Sir Jim Is Doing What Any Sensible Business Owner Would Do At MUFC – Rob Wilson

Manchester United minority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe is no different from Elon Musk due to INEOS’ cost cutting measures at the club, Professor Rob Wilson has said. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, sport sponsorship is expensive and it is clear that the MUFC project is bigger than anyone expected, so Sir Jim is doing something any sensible business owner would have done very similarly.

Rob added that INEOS have already accepted that Manchester United are the crown jewel in their portfolio, so that could be the reason they are divesting from other sports.

His words, “The big thing with Manchester United is that the organisation became bloated. Just because Sir Jim Ratcliffe has gone in, he’s seen as the bad guy that’s making the cuts. The reality is any sensible business owner would have done very similarly. They might have done it in a different way, might have done it over a longer period, might have gone deeper, but anybody that is smart and has made money in business will have cut costs at Manchester United because they needed to be cut.

What we see generally, typified in US-style ownership, is they look at revenue generation first and they look at cost control second. So go back to Manchester United, what did the Glazers do? They’ve tried to ramp up revenue as much as they possibly could. Actually what they did was they put an army of people behind that to make sure that you could sign your big deals with Snapdragon or Team Viewer before that and the big deal with Adidas and the Nike deal that came before that.

So I think what we typically see with US ownership in the first instance is let’s go after revenue, particularly in sponsorships and then we look at the other things thereafter.

Elon Musk is slightly different because his acquisitions that we’ve seen, particularly at Twitter or X, is that he goes in after the cost-cutting because his investment methodology is more akin to what we would see with a British investor who looks at costs first.

I’m wondering if the sporting strategy has been to build a stable to improve awareness and legitimacy to go after a tier one asset, Manchester United. Now they have that, they divest from other properties to increase their profile in Manchester. This would be bad news for some of the other partners, cycling in particular, if true, and potentially good news for United as they look to recover on the field and finance a stadium regeneration project.

It’s damaging in the short term if INEOS leaves other properties high and dry, but that’s the nature of business. They are also forced to consider where they spend given the challenges they’ve faced in the European trading markets. My theory is that it’s all linked to Manchester United in one way or another. They will also be reviewing the impact of the deals they have and maybe New Zealand simply didn’t deliver what they’d expected?

Sport sponsorship is expensive and it’s clear that the United project is bigger than anyone expected. It’s a crown jewel asset though and single-handedly will provide benefits more significant than the sum total of the other sports properties if they turn the tide with United’s sporting performance. You don’t put your top team in there for nothing.”

WOW.