Manchester United are considering selling the naming rights to a refurbished Old Trafford or a newly-built stadium as part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe seeks to drive up revenues to fund the project, while the club is also deliberating over substantial ticket price rises.
United have also held exploratory talks with major financial institutions, including Bank of America, as they explore a series of funding options to raise the capital required to cover a potentially multi-billion pound project.
Manchester United declined to comment on all points raised in this report, but club sources — who spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the matters — insisted that while discussions have taken place, no decisions have yet been made. Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.
It is unclear at this stage whether the club or INEOS, the company owned by Ratcliffe, would carry the burden of fresh debt if money is borrowed to fund the infrastructure project. United’s financial results posted in the second quarter of the financial year in March stated that the club still have debt totalling £653.3m, excluding money owed in transfer fees, largely as a legacy of the Glazer family’s sole ownership of the club, before they sold a stake to Ratcliffe and handed over operational control of the club to the British businessman.
Those financial results also revealed that £120m of Ratcliffe’s £238m cash injection into the club — which had been pledged to go towards infrastructure — had been used to pay down money on United’s revolving credit facility. United’s logic may have been that reducing the debt on the high-interest credit would allow them to subsequently borrow money through a different mechanism at a lower interest rate and use it towards infrastructure investment.
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United’s 114-year-old stadium has always been known as Old Trafford and the club has never before sold its stadium naming rights. While stadiums across Europe and the United States have long been associated with major brands, it has been a more contentious issue in England, where supporters cherish the history of a stadium’s name.
More recently built stadiums, such as Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium or Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, have taken on lucrative naming rights contracts. In each case, the airlines have acquired the rights not only to the stadium’s name but also the front-of-shirt sponsorship.
A number of clubs have entered into naming rights deals for stadiums (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
In the event of a refurbishment, one option may be for United to retain the name Old Trafford but seek to have an associated partner. The English national arena, for example, is called Wembley Stadium, connected by EE, for which the network provider pays a reported £10m-per year. A similar approach has seen teams retain traditional names for stadiums by attaching a sponsor — such as the Spotify Camp Nou in Barcelona or cricket grounds including the Emirates Old Trafford in Manchester and the Kia Oval in London.
In the event of a new build, however, United are open to selling the name altogether, which they hope would command tens of millions of pounds.
United have not yet revealed how they intend to fund either a refurbishment or a new build, but the Glazer family have never shown an inclination to self-fund United’s ambitions while Ratcliffe’s INEOS will likely seek a mixture of public funds and private partners or debt in order to carry out the work.
It then opens up long-term questions as to how revenues will enable the club to recover the costs. Naming rights is one route, while ticket price increases were presented as a way for the club to increase revenues when the Glazer family pitched to potential investors during the strategic review process that culminated in Ratcliffe becoming a part-owner earlier this year.
United will already increase the price of their season tickets by five per cent for the 2024-25 season. It is the second increase they have put on season tickets after 11 consecutive seasons of price freezes, after also introducing a five per cent increase for their 2022-23 season tickets. However, in the event of a substantial stadium project, United are now considering further ticket price increases to help handle the costs of the project and keep revenues high enough for the team to be competitive on the field.
United‘s stadium plans were brought into sharper focus in May after the club’s longstanding issue with a leaking roof was further exposed when Old Trafford appeared washed out towards the end of the Premier League defeat against Arsenal.
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Speaking to British and international journalists in February, Ratcliffe said the stadium is secondly only to the team’s on-field performances as the most talked-about issues at United. Ratcliffe himself described United’s stadium as a “waterfall” in an interview this month. He stressed that in a world of tightening financial fair play, where clubs’ losses are more closely monitored by both the Premier League and UEFA, optimising revenue from best-in-class stadia is essential.
He estimated that a refurbishment of Old Trafford could cost around £1billion — a scenario in which United would take the capacity up to between 80,000 and 90,000 people. He said a newly-built stadium, which he explained was his personal preference but not necessarily feasible, would cost £2bn.
Ratcliffe has spoken of his desire to create a ‘Wembley of the North’ and he has enlisted Sebastian Coe, who chaired the organising committee for the London 2012 Olympic Games, to lead a task force to explore the regeneration of Old Trafford. Former United captain Gary Neville is also a member, while Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and Trafford Council CEO Sara Todd are also involved.
The task force will explore how to finance the project. A variety of potential private funding sources will be explored, with the cost of building a new stadium and/or a wider regeneration plan likely to require additional financial partners. In May, Ratcliffe met with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who may soon be the prime minister, to discuss the proposals for the stadium to be the centrepiece of a potential sports, leisure and business campus.
Ratcliffe is overseeing big changes at Old Trafford (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Ratcliffe’s previous call for public funding assistance refers to the regeneration of the broader area rather than United’s stadium itself, and this has been encouraged by Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, but the general public may require some persuasion given that Ratcliffe is domiciled in Monaco and United’s controlling shareholders, the Glazers family, have extracted over £166m in dividends from the club during their ownership, while they recently received $1.3bn from Ratcliffe for 27 per cent of the club.
Speaking to The Athletic in 2022, United’s legendary forward Eric Cantona said he would “quit football forever” if United sold their naming rights. Cantona remains involved in marketing campaigns with United, most notably recently helping the launch of their jersey with new front-of-shirt sponsor, Snapdragon.
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Cantona said: “Now all the stadiums are called Emirates or Allianz. These stadiums lost the soul and history of the club, like Arsenal and West Ham. I played at those old stadiums, like Highbury and Upton Park. I spoke with some Arsenal fans and they hate these (new) stadiums. These fans lost the soul of their clubs.
“Fortunately, Old Trafford is still Old Trafford. Anfield is still Anfield.
“But can you imagine Old Trafford becomes a new stadium called by a brand? If one day they do that, I am sorry but I am not a fan of United anymore. And I quit football forever!
“But please, don’t call this stadium Nestle, or Amazon, please. Old Trafford is Old Trafford.”
(Top photo: Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)