I have nothing in particular against Manchester United, my response would be the same in relation any top club (I support a League One team and a third tier non-league outfit]. I don’t think taxpayer money should be used to build or rebuild stadiums.
I pay a substantial five figure sum in tax each year and I
would be happy for some of it to go to grass roots sports, particularly to help
youngsters to enjoy football and other sports.
While much of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s round of media
interviews on Wednesday, after his acquisition of 27.7 per cent of Manchester
United was finally confirmed, may have excited United fans, there were
more than a few elements that caused surprise.
Among lines about “knocking Manchester City and Liverpool off
their perch” and nice stories about chumming around with Sir Alex Ferguson, his
comments on women’s team made them sound like an afterthought, merely offering
that “if it’s a team wearing a Manchester United badge on their shirt, then
it’s Manchester United and they need to be focused on winning and being
successful.” But to offer the benefit of the doubt, these are early days and
perhaps there are big plans afoot.
Old Trafford
What also stuck out were his comments regarding Old Trafford
and either the potential renovation of United’s home stadium or the possible
construction of a new one.
Ratcliffe suggested that, when the time comes to either
rebuild or replace Old Trafford, he would seek out some sort of public funding,
also suggesting that it would be part of a potential regeneration of that area
of Manchester.
Ratcliffe said: “People in the north pay their taxes [although
actually the biggest tax take is in London and the south-east] and there is an
argument you could think about a more ambitious project in the north which
would be fitting for England, for the Champions League final or
the FA Cup final and acted as a catalyst to regenerate southern
Manchester, which has got quite significant history in the UK.”
The easy (and not unreasonable) gotcha is that Ratcliffe
invoked the UK taxpayer while not being one himself. He was asked about his
residency in the tax haven of Monaco, to which he replied: “I paid my taxes for
65 years in the UK. And then when I got to retirement age, I went down to enjoy
a bit of sun.” A happy coincidence that the only possible place “to enjoy a bit
of sun” also happens to be where the income tax rate is zero per cent.
I should be so lucky, but the really wealthy can arrange
their tax affairs to minimise their liabilities while if you are moderately
well off you get hit hard. I well
remember the £40k bill I got on my 75th birthday for exceeding my
lifetime allowance.
In any case, that distracts from the main issue, which is
trying to guilt-trip the taxpayer into subsidising a new stadium for Manchester
United.
Fans of U.S. sports will be familiar with the tactic: a
sports team owner pressures the local government into providing millions of
dollars worth of funding or tax subsidies for a new stadium, earnestly
promising that it wouldn’t really cost anything at all because it would bring a
raft of economic benefits to the local community.
However, multiple studies in America have exposed this claim
as, at best, hugely exaggerated and, more realistically, complete nonsense.
Public subsidies for stadiums are a mess that is entrenched
in US sports, but cannot be allowed to take hold in the UK. For a start, where
would the money come from?
Where would the money
come from?
A Manchester Council budget process report recently revealed
that they could be looking at a budget gap of £71.9million in 2026-27, which by
coincidence will probably be right around the time that work on Old Trafford
could begin, if Ratcliffe gets his way.
There will no doubt be wrangling over which public authority
would provide United with the funding, not least because Old Trafford is
technically not in Manchester, but the point remains: at a time when councils
around the UK are going bankrupt (often, funnily enough, because they got
involved in ill-advised and economically unsound construction projects), which
means basic services are catastrophically affected, how can anyone justify
committing public money to spruce up a football club’s stadium or buy a new
one?
Ratcliffe isn’t wrong when he mentions the southern (by
which he means London) bias when it comes to national sporting venues in
England. He’s also right that the north
of England has been historically neglected and ignored by the UK government
(despite all the talk of a ‘Northern Powerhouse ‘).
But even though Ratcliffe has a point, it’s hard to take it
seriously because we know he’s being disingenuous, at best. He’s not asking for
a separate ‘Wembley of the north’ to be constructed for the benefit of the
people: he’s asking for the redevelopment of his own club’s stadium to be (at
least partly) paid for by the people.
United don’t need the money. They brought in £648million in
the last financial year, up 11 per cent on the previous one. They were fourth
in the recent Deloitte Money League rankings of the richest clubs in the world.
They would, you’d imagine, easily be able to secure funding based only on the
increased revenue that would come from a new or refurbished stadium.
They even have an elite recent example in Tottenham, who
managed to build their superb new stadium without public money. The spending
wouldn’t even harm their profit and sustainability calculations, as
infrastructure costs are exempt.
Ratcliffe’s were just early suggestions, and there’s no
indication that any public body would actually be amenable to it. But even so,
the idea that public money should be used to help renovate or rebuild Old
Trafford should be stopped as early as possible.
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