funds to stay in a club for more than five to ten years. The Kroenkes have owned Arsenal since 2007, FSG has been with Liverpool since 2010, and the Glazers are getting close to their third decade in Manchester. The fact that these famous owners are selling off minority stakes instead of leaving the clubs completely says that they plan to stay in charge of them forever.