Manchester United's share price has fallen in the wake of the club's Europa League final defeat
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Omar Berrada and Avram Glazer
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Omar Berrada and Avram Glazer
The financial ramifications of Manchester United’s Europa League final defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday will be felt for some time.
In the medium to long term, in losing out to Spurs in the showpiece final at Athletic Bilbao’s Estadio de San Mames, United now have no European football whatsoever to look forward to next season, with the high-stakes nature of the game this week seeing the winners book UEFA Champions League qualification for next season, and with it a revenue boost, even at a conservative estimate and without factoring in progression to the knockout stages, of some £70m.
Add in a further £17m or so for the additional matchday revenue that they will miss out on and it becomes even more of a bitter pill to swallow for the club.
As a publicly listed business on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), it’s far easier to take a temperature check as to how the markets feel about the club's performance on the pitch, which is closely linked to how well they do off it.
When the bell sounded the day after the club’s defeat, and with it a lack of Champions League football, shares on the NYSE slumped by 7.8%.
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Shares in the club were trading at $13.40 on Thursday when the markets opened, a sum that was even below the $14 per share that existed at the time of the company’s initial public offering back in 2012. As of Friday morning they were trading at $13.29 per share.
To look at the share slump against the value per share that Manchester United co-owner and the club’s second largest shareholder, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, paid when he took a 27.7% stake in the team back in December of 2023, he paid $33 per share for the stake held by his company, INEOS, a deal that had seen the club valued at $5.4bn (£4bn).
That valuation of the club has been continuously challenged through heavy losses creating financial constraints, the redundancies affecting some 250 staff over the past 12 months, and a dismal performance on the pitch that has now seen them without a lucrative European football revenue stream for next season, something that can impact the club’s commercial performance and ability to attract better players to improve their situation.
A recent report from US sports business website Sportico pegged Manchester United’s 2025 valuation at $6.1bn (£4.52bn). While that represented a rise in valuation compared to what Ratcliffe paid, it was down 2% compared to the 2024 list.
The $13.4 per share that was being traded on Thursday implied a market capitalisation of $2.3bn of the football club, although only the A shares, which carry inferior voting rights privileges, trade on the NYSE.
There was optimism from investors ahead of the Ratcliffe deal in late 2023, with shares trading at around $20.38 late in December. But since then there has been a major slump and the share price has shown little sign of rising by any significant percentage in the last 18 months.