Let’s start with the basics. Since they bought the club in a
highly controversial leveraged buyout in 2005, the Glazers have taken more £1.1 billion out of United. According to football finance blogger Kieron O’Connor of the Swiss Ramble, United have paid £743 million in interest payments since the takeover, when the Glazers acquired United for £790m but only put up £200m of their own money, saddling the Red Devils with eye-watering debt.
Between 2010 and 2022, the club has paid out £517m in interest, almost as much as the rest of the Premier League in the same period. The six members of the Glazer family who have been directors have also taken an estimated £50m in directors’ fees in that time. In the last seven years, they have collected £166m in dividends.
If you count the £465m the Glazers have received in selling Class A shares, none of which has been reinvested in the club, the total amount the family has taken out of United stands at more than £1.6bn. That’s £1.6bn that could have been spent on transfer fees, salaries and redeveloping a creaking Old Trafford and outdated training ground, but instead went towards enriching a billionaire family.
In terms of owner funding between 2012 and 2021, United ranked bottom of the Premier League on minus £154m. Manchester City’s owners invested £684m, Chelsea's £516m. United may have spent large sums of money recently - they have the second-largest wage bill in the Premier League, only trailing Chelsea - but all that money has come from the club itself and its vast commercial revenues, a lot of which stems from its heritage and the sustained success under Sir Alex Ferguson.