How do you try to become a 21st-century superclub, or perhaps maintain the position of one? Well, your home environment is one barometer.
If you are fortunate enough to inherit a high-capacity arena built for other things that would rather not be left as a white elephant, then – like Manchester City and West Ham – lucky you.
For others aware of the growing dimensions of the world’s biggest sport with its new grandeur, building a new stadium is the potential pathway to opportunity and scale – and even a fundamental need.
The debate will rage about the purpose behind a new stadium.
Is it a vanity project? An opportunity to increase commercial revenues by pimping out facilities for everything from Beyonce to boxing? To build more value for the owners? Or, what the average fan really wants, to have a bloody winning football team.
Really, it’s all of the above and recent history will tell you building a modern stadium is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Fans of Arsenal, Tottenham and Everton know the compromises their clubs have endured to make expensive upgrades.
The next likely cab off the rank for a complete stadium reboot is the Glazer/Sir Jim Ratcliffe project. But being a unique beast, I think Manchester United will not have the same obstacles and challenges some others have faced.
Among Premier League clubs, United are in a bracket of their own irrespective of a decade of decay and current playing malaise under Ruben Amorim.
Despite figures supposedly showing Liverpool have been watched more in the past 12 months around the globe, United have unsurpassed recognition in terms of worldwide support and brand relationships.
In that respect, a new all-singing HQ to reflect their aura is a necessity to stay as market leaders.
Only an institution of United’s size could allow the Glazers to borrow such an amount to buy the club, and then use that club’s own money to pay back the debt they created, plus dividends – and increase its value by 700 per cent.
Whilst being the antithesis of what any fan would want, it showed that United can do what others can’t. Hence why Ratcliffe paid £1.25billion for 27 per cent.
I’m not surprised he and the Glazers want an ambitious new stadium. The optics are good – it makes United look big, bold and progressive – but also talks to the fundamental purpose of increasing long-term commercial value.
Look to America and see the stadium footprint of the Miami Dolphins which has a fully fledged Formula One race track.
It reinforces the idea that Manchester United are important and increased capacity means greater revenues. It would let them monetise new digital technology, increase corporate areas and host other events; sporting and entertainment.
Traditional football fans may not like all that hullabaloo but in the real commercial world in which football now exists, it’s what needs to be done.
We’ve seen others find it a hindrance financing stadiums. Arsenal were ground-breaking in being the first big club to completely rebuild. There’s no doubt the funding affected their economic ability to compete on the pitch as the shareholders didn’t want to spend on big transfer fees and wages at the same time.
Arsene Wenger toed the line and Arsenal morphed from winners to a top-four participation club. There was even a rumour that one of the conditions for the financing of the Emirates was that Wenger had to stay as manager!
Tottenham built a phenomenal stadium which has been commercialised like no other in the UK by Daniel Levy, but they have found little in the way of the trophies so far worthy of such magnificent surroundings.
My commercial nose tells me there are banking covenants around debt and a raft of other things that restricts Tottenham spending in the way people perhaps think they should.
Everton were compromised by the manner in which they accounted for spending on Bramley-Moore Dock which in part led to a points deduction for PSR breaches, though it should also be noted Farhad Moshiri didn’t help himself by also burning through cash on unsuitable players and managers.
Importantly, I don’t think the challenges many clubs had in building stadiums are going to be visited on Manchester United.
If they are allocating a separate budget for the development of the stadium, because it is a capital expenditure project, it is not something that will come out of their PSR.
Arsenal’s shareholders for a number of years made a choice on stadium spending versus player spending. They weren’t willing to do both. You don’t necessarily have that issue with United. They can run the two parts of their business in harmony.
For them, ‘New Trafford’ is a vital part of an overall reinvigoration project to make United the force they once were.
The modern football industry is a phenomenon. Players earn vast, previously unheard of wages and have bigger followings on social media than the Pope. Clubs earn huge revenues. Their potency is so significant, everything around them has to be done properly.
Ratcliffe will realise building a stadium has to be matched by progress on the field. One has to spark the other, not stifle. He is an innovator. He creates things so it’s logical that to fulfil the ambition he has for United and the legacy he wants to leave, building a bigger and better home for the club will be the guiding principle.
The big decision for United now is whether to redevelop and enlarge the existing stadium to 87,000 or start from scratch and make it even bigger.
I’d be inclined to go with the new build – more expensive but greater revenues and future-proofed rather than bolting on. I suspect Sir Jim would also like that.
United will have done their valuation. A purpose-built stadium will be available to operate at an elite level for the next 50 to 60 years, with a design able to embrace digital, AI, virtual reality, banqueting, corporate, tours and a whole raft of other enabling.
I don’t believe public money has been earmarked for the stadium itself and neither should there be. It is a commercial venture and if you own the football club, you pay.
There is also suggestions that it forms part of a regeneration project in that area.
A panel including political luminaries such as Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, former chancellor George Osborne and the real intellectual capital Gary Neville (!) are advising on.
United’s owners might not be at this moment proving overly football savvy about picking managers, sporting directors and buying players and PR, but I am pretty damned sure they know what they are doing commercially.
I only hope this second Wembley tag doesn’t stick. There’s no such thing and no need for it.
Wembley is Wembley and part of the iconography of English football that helped facilitate the powerhouse of the world’s most successful domestic league. Don’t dilute the name as some nod to ‘levelling up’ – you wouldn’t call another tennis tournament the Wimbledon of the north.
Regardless of the nickname, the idea of radically revamping Old Trafford is right. A vital game-changer for the whole club, in fact.
For most clubs, such an ambitious project would be a fiercely challenging prospect because of over-reach. For Manchester United, it’s an opportunity laid upon opportunity.