Manchester United and Barcelona played an action-packed 2-2 draw Thursday in the first leg of their Europa League matchup. Off the field, United posted a win, as the club’s shares jumped 10% to finish at $26.84—the highest close since the Glazer family listed the club on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012.
The stock move comes a day ahead of the “soft deadline” for buyers to submit bids to purchase the club. In November, the Glazers announced they were exploring strategic alternatives, including a full or partial share of United, which it bought in 2005 via a leveraged buyout for £790 million (about $1.5 billion at the time). The family hired the Raine Group to oversee the sale, after the investment bank brokered the sale of Chelsea last year.
Several bids have already been submitted, according to people with direct knowledge of the deal, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. An investor group from Qatar is expected to make an opening bid of roughly £5 billion ($6 billion), according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday. This bid is not connected to Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), a subsidiary of Qatar’s $450 billion sovereign fund. QSI owns a majority stake in Ligue 1 club Paris Saint-Germain.
Jim Ratcliffe’s company INEOS is the only party that has publicly declared interest in bidding on Manchester United. Ratcliffe, the founder and majority owner of INEOS, is the richest person in the UK with a net worth of $15.2 billion, according to Forbes. Raine declined to comment on the sale process for this story.
Manchester United’s stock was sitting at $13 before the Glazers announced a potential sale, and it has now more than doubled as the bid process heats up. At today’s close, United’s enterprise value, including net debt, is $5.2 billion. Last month, Sportico valued United at $5.95 billion in its Premier League team valuations, 26% ahead of second-ranked Liverpool ($4.71 billion).
United is the only EPL club that would rank among the 10 most valuable sports franchises in North America, where the cutoff is $5.1 billion. For the 2022-23 season, the 20-time English champions project total revenue of £590 million to £610 million ($710 million to $755 million). It has posted a net loss each of the past three years and will do so again for the year ending June 2023.