Chapter 178 Manchester United Business

 As for the role of replacing Beckham in Manchester United in the future, how could Barron, who was a fan of the Red Devils in his previous life, not know...

In fact, at this time, Manchester United head coach Ferguson had already begun to pay attention to Ronaldo.

However, he still had some doubts about signing the other party at this time. After all, before Ronaldo, Manchester United had never signed a Portuguese player, and the young Ronaldo was still a little thin at this time, and almost no fans outside Portugal knew his name at this time - at this time, he had not even made his debut for the first team of Sporting Lisbon in Portugal for a season.

Therefore, although Ferguson had contact with Ronaldo and the other club before, he initially only wanted to loan him to Manchester United for the 2003-2204 season.

However, after learning about this, Barron persuaded Ferguson to sign Ronaldo directly.

One advantage of doing this is that later in the original time and space, Premier League teams including Liverpool and Arsenal noticed Ronaldo, including his team. In the friendly match with Manchester United, Ronaldo performed very well. Therefore, after other teams also began to make offers for him, Ferguson finally offered a transfer fee of 12.24 million pounds to sign Ronaldo.

At this time, it was decided in advance that the cost of signing Ronaldo would not exceed 10 million pounds, because the highest offer for him at this time was only 4 million pounds.

Both Ronaldo himself and his agent are looking forward to him wearing the Manchester United jersey and appearing at Old Trafford next season. After all, entering such a wealthy club is probably the dream of any young player, and it will also greatly increase Ronaldo's commercial value.

When Barron first bought Manchester United, he made a promise to Ferguson that he would respect his opinions on all matters concerning the club's competitive aspects.

If Barron has any ideas, he will only bring them up and try to convince the other party, but Ferguson himself can decide whether to accept them in the end.

Including the final abandonment of Beckham, which is also a reflection of this commitment.

But apart from that, he needs to make some changes in the club's commercial operations.

Because compared with Real Madrid, even though Manchester United is not inferior in strength, and has better results in various international competitions, Real Madrid does do better in commercial operations.

But even Real Madrid is still far behind American sports operations in this regard.

Although football is known as the world's number one sport, when it comes to the world's most profitable leagues, before the Premier League, there have always been the three major American events: NFL (National Football League), FLB (Major League Baseball) and NBA (National Basketball Association).

At the club level, among the world's most profitable clubs, so far, only Manchester United and Real Madrid are football clubs in the top ten...

Unlike Manchester United, whose profits mainly rely on ticket revenue and share of event broadcasting, other American sports clubs' revenue from these two items is less than half of their total revenue. Most of the remaining revenue comes from sports licensed merchandise and sports sponsorship.

Therefore, in this regard, all European football clubs, including Manchester United, need to learn from their American counterparts.

For this reason, Barron directly hired Bal Pedda, who used to work as the brand marketing director at IMG, the most well-known sports brand operation company in the United States, through a headhunting company, to join the Manchester United Business Management Company he established specifically for the commercial operation of the Manchester United Club as CEO. He hoped to use America's experience in sports commercial operations to increase the commercial revenue of the Manchester United Club.

One of them is that Manchester United will implement a superstar strategy similar to Real Madrid's "Galacticos", whether it is through their own training - such as Cristiano Ronaldo who is about to join Manchester United, both his skills and image are very suitable to become a new football superstar; or through transfer introduction - in the future Manchester United will participate in the competition for the hottest players in the transfer market, and through these, enhance the club's visibility and attention.

In addition, Manchester United will also increase its efforts in the marketing of its own brand. While expanding the club's fan base, it needs a dedicated fan organization to bring together fans from all over the world and enable them to easily buy a richer range of peripheral products related to the Manchester United club.

This means more cooperation on sports licensed merchandise and launching more diverse products.

Of course, to make these changes, Barron first needs the cooperation of club CEO David Gill and head coach Ferguson.

You know, one of the reasons why the conflict between Ferguson and Beckham intensified before was that Ferguson was dissatisfied with the other party spending too much energy on business and neglecting daily training. Therefore, he valued the competitive aspect the most, and was quite resistant to too many commercial activities that would affect the team's competitive state.

Therefore, Barron had a conversation with David Gill and Ferguson. He first said that the funds from the sale of Beckham in this transfer market could all be used for the team's recruitment. In addition, he would provide the club with 50 million pounds of funds to renovate Old Trafford and the youth training base, not only to expand the stadium's stand area and increase the number of VIP boxes, but also to update their training equipment, renovate the turf, and set up a new physiotherapy center and medical team to provide protection for the players' physical condition.

At the same time, although Manchester United Club and Manchester United Commercial Management Company are two complementary companies, the management and head coach of Manchester United Club will receive corresponding profit shares from Manchester United Commercial Management Company.

That is to say, the higher the commercial income of Manchester United Club, the higher the income of David Gill and Ferguson. Ferguson and his team may not have any idea about this part of income now, but when the commercial management company really develops and faces the income of millions of pounds, I am afraid that Ferguson's attitude towards it will change.

After all, in the past, even if the club had a certain income from the commercial activities of star players like Beckham, the money had nothing to do with Ferguson. But it will be different in the future. As long as it does not affect the team's competitive state as much as possible, I am afraid it will get the support of Ferguson and others.

From now on, the competitive aspects of Manchester United club will be managed by David Gill and Ferguson.

Brand marketing is handed over to Manchester United's commercial management company led by Balpeda. Both parties have their own responsibilities, but they will also cooperate with each other.