Before Wednesday at 21:00 GMT, the owner of Ineos, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and a banker from Qatar, Sheikh Jassim, will make better offers to buy Manchester United.
United met with the only two bidders known to the public this month.
People say they talked well when they went to Old Trafford and Manchester United’s training ground.
Ineos wants to buy all of Glazer’s shares, which together are worth about 69% of the club. But the Qataris want to buy the club as a whole.
BBC Sport found out that United officials met with eight potential investors over the course of 10 days. Among them were representatives from Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim.
Their first bids haven’t been made public yet, but reports say they are both around £4.5 billion. This is a long way below what the club’s American owners, the Glazers, have set at $5 billion to $6 billion.
The next big question is whether they or any other potential bidders can make an offer that makes the Glazers want to sell.
If not, and since United’s luck has improved a lot under manager Erik ten Hag in the past few months, the Americans might still decide to keep the club and try to sell a minority stake to a US hedge fund like Elliott Investment Management.
The Glazer family said in November that they might sell United.
In its first bid, Sheikh Jassim’s Qatari group said, “We plan to bring the club back to its former glory.”
Sheikh Jassim is the head of the Qatari bank QIB and the son of a former prime minister of Qatar. He has always been a fan of Manchester United.
The 70-year-old British billionaire Ratcliffe owns the Ineos group. He has always put money into sports, and now he owns the French Ligue 1 club Nice and the Swiss club Lausanne.
It also gives money to the Ineos Britannia sailing team, which Sir Ben Ainslie leads. It also has a five-year deal with the Formula One team Mercedes and bought the British cycling team Team Sky in 2019.
At the time of the first bid, it was thought that the proposal would emphasize that Ratcliffe, who was born in Manchester, would be “a British guardian for the club” and try to “put the Manchester back into Manchester United.”
Who is in the running?
We will make at least two offers for United, and Saudi Arabia is interested.
This means that up to five parties could be trying to negotiate a full sale, and others could be looking to make a smaller investment in exchange for a smaller share of the 20-time English league champions.
Even though he might not have a direct role in the club, Nasser al-Khelaifi, the president of Paris St. Germain, is likely to be a key figure in any attempt by Qatar to buy the club.
Al-Khelaifi was thinking about having his company, Qatar Sports Investment, buy a smaller share of a Premier League club (QSI).
Uefa rules say that one person can’t own more than one club, so Qatar would have to work with private people or a different group to buy all of United.
Human rights and LGBTQ+ groups are worried that Qatar might buy a Premier League club and then own two of the best teams in Europe.
A look at how Manchester United could be sold
People in the Gulf state look confused when they hear that Qatar might buy Manchester United or that Qatar already owns Paris Saint-Germain, which could cause a conflict of interest.
They think that more than one group owns about half of the Premier League clubs.
One example is that Manchester City is part of the City Football Group. Daniel Kretinsky is Sparta Prague’s president and owns a piece of West Ham. Both teams were in the Europa League last year.
They also know that Ratcliffe wants to buy United and that there is no sign that he will give up control of French club Nice, four points away from a spot in Europe.
Uefa has also said that RB Leipzig and RB Salzburg can play in the same European tournaments.
Since Nasser al-Khelaifi is the chairman of both PSG and the European Clubs’ Association, which has been working more closely with Uefa, it is safe to say that any problems have been solved.
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But people who know about this offer say it has nothing to do with who owns PSG. The bid is also clear to be just an idea. Also, sources say that the information in United’s “data room” has been less than satisfying.
All of the Old Trafford club’s financial information must be made public.
People think this is just the beginning, but Sheikh Jassim is serious about taking the club away from the Glazer family for the first time since 2005. He also wants to invest in the whole Trafford area.
