ON 28 June 2005, the Glazer family completed their takeover of Manchester United Football Club.
It loaded the club with debt, and over the next 20 years, BBC Verify has found about £1.2bn has been spent on debt interest, debt repayments, dividends and fees to the family.
To fund the deal, the Glazers borrowed millions of pounds from hedge funds and left the club with debts of £604m.
One year on, the club had already paid £53.2m in debt interest to its lenders and in fees to the Glazer family.
On 22 June 2005, the Glazer family paid £790m to buy out the club’s exiting shareholders and to remove the club from the London stock market.
But it was a deal mainly funded by borrowed money and loaded £604m in debts on to the club, which had previously had borrowings of only £50m.
The club’s board had warned, external in April 2005 about the dangers of this amount of debt, saying it was not “prudent” and risked “a downward spiral in both team and financial performance”.
The takeover provoked protests from fans, which continue to this day.
Calculations by BBC Verify – based on an analysis of the club’s published accounts and stock market announcements – show that since the Glazer family’s acquisition of the club in June 2005 it has paid out:
£815m in debt interest repayments
£166m in dividends to shareholders
£10m in management and administration fees to Glazer family companies
£197m in external net debt repayments
This means that, in total, £1.187bn in cash left the club between 2005 and 2024 which it is reasonable to argue would not have done so in the absence of the Glazer takeover.
It is a conservative estimate, too, because it does not include various fees to banks, financial advisers and other financing costs, including currency hedging.
It also does not include the cash that has left the club in the form of directors’ fees.
Since the Glazers re-listed a portion of the club’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, £125m has also been paid out in compensation to the club’s directors.
Given half of the directors were Glazer family members, it’s likely half of this sum – about £63m – went to them.
BBC Verify asked the club to comment on the findings and they said they would leave the accounts to speak for themselves.
The Glazer family can legitimately point to the fact they have significantly grown the value of the club over the past two decades.
Under the Glazers’ two decades of full ownership, United’s annual commercial revenues have risen more than fivefold – from £55m in 2006 to £303m in 2024.
This is reflected in the implied market value of the club.
The Glazers acquired United for £790m. The stock market implied value of the club in May 2025 was more than £3.2bn.
And the financial terms of the sale of a stake in the club to Sir Jim Ratcliffe in 2024 implies an overall valuation of £4.3bn.
The family can also point to the fact that, under their ownership, the club has spent more than £2bn on signing new players since 2012.
This compares well with expenditure by most of the club’s rivals, external over that period.
On the pitch, United have won 15 major trophies under the Glazers, but only five have those have come since the retirement of legendary former manager Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013.
Last season they finished 15th in the Premier League – the lowest they have ended a campaign since a year in the second tier in 1974-75.
This was acknowledged in the club’s quarterly accounts, released on Friday.
Chief executive officer Omar Berrada said it had been “a difficult season in the Premier League, which we all know fell below our standards and we have a clear expectation of improvement next season”.
The Glazers mainly used borrowed money to buy the club in 2005, but the accounts show they also put in £273m of their own cash.
However, they have invested no money of their own since.
The investments in the squad have come from the club’s own internally generated cash resources and from debt secured on the club directly and on the ownership shares in the club.
The family have also realised considerable value from their investment.
Between 2012 and 2022 the Glazer family sold £555m in shares in the club, including the proceeds of a £150m 2012 listing on the New York Stock Exchange.
Of the sale proceeds, £484m went to them directly, though £71m went to partially pay down the debt they took out to buy the club.
In 2005, Manchester United PLC’s total gross debt was just £50m.
The Glazers’ leveraged buyout increased the gross debt listed in the accounts to £604m in 2006 – this was partially secured on the club’s assets directly, and partially secured on the Glazer family’s ownership shares.
There has been been some major refinancing of the debt over the two decades, including in 2010 and 2015.
In 2024, the Glazer family sold £732m in shares to Ratcliffe, leaving him with roughly a 30% ownership stake and control of the football operations.
As part of the deal, Ratcliffe injected a further £236m of his own funds directly into the club for investment into the infrastructure of their Old Trafford stadium.
This additional investment was not funded by additional debt.
Ratcliffe told the BBC in March 2025 the club had been set to run out of money by the end of this year, forcing him to drastically cut costs.