The Americanisation of Manchester United In the second of a two-part series, The Sunday Times looks at how the Red Devils extend their global reach to the Us, just as entrepreneurs are keen to buy a piece of the world's media magnet, the Premiership
By Rob Hughes THE Thai takeover of Fulham FC has gone quiet for a week, but that doesn't mean it is over. Bangkok's silence could mean that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has got what he wants - a politician creating headlines at home and abroad - or it might be that he is counting the pennies and waiting until the price is right. In the world of the Beckhams and fast bucks, he who commands the media makes the money. I think the boy David, with a book to sell and a brief injury void to fill, held only one press conference per day in Madrid last week. I know which club plan to make the news this coming week - Manchester United. >From the United States on Friday came this notice: 'Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of English Premier League champions Manchester United, and Champions World will make an announcement at Niketown in New York City on Tuesday, Nov 11 at 11am. 'Following the announcement, the Manchester United manager and Charlie Stillitano will be available for interviews.' What could it be, this announcement of such importance that it is timed for that precious moment - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - when many institutions practise silence to commemorate Armistice Day and honour the dead of two world wars? It means they are selling something. It means that United, who a year ago made their first US tour since 1982, are going to come back again next summer. Nike, of course, is one of the sponsors who make Man U the richest club in the world. America, of course, is the unconquered market for professional soccer. Sorry to have to tell you Red Cafe and Reds Superstore devotees, but United are looking both ways, East and West, for their customers. Sorry to have to disagree with the previous announcement - by Sir Bobby Charlton, in New York when baseball's Yankees and Man U plc forged a trading alliance two years back: 'We are not,' Sir Bobby said, 'going into this to make money. We are not in the process of selling our souls to another sport.' The selling of souls is exactly what all this is about, from the entrepreneurial thoughts of Thailand's PM eyeing a Premiership team to the way that David Beckham markets himself. D.B. himself said in an interview that he feels especially good now that the people of the Bernabeu have begun to see that he is a useful player and not just a marketing symbol. In his time at Old Trafford, the rise and rise of soccer's global pulling power has outgrown all comprehensibility. In 1989, when Beckham was just a lad attending a Bobby Charlton training school, it was announced that one Michael Knighton had paid �10 million (S$29 million) to buy out Martin Edwards, the chairman and chief executive of the club. The deal never went through because Mr Knighton had more chutzpah than cash. But he had shown the way. The late Robert Maxwell, the publishing charlatan who drowned after falling overboard from his yacht when corruption investigators closed in, was next to try to buy United. Then came the real entrepreneur, Rupert Murdoch. The bid of his global media company News Corp pitched the value of Man U in 1998 - less than a decade after Knighton's �10 million - at �623 million, or a billion US dollars. Edwards, still the holder of shares handed down from his father Louis Edwards, stood to make �88 million had that deal gone through. But the British government ruled that it was against the people's interest for Murdoch to control both BskyB, the satellite broadcasting channel that has exclusive rights to broadcast English Premier League games, and at the same time to own the League's most famous club. In Murdoch's hands, independent financial analysts believed, the value of Man U would have soared to �1.2 billion. We shall never know. Football is a win, lose and sometimes bust business, and currently United, with all their expanded world franchise and their continuing domination of the Premiership, are valued at �500 million. There are periodic raids on the shares. Malcolm Glazer, owner of SuperBowl champions Tampa Bay, has just increased his stake in United to 25 million shares, almost 10 per cent. He is the quiet American who doesn't talk about his investments but observers hint that he could mount a full takeover and really push the franchise of the world's most famous club in the US, the world's most soccer-resistant market place. Alternatively, J.P. McManus and John Magnier, Irish racehorse tycoons and one-time friends of Sir Alex, keep adding to their investment of 23 per cent. And Dutch TV mogul, John de Mol, who created the Big Brother series, has over 4 per cent. What do they see in Man U? Maybe it is as simple as men of great wealth and worldly eye who just want to be involved in a club that fascinates tens of millions of people worldwide? Maybe not. It isn't a coincidence that the ghosted autobiography of Beckham was commissioned by Harper Collins, Rupert Murdoch's publishing house, and that Murdoch's TV outlets in all parts of the globe find that football, particularly EPL football, sells wherever man walks. It isn't coincidence that Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns AC Milan and built some of his wealth on TV franchising, which included the broadcasting rights to Italian football. It isn't a surprise that Gustavo Cisneros, a Venezuelan heavily into the Latin American TV satellite business, is often quoted in the English media as being the 'mysterious' billionaire looking to buy a Premiership club. It isn't a shock that cable television operator NTL has financial fingers in the pie at clubs from Newcastle to Villa. And it is no great shock to read that Roman Abramovich, the Russian owner of Chelsea, has inclinations to spread his business portfolio to TV franchising. The Abramovich blues, possibly even this season eclipsing Man U red and Real Madrid white in England and abroad, beamed back to Russia and to the TV market everyone foresees, China. These are the musings of journalism and journalists are such cynics. Why, it even enters my mind that a fellow in political office with a spare satellite or two and a population crazy about EPL could be biding his time to own all or part of a London club he recently saw outplay Man U in their own Old Trafford fortress. But I could be wrong. It could just have been a Prime Ministerial flight of passing fantasy. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Messenger with backgrounds, emoticons and more. http://www.msnmessenger-download.com/tracking/cdp_customize ------------------------ Yahoo! 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