Opinions among fans are divided, but Manchester United – like all of the Premier League’s so-called Big Six – are in favour of FIFA’s revamped Club World Cup.
World champions in 2008, United have had a controversial history in the Club World Cup. A year after Sir Alex Ferguson’s side won the treble in 1999, they withdrew from the FA Cup in order to compete in the competition.
It was front-page news. The views of everyone from the prime minister to the day’s reality TV stars were splashed on a now-infamous cover of the Daily Mirror, and the consensus was that Manchester United were ‘killing the Cup’.
In the end, the Red Devils performed poorly in that tournament, just as they had in 1968 Intercontinental Cup, a forerunner of the Club World Cup.
Should United support FIFA’s expanded Club World Cup?
The demands on players are already huge, but there's millions in revenue on offer… 🤑
FIFA President Gianni Infantino and US President Donald Trump present the trophy during the award ceremony following the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 final match between Chelsea FC and Paris Saint-Germain at MetLife Stadium on July 13, 2025 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Photo by Etsuo Hara/Getty Images
FIFA have given the competition several makeovers in the hope of giving it the gravitas of the Champions League or even the international World Cup. But Gianni Infantino’s latest attempt to imbue the Club World Cup with some glitz is their boldest yet.
The 32-team format was extraordinarily lucrative for Chelsea last summer. They took home £85m in prize money from the United States, where they beat Paris Saint-Germain 3-0 in the final in New Jersey in a match remembered mainly for president Donald Trump’s podium gate-crash. Awkward and baffling, yes, but a measure of how important this new tournament is for FIFA.
And in a development from which United could cash in, world football’s governing body’s expansionism is far from finished.
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Manchester United could earn up to £91m in Club World Cup – but FIFA must find the cash first
There has been a steady drip-drip of news regarding the 2029 edition of the Club World Cup this week.
FIFA are said to be mulling a two-year rather than four-year cycle at the behest of Real Madrid, while there have even been suggestions that England could host the event. The main headline, however, is that Infantino wants to allow another 16 teams to compete, taking the total to 48.
Rio Ferdinand of Manchester United lifts the FIFA Club World Cup Trophy after the FIFA Club World Cup Japan 2008 Final match between Manchester United and Liga De Quito at the International Stadium Yokohama on December 21, 2008 in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan.
Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
United have been cited in multiple reports. After Chelsea and Manchester City represented England in the US last summer by virtue of being the two most recent Premier League sides to win the Champions League, FIFA is looking to create a mechanism through which more teams from the same nation can qualify. They want the big-ticket clubs there – and United, whose marketing team regularly boast of a billion followers worldwide, are the biggest of the biggest.
So how much could the tournament be worth?
It’s not a simple question to answer. Perhaps a better line of enquiry might be: can FIFA sustain the same level of prize money in 2029 as they did in 2025?
Getting sponsors and broadcasters on board last year was a challenge for FIFA, who struggled to convince partners of the revamped tournament’s prestige.
In the end, they got DAZN in as exclusive broadcaster in a billion-dollar deal which was indirectly funded by Newcastle United owners the Saudi Public Investment Fund. That led to accusations that the TV deal from which FIFA distributed prize money was artificially inflated.
Those suspicions weren’t particularly conspiratorial. For context, the Premier League’s record-breaking domestic TV deal is worth £1.6bn annually to Man United and their peers. Viewing figures were fair for the Club World Cup, but clearly the competition is nowhere near the level of a behemoth like the Premier League.
FIFA were relatively transparent when it came to who earned what from the tournament. But whether United could match Chelsea’s £85m windfall in a future edition of the tournament really depends on whether FIFA can re-run the Saudi deal or drum up enough interest to generate the same value from the TV deal organically.
European clubs earned between $13m and $38m for participating. The mechanism was based on their coefficient ranking and somewhat vaguer commercial criteria. Despite falling behind in recent years, United remain a commercial superpower and would be at the top end of that range.
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Beyond that, each group stage win was worth $2m and a draw $1m. In the round of 16, clubs earned an extra $7.5m, the quarter-finals $13m and semi-finals $21m. The runners-up received $30m, while the winner took home $40m.
At today’s exchange rate, that translates to a maximum of £91m in prize money.
On top of that, clubs got the chance to fly their commercial flags in the States. While harder to quantify, the merits of that in terms of retail sales, fan ‘acquisition and retention’ and brand development are enormous too.
When United tour the US, they routinely generate revenue of £10m-plus.
Could Premier League and League be scaled back to accommodate Club World Cup?
The expansion of the Club World Cup and the Champions League in recent years has been labelled a Super League by stealth by some commentators. And just as they were instrumental in the botched launch of the Super League five years ago, the Glazer family lobbied for both.
Qualifying for the Club World Cup by winning the Champions League could be worth a jaw-dropping £300m for a team like United, including all prize money, matchday income and commercial benefits. It doesn’t take a finance expert to see the benefits of that sort of sum to the Glazers and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
But the picture is complex. The growth of the football calendar since the turn of the millennium means elite clubs need enormous squads – and that means an enormous wage bill.
A banner against the proposed European Super League hangs from a pub close to Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, northwest England on April 21, 2021. - The proposed European Super League (ESL) appeared dead in the water today after all six English clubs withdrew following a furious backlash from fans and threats from football authorities.
Photo by OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images
Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly has gone on record advocating the scaling back of the calendar for those reasons. This season, for example, United will only play 40 matches, whereas Arsenal could face nearly 70. Plus, it’s a World Cup year. That has a knock-on effect – appearance fees, costs related to injuries, bigger transfer and wage expenses to build a deeper squad and so on.
If FIFA persist with the expanded Club World, something surely must give.
“If they expand the competition, the next move will be to hold it every two years,” says University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to United in Focus.
“It’s a potential big-money earner but it lacks legitimacy as far as European fans are concerned. FIFA don’t care about that, of course. If you have more of the big hitters like Manchester United then it is going to attract more attention.
“But they will have to put solutions forward to slim down the football calendar. I can assure you, reducing the number of teams in the Premier League and making the League Cup non-mandatory will be proposed. United aren’t interested in playing the small clubs in small competitions. They don’t generate enough revenue for it to be worthwhile.”
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