A respected sports-business analyst, Sport+Markt, has claimed that the green and gold campaign has made a significant impact on the revenue of the Glazers’.
“Our data show the club has lost retail revenue from the year 2009 to 2010 by around 10%,” said Dr Peter Rohlmann, the report’s author. “This is due to the fact that all the circumstances about the ownership and the behaviour of the Glazer family were not positive in the minds of Manchester United fans. This has had a direct impact on their merchandising spend.”
In the summer, RoM launched a ‘Dig Out Your Old Shirts‘ campaign where we encouraged fans to don shirts of years gone by instead of buying one of the new ones.
We wrote:
Nike signed a deal worth £303m with United which expires in 2015. Whilst presently, it is Nike’s pocket we will be hurting, not the Glazers’, it stands to reason that in 2015, the Glazers will be offered considerably less for the manufacturing contract with Nike.
Not only do Nike make the kits, but they are responsible for “Manchester United’s global retail operations”. This essentially means Nike spreads the United brand around the world.
Every penny that we can deny the Glazers is another reason for them to sell up. At present, they don’t have much of a reason to go, but if year on year they make less money from our club and they come to the conclusion that they are going to sell, they would need to do so sooner rather than later to get the best price. Every year that they wait and every year that the protests gain momentum, the less money they are going to make from us.
The Guardian has suggested today that this decrease in revenue could lead to a new deal being put in jeopardy.
