Funny we talk about Barca being in debt but according to Forbes their debt is only 8% of their valuation compared to United's 19%. And 19% doesn't seem that bad compared to Atletico's 23%, Everton's 32%, Inter's 50% and Milan's 41%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes'_list_of_the_most_valuable_football_clubs?wprov=sfla1 What I don't get is why MLS clubs aren't making the top 20. I realize their revenue is peanuts but Atlanta were valued at $500M last year, ahead of Everton and Newcastle and LAFC sold shares at a valuation of $700M.
Pero/Rel baby!!! Makes the money flow! It is scary how the soccer media hasn't focused on the financial states of AC Milan and Barca as much as Manchester United. Then again, could just be a bias towards English speaking nations. I believe if AC Milan doesn't qualify for Champions League they are financially f'd, and will default on their loans. Or maybe that was a season or two ago??? As for MLS teams not being on there. MLS teams aren't glamorous, nor do they currently have a global reach. When the next Media Rights deal is done, that may move this needle. That's a big thing holding the league back at the moment. If MLS can get their domestic Media deal in the NHL ballpark.......that would allow them to increase the salary budget by a fair amount. Which in turn would bring in higher quality players, and more importantly keep the talented young players by being able to pay them more.
Could it be that it’s difficult to distinguish where the club ends and where MLS/SUM starts regarding their market value? And I concede that that may be a distinction without a difference regarding the ownership, but it feels kind of apples and oranges when compared to other soccer teams.
SUM was worth $2 billion a couple of years ago. That would work out at $75M a club. It doesn't explain why LAFC is suddenly worth $700M.
What has Milan's financial situation got to do with pro/rel? As opposed to poor management, for example?
My snide remark towards Pro/Rel was in response to the club valuations by Forbes. Not AC Milan's Debt, which is from a leveraged purchase by their owners (former owners?).
I understand that by explicitly mentioning the SUM bogeyman prompted this reply, I wasn't really focusing on SUM itself. More that investing in an MLS team is buying into a lot more than just team: you're a co-owner of the entire league, and that has to play a non-insignificant part of what boosts the valuations of these teams. Atlanta and LAFC play a much more direct role in Columbus' or RSL's value than Barcelona does to Real Betis, for example.
The point of the ESL, and the problem with that, is they cater for the "future fan", aka the ones sitting in front of a screen on another continent. These people watch ManUnited because it has the stars (= players with ridiculous price tags which not necesarily matches with really being a star on the pitch...Pogba). So ManUnited is a brand as it's home to expensive players and that doesnot change for those "future fans". Unless of course their budget drops like a brick and becomes something like 1/10th of their current one.
.... to a degree yes. In the case of La Liga though, I'd say Barca plays a pretty big role in the value of Betis. What's La Liga without Barca/Real, outside of Spain (especially with the restructuring of TV for La Liga finally)? I'd ask the same of the Ligue 1 clubs without PSG at this point. The EPL is the best example of what you're pointing out IMO. I know folks will sheeet on this, but I don't think I'm far off the mark. The last 18 months (and a shining new example of it with the Soteldo singing recently) is that THE SYSTEM is attractive for the safety it provides. Clubs have been run over by the financial bus, and relatively speaking we haven't. Santos turned down something like 20m$ for him before COVID. TFC got him for 6m.
A team like Manchester United is puzzling, in a lot of ways, from an American perspective. Our most valuable sports teams generally come from major metropolitan areas like New York, LA, Chicago and Dallas. Manchester the city isn't really in that league (it's more akin to San Diego or Minneapolis), but Manchester City is in the big leagues when it comes to team valuation. Their value doesn't have a lot to do with their home market, which is different from the US.
Manchester is the 2nd largest city in England, and the 3rd largest metro area. It is true that home markets aren't as big a deal as in the US, the whole country is one market in many ways, but Manchester is still a major metropolitan area.
Yeah, it's big by British/European standards. But, I don't think MC's value has much to do with the value of its home market. It would be interesting to see how the team's income breaks out (i.e., matchday revenue, versus internatioonal merchandising and media deals).
Manchester claims to be England's second city, though Birmingham has a bigger population. Birmingham's claim is dogged by the fact that the entire place is a giant sh*thole with no redeeming features. And as someone born a few miles from the Mersey estuary I'm much more anti-Manchester than anti-Birmingham. We don't mention in our family that my paternal grandfather was born at the wrong end of the East Lancs Road, while my paternal grandmother always denied being born in Wales (which she was). England is a strange, provincial land.
Well City have always claimed to be Manchester's team while United's fans were more likely to come from the suburbs. No idea of that was true but I was in Manchester a few days after City won something, traditionally a rare occurrence, and every taxi was decked out in blue.
I've driven and taken trains all over England, Scotland and Wales. Basically from the Southeastern tip all the way to the top of the Highlands. Never really had a desire to go to Manchester.
Not sure what you mean by saying they got lucky. I guess if you are saying the supporters that wanted the glazers out were able to use the ESL but um that's how protests work. There is always a catalyst to move people from just complaining to their friends to taking concrete action. And here's the thing these supporters don't want to be doing this. They'd much rather be focused on the game instead of the off the field stuff. But they fear, and I believe rightfully so, that if they don't act now they'll lose the game they love.
I mean more about putting sponsors off, making them not wanting to be associated with an unpopular ownership. Could that be done? It wouldn't be easy, but I wouldn't say it's impossible.
On our first trip we spent a week in London, then I wanted to spend a few nights in the Northwest so I could go to Ewood Park for a Blackburn game. We figured staying Manchester made sense. That will likely be our only trip to Manchester. It was fine, but the city doesn't have a ton going for it if you're not a soccer/music fan (my wife is neither). We took the train down to Chester for a day, which was great, and we spent a day seeing what there is to see in Manchester, but the day I was up in Blackburn my wife was fairly bored.
The whole UK. I Lived in Bangor, Wales. Was talking to a local guy one day and he asked me what I was going to do over the weekend. I responded I was going to Caenarfon to see the castle and the Roman Ruins. He said that he had heard Caenarfon was nice but he'd never been because he was a Bangor lad and couldn't go. For the record Caenarfon is about 10 miles down the road. There's a really good technology Museum there which is built in the original station for the the Liverpool and Manchester Railway so naturally has a good collection of steam locomotives. Not as good as York but still. Besides that there's a big mall, but yeah not much else. Although I might be a tad biased against it. Can't imagine why
I did get that from your previous post, but as I posted I donot think the "future fans" care much about who's the owner and those are the on line eyeballs sponsors look out for. It's not for nothing sponsors have clauses in their contracts with ManUnited that they're out of sponsorship if they fail to qualify twice in a row for the CL. For them it's all anout on line eyeballs. Most sponsors don't care that much for the ticket buying fans, as these are a minority for their purposes.
I'm sure they are. But, there's really not much to set them apart from London, if you're a tourist. They're just smaller English cities. Not a dig on them. Perfectly nice American cities like Cincinnati or Kansas City aren't much of a draw for foreign tourists, either. The two sort of offbeat cities/towns in the UK that I found surprisingly interesting were Carlisle and Inverness. Wish we'd had a full day in both of those places.
Northwest Wales is funny. There are pubs that go silent until they hear what language you order in. If you order in English they'll switch to Welsh. My uncle lives in Bwlchgwyn, which was a Welsh speaking village until he learned enough Welsh to get by at which point people started talking to him in English.