In March 2016, Manchester United unveiled its latest signing.

Not a deep-lying playmaker, a pacy winger, or solid-as-a-rock center-back.

But rather a… tractor.

Not a metaphorical tractor. An actual f*&#ing tractor.

It was a limited-edition, 51-horsepower Yanmar. Premium red body. Gold wheels. Complete with Manchester United badges, wheel caps, and floor mats.

Former player Dwight Yorke even flew to Bangkok to help launch it.

The internet was not kind.

For many supporters, the tractor became a poignant symbol of the recent decline of this hallowed institution.

Just three years earlier, Manchester United had celebrated a record 20th English league title. It was Sir Alex Ferguson’s 13th Premier League title across 21 seasons and the perfect end to the most successful managerial reign in English football history.

Now United were celebrating their first [checks notes] official “Agricultural Vehicles Partner.”

Manchester United would finish fifth that season, miss crucial Champions League qualification, and score just 49 Premier League goals. But, even as on-field performance cratered, the team’s commercial engine was firing on all cylinders. 

Manchester United had spent generations building one of the most valuable sporting brands on the planet. Each new deal brought in more money to buy players, service the debt, and fuel the sporting engine.

But how important was commercial income to Manchester United’s financial model? How much of it depended on current sporting performance, and how much was the delayed monetization of past success?

And just how long could Manchester United’s P&L continue to defy the reality of what was happening on the pitch?

Let’s get inside the numbers.

At the heart of the Manchester United P&L story is a change in revenue mix.

Every revenue bridge I’ve built comes down to the same thing. Price, volume, FX…and then that one line that actually explains the year, buried in a shift between product, geography, or channel.

It takes an analyst a week or so to find it. And by then, the question has been… well…relegated.

Summation’s AI Analyst does that dig in minutes, and shows you where and how it found it. Ask it yourself next quarter, and watch the answer come back while you’re still in that meeting.

PS → You can see Summation’s verification at work on Manchester United's numbers

A quick hello to new subscribers, there are quite a few who joined over the last week to read this series. Welcome… as a recap, these Saturday newsletters are where I break down a part of my personal operating manual as a Chief Financial Officer after 20+ years leading finance teams in large complex companies.

By sharing, I hope other CFOs can use and learn from what has (and hasn’t) worked for me.

But, this month I’m doing something a little different (while I take a much-needed vacation): A four-part deep dive into the financials of the football business through the lens of Manchester United Football Club.  

Full disclosure: I’m a lifelong fan, so I brought in a friend, specialist Sports CFO, Jason Hershman, to counter-balance my hopeless emotional bias on this story, and answer some questions .

We started last week by dissecting the complex capital structure history of the club to understand how they ended up carrying such a heavy continuing debt burden.

This is part 2 of 4, where we’ll dig into the commercial monster that powers the Manchester United P&L.

Secret CFO: Jason, I’m most curious about how on-field performance and off-field financial performance are correlated. But to set the scene, how should we be thinking about a football club’s revenue streams, and what drives them? 

Jason, Sports CFO: United discloses revenue through three segments. And, despite Manchester United’s worst Premier League finish in 50 years in 2024/25, reported revenue for the same period actually hit a record level of £667m.

In FY’25, those segments were:

United records prize money within Broadcasting. So when people say “performance revenue,” what they really mean is Broadcasting. That is where football quality directly hits the P&L. Commercial and Matchday are mostly walled off from it in the medium term.

Secret CFO: Commercial revenue has been the go-to lever for growth and presumably has a very high contribution margin. It’s also a good insurance policy against on-field performance-related revenue. But how has commercial income been so robust when the team… isn’t.  Surely that catches up eventually. Sponsors must want a winning team?

Jason: Commercial revenue has grown 6x since 2007, now sitting at one-half of total revenue. 

Commercial revenue growth is the natural target for a brand with deep brand equity to command two things:

Here’s what three of Manchester United’s greatest players from the Ferguson era have to say about how the contracts of the players shifted on commercial rights during those latter glory years:

The front-of-shirt deal is a cleaner read on brand pricing power, and on how its held through mediocrity:

The kit deal tells the same story. In 2023, United extended with Adidas to 2035 for a minimum of £900m, the biggest kit contract in the Premier League. That’s in line with what Adidas and Nike pay Real Madrid and Barcelona, despite United not performing nearly as well as either club on the pitch.

But… performance can have a significant impact on those deals. Start with Adidas. The original 2015 kit deal included a clause that would cut Adidas’s payment by 30%, (£22.5m), if United missed the Champions League for two consecutive seasons. The renewal replaced that with something simpler and more punishing: a flat £10m reduction for every season out of the Champions League, with no two-year grace period.

United’s absence from the 2025/26 Champions League triggered it for the first time, and the club only avoided a second charge by finishing third in 2025/26 and returning to the competition for 2026/27.

Secret CFO: That’s a double whammy. Qualifying means access to the top tier of European broadcast revenue in 2026/27 and avoids a commercial penalty on the kit deal. Surely, rival clubs must be maximizing commercial revenue in similar ways though?

Jason: While United remains a commercial behemoth in the Premier League, there are signs the commercial machine has started to saturate the addressable market or degrade versus competition. United’s commercial revenue growth has been slower than peers over the last 10 years. And Manchester City has overtaken them in absolute terms. (SCFO: Hmmm…. Let’s not forget City are facing charges for breaching financial fair play rules, including accusations of overstating sponsorship income. But I take the point…) 

Secret CFO: Let’s get deeper into the durability and cycle length of the different revenue streams vs on-pitch performance. Where precisely is revenue most sensitive to on-field performance??

Jason: To answer that, we have to test each revenue line against specific on-field performance measures. There are three specifically:

We can go even deeper:

Matchday income barely moves with results. There are three ways to increase this line: increase attendance per match, increase home matches per season, or increase supporters’ spend per match.

Old Trafford runs at ~99% capacity and last added new capacity 20 years ago. It cannot be expanded further without major redevelopment. We’ll dive further into that next week, but in the short term, additional seats are not an option.

What does vary with performance is the number of home games, determined by whether United’s performance leads to a deep run in European or domestic tournament play. This partially explains why matchday revenue rose 16% in the disastrous 2024/25 season: United reached the Europa League final, adding five home games to sell, vs. the previous season's early exit in the more prestigious Champions League.

SCFO: I assume matchday revenue will be down significantly in FY26 with the minimum number of home games played. No European football at all, plus exit at the first stage of each domestic cup?

Actually… no. You are right that match count was down significantly, but average revenue per seat increased to mostly offset it. This was driven through a combination of hospitality packages, premium experiences, and ticket prices. You can see a marked increase in matchday revenue per home match since the change in how the club was run a couple of years ago. FY26 isn’t on this chart, but all the YTD reporting and guidance indicates there’ll be another significant step up when the year end results are published.

SCFO: I don’t have a season ticket, but plenty of my friends do, and the ownership’s treatment of loyal fans has been, rightly, unpopular. Management knows Old Trafford will sell out regardless, making price hikes the crack pipe they can’t resist. But even through a commercial lens, keeping Matchdays affordable for the most loyal fans is vital for protecting the legendary atmosphere inside the stadium. It’s a big part of the brand story that the commercial partners are paying a premium for.

Broadcasting is the most cyclical line. The intuition would be that United’s 15th place finish in 2024/25 would gut their Premier League related TV income, but it barely dents it. The Premier League shares two-thirds of its broadcast pot equally, so every club, top or bottom, banked £96.9m in 2024/25 regardless of finish.

Merit payments, the only slice tied to the table, move £2.6m per place. On top of that sit facility fees for being picked for live television. United gets picked for TV constantly regardless of their form because of their enormous global fan base. Win, lose, or draw United is on television.

Add it up and United, in 15th, still collected £136.2m from the Premier League, more than four of the clubs that finished above them. In the end, only 12% of United’s FY’25 revenue from the Premier League was merit-based, down from 24% in FY’24. 

The stickiest parts of the entire revenue base are the collectively negotiated UK and international television rights. Overall Premier League total revenue has seen a consistent stair-step function, reaching a new high every three-year television rights cycle.

European competition income is much more meritocratic than the Premier League. This has seen an aggressive decline in recent years. An early Champions League exit in 2023/24 led to a sharp revenue fall in 2024/25.

But the real financial hit will be seen in the 2025/26 season, when the club played no European football at all. The board should breathe easier as it enters the 2026/27 having qualified for the Champions League with last seasons’ 3rd place finish.

Under the expanded 2024/25 formats, a deep Champions League run paid north of €100m. Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) banked a record €145m in 2025 and seven other clubs cleared nine figures. Meanwhile United have been feeding on the scraps, netting €36m in prize money as the Europa League runner up in 2024/25.

Secret CFO: Back in that right hand box again for next season though… at last. Let’s go back to commercial income, surely there must be some relationship between this line and performance. Adidas must be prepared to pay a lot more to slap their logo on the shirt of a winning team?

Jason: Well, yes, commercial income does respond to performance too, but more slowly. Multi-year contracts are signed based on the perception of the team’s reach at the time of signing. There are some performance triggers, inserted in contracts, but it is mostly guaranteed for the contract term.

If United went through a truly rock-bottom five-year streak, new commercial contract terms would be pressured as old contracts roll-off. However, year to year on-pitch performance is not a major revenue headwind.

SCFO: How does this all compare to the rival peer set?

Overall, across the Glazer years United’s revenue nearly tripled, from £173m to £581m in FY’17 when it topped the Deloitte Money League to £667m now. Impressive on its own terms.

But other clubs rapidly outgrew United over the same stretch. In the latest Money League, Manchester United, which topped the rankings in 10 of its 29 editions, dropped to eighth place, its lowest position ever. For the first time, it sits below Liverpool, City, and Arsenal.

SCFO: This tells the real story, and explains why United are so uncompetitive in the transfer market. We used to have the highest revenue in world football, and no interest cost. Now we are just one of many with strong revenue, but carry a massive debt burden. The only way to square that without going bankrupt is comparative underinvestment into the squad and facilities.

SCFO: So, if we step back and look at the overall revenue quality of a football club, how do you assess it?

Jason: What you’ll find is that is two-thirds of the top line is recurring; backed by multi-year commercial contracts and sold-out matchdays. But there is variable broadcasting revenue, with volatility based on Champions League qualification. 

Most businesses would happily take this mix but it does hide two major risks: heavy customer concentration, led by Adidas and Snapdragon. And there’s a repricing lag where commercial protects earnings in the short term but responds to results sharply upon renewal.

A global brand can absorb a bad cycle, but once contracts roll over after a bad decade, this lag becomes a structural problem, and fast. 

Thanks Jason. It’s fascinating to see the breakdown of exactly how the various pots of prize money, broadcast income, and even commercial income are sensitive to on-field performance.

It’s not hard to see why a Top 5 finish last year was so important. I suspect another year out of the Champions league would have made the June debt refi (we discussed last week) much more difficult (and expensive).

The other thing that struck me is the perspective on the growth in commercial income. The one thing the Glazer ownership has had some credit for in certain parts of the media over the last 20 years is the success in growing the commercial income line.

But when you step back and compare it to rivals, it does look like that is more driven by a rising tide that has lifted all ships across the Premier League. Sure they still need to execute it against a deteriorating on-pitch story, but the once obvious commercial income leadership is no more.

The one glimmer of light is that as the club has right-sized the cost of its playing squad to match a (comparatively) lower income line, and got some expensive underperformers off the wage bill. If they can now consistently achieve Champions League football, it should open up capacity to invest significantly into the playing squad in the future. But for now, they’ll need to do more with less.

Which brings me to the biggest financial decision of all: How to solve a £2b problem like Old Trafford. 

Next week we will dive into one of the biggest CapEx projects in sport; the redevelopment of Old Trafford.

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