How the Glazer circle of relatives price Manchester United £1.2bn

June 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the Florida-based Glazer circle of relatives taking complete regulate of the Premier League membership.

It was once a deeply debatable takeover from the start on account of the monetary implications for United.

On 22 June 2005, the Glazer circle of relatives paid £790m to shop for out the membership’s exiting shareholders and to take away the membership from the London inventory marketplace.

But it was once a deal basically funded through borrowed cash and loaded £604m in money owed directly to the membership, which had up to now had borrowings of simplest £50m.

The membership’s board had warned, exterior in April 2005 in regards to the risks of this quantity of debt, pronouncing it was once no longer “prudent” and risked “a downward spiral in both team and financial performance”.

The takeover provoked protests from lovers, which proceed to this present day.

Calculations through BBC Verify – in line with an research of the membership’s revealed accounts and inventory marketplace bulletins – display that for the reason that Glazer circle of relatives’s acquisition of the membership in June 2005 it has paid out:

This signifies that, in overall, £1.187bn in money left the membership between 2005 and 2024 which it’s affordable to argue don’t have accomplished so within the absence of the Glazer takeover.

It is a conservative estimate, too, as it does no longer come with more than a few charges to banks, monetary advisers and different financing prices, together with foreign money hedging.

It additionally does no longer come with the money that has left the membership within the type of administrators’ charges.

Since the Glazers re-listed a portion of the membership’s stocks at the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, £125m has additionally been paid out in reimbursement to the membership’s administrators.

Given part of the administrators had been Glazer members of the family, it is most likely part of this sum – about £63m – went to them.

BBC Verify requested the membership to remark at the findings and so they mentioned they would go away the accounts to talk for themselves.