A Manchester United Ineos Takeover Could Hail A Multi-Club Model Reckoning

For Manchester United fans who have been paying attention to two main bidders for the club the name Sir Jim Ratcliffe must have given them pause for thought.

Because, well, they’d be forgiven for wondering; doesn’t the British billionaire already owns a team in France?

Those who dug deeper would find it isn’t just one team Sir Jim possesses, the Ineos boss has a pair; Ligue 1 club Nice, which he bought in 2019, and FC Lausanne-Sport from the Swiss Super League.

United, it appears, are different. Ratcliffe is believed to be buying for love and money.

The tycoon supported the Red Devils as a boy and has supposedly fancied having his name above the boardroom door for some time.

A statement from Ineos confirming its desire to acquire the team was certainly infused with more emotion than these types of statements usually are.

“We would see our role as the long-term custodians of Manchester United on behalf of the fans and the wider community,” it read. “We are ambitious and highly competitive and would want to invest in Manchester United to make them the number one club in the world once again.”

Sir Jim’s firm didn’t stop there, however, Ineos staked its claim as the fan-centric bid.

“We also recognize that football governance in this country is at a crossroads,” the statement continued, “we would want to help lead this next chapter, deepening the culture of English football by making the club a beacon for a modern, progressive, fan-centered approach to ownership.

“We want a Manchester United anchored in its proud history and roots in the northwest of England, putting the Manchester back into Manchester United and clearly focusing on winning the Champions League.”

It might not be surprising that the English bidder, whose main rival is Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani, would choose to try and maximize its local credentials.

Because it is Ineos’s interests abroad which would come under the microscope was it to be successful in acquiring Manchester United.

The deal would make United the jewel in the crown of Sir Jim’s multi-club ownership model.

It puts them at the sharp end of a controversial trend that has gained serious traction in the past decade and is surely set for a day of reckoning with regulators.

‘The potential to distort’

One governing body with major concerns about multi-club ownership is European soccer’s UEFAEFA
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It has said: “the rise of multi-club investment has the potential to pose a material threat to the integrity of European club competitions, with a growing risk of seeing two clubs with the same owner or investor facing each other on the pitch.”

Not only that, UEFA fears it “has the potential to distort transfer activity” and risks transfer fees being set “at prices that suit investors, rather than at fair values.”

Despite these fundamental concerns, UEFA has been able to do very little to prevent the multi-club model’s exponential growth.

According to the Financial Times, as of 2022, there were 195 clubs involved in multi-club ownership globally more than double the figure five years ago (81).

This increase has occurred despite there being regulations against it both domestically and at a continental level.

A UEFA report released earlier this month [February 2023] said “more than two-thirds of all [European] national associations have rules directly limiting or restricting multi-club ownership within the country in question.

“Those restrictions range from a cap on the size of shareholdings whereby a stake in a second club cannot exceed a certain level (e.g. 10%) to a total ban on owning shares in more than one club within the league/country.”

These rules, of course, do not extend to cross-national interests, but the limitations of UEFA’s power has essentially meant the issue only rears its head when there is the potential for two of the clubs to meet in one of its competitions.

However, on the handful of occasions this has been tested UEFA has been bold in its actions.

The first was back in the late 1990s when three clubs owned by the British investment firm ENIC, AEK Athens, Vicenza Calcio and Slavia Prague, qualified for the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup.

Although the teams didn’t end up facing each other, the situation concerned the regulator enough to take action to ensure something similar didn’t occur the following year.

So, despite both AEK Athens and Slavia Prague qualifying for the UEFA Cup, only the Czech side was permitted to compete that year.

The teams took the governing body to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to appeal and lost.

As a result, ENIC decided to put all its eggs in one basket, Tottenham Hotspur, and never looked back.

In 2001, French broadcaster Canal+ sold a stake in Swiss club Servette to avoid a similar issue with its interest in Paris-Saint Germain, but this wasn’t a clash and for the best part of two decades, UEFA was not tested.

The emergence of two clubs owned by the energy drink manufacturer Red Bull, however, prompted action in the mid-2010s.

Again the owners reached a deal with the regulator. It was sparked by a 2017 investigation by UEFA’s financial team into links between RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg and resolved with the Austrian side making leadership changes, reducing the level of sponsorship from the beverage maker and ending a cooperation deal with the Germans.

But, as the above data demonstrates, far from deterring investors from owning several teams more have sought to emulate the ‘Red Bull model.’

In 2023 are more potential conflicts than ever before, as the multi-club hedge has been popularised.

The question is; will soccer launch an effective clampdown to stop it?

The strict prohibitions that supposedly exist across the continent are not working and the occasional threat of a UEFA intervention is not a large enough deterrent to stop the practice.

But Manchester United being acquired by Ineos might just prove to be the tipping point.