Sir Jim Ratcliffe is the Elon Musk of sports sponsorship amid further Man United redundancies, claims football finance expert

A football finance expert has compared Manchester United part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe to Elon Musk. 

Ratcliffe purchased a 27.7 per cent stake in United for £1.25billion last year which enabled his Ineos company to gain control over operations at the club from the unpopular Glazer family.

Since he took charge, the British billionaire has undergone significant restructuring at Old Trafford, with several money-saving measures implemented.  

Mail Sport exclusively revealed on Tuesday how Ratcliffe is planning to continue his cost-cutting, with more than 100 staff set to be made redundant after around 250 were culled last year.

Elsewhere, Ratcliffe cancelled free coach travel for staff to last year’s FA Cup final, has cut back on ambassadorial salaries and increased ticket prices, while he also decided to bring to an end Sir Alex Ferguson’s £2million-a-year role with the club.

And Professor Rob Wilson, Director of Executive Education at University Campus of Football Business, gave his thoughts on Ratcliffe’s strategy – and insisted it is similar to what Musk, who is the world’s richest man, would do. 

‘What we see generally, typified in US style ownership, is they look at revenue generation first and they look at cost control second,’ he told Spin Casino. 

‘So go back to Manchester United, what did the Glazers do? They’ve tried to ramp up revenue as much as they possibly could.

‘Actually what they did was they put an army of people behind that to make sure that you could sign your big deals with Snapdragon or Team Viewer before that and the big deal with Adidas and the Nike deal that came before that.

‘So I think what we typically see with US ownership in the first instance is let’s go after revenue, particularly in sponsorships and then we look at the other things thereafter.

‘Elon Musk is slightly different because his acquisitions that we’ve seen, particularly at Twitter or X, is that he goes in after the cost cutting because his investment methodology is more akin to what we would see with a British investor who looks at costs first.’

Musk, whose net worth is $397billion (£318bn), bought Twitter in 2022 and immediately fired several top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal.

He subsequently renamed the platform as X and began to charge users a monthly fee for a ‘blue check’, while he also executed widespread redundancies across the company. 

Meanwhile, Ratcliffe and Ineos have also been at the centre of a storm this week after they ended their sponsorship of the New Zealand rugby team.

It emerged on Monday that the All Blacks were suing the British billionaire’s company after they accused the group of reneging on the latest instalment of a £22m six-year deal which came into play in 2021. 

Ineos later hit back, claiming they were withdrawing their sponsorship due to the ‘deindustrialisation of Europe’.

And Wilson went onto hint that this decision could be linked to their long-term plan for United. 

‘I’m wondering if the sporting strategy has been to build a stable to improve awareness and legitimacy to go after a tier one asset, Manchester United,’ he added.

‘My theory is that it’s all linked to Manchester United in one way or another. They will also be reviewing the impact of the deals they have and maybe NZ simply didn’t deliver what they’d expected?

‘Sport sponsorship is expensive and it’s clear that the United project is bigger than anyone expected.

‘It’s a crown jewel asset though and single-handedly will provide benefits more significant than the sum total of the other sports properties if they turn the tide with United’s sporting performance. You don’t put your top team in there for nothing.’