Finnish entrepreneur Thomas Zillacus says he has submitted a bid to buy half of Manchester United and says he will allow fans to buy the other half.
Some of you, if not all, will be asking who on earth is Zillacus? He is the chairman of the social media group novaM Group and his bid has been lodged through XXI Century Capital, an investment firm owned by his own holding company.
Zillacus appears to be pushing his bid publicly as being fan centred, which initially seems positive, as it would potentially give fans a chance to buy a stake in the club. I would urge fans, as with any bid, not to jump to any conclusions early on about this as it remains to be seen how serious Zillacus will be in the negotiation process.
The Finnish businessman previously worked as chairman of HJK Helsinki and currently owns Finland’s 6-times ice hockey champions Jokerit. However, his bid seems centred around an app rather than match-going fans.
A statement released on Thursday read, as per Pressat: “Any sport club ultimately should belong to its fans. The current development, where billionaire sheikhs and oligarchs take over clubs and control them as their personal playgrounds is not a healthy trend.”
It’s the first statement in which a bidder for Manchester United has fired shots at another potential buyer, being Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim, without digging too deep into the gory details behind sportswashing.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim’s statements focused on their own bids.
Zillacus’ statement added: “The current market value of the club is just under 3.9 billion USD. That means that if every one of the fans of the club would join in buying the club, the total sum per fan would amount to less than 6 dollars. My bid is built on equality with the fans.
“My group will finance half of the sum needed to take over the club, and will ask the fans, through a new company that is being set up for this specific purpose, to participate for the other half. If every fan joins it means less than 3 dollars per fan. Each fan who joins will have access to an app which the fan, from anywhere in the world, can use to participate and cast his vote when deciding on footballing matters relating to the club. No decisions will be taken that are not supported by a majority of the fan base.”
Furthermore, he added how he wants to make the club a driving force to stop online abuse.
“Manchester United should not only be the best football club in the world, it should also be the leading club in the world in working to stop abuse, racism and hate speech in social media and on sports grounds.”
Fans will be eager to know how serious the bid is and whether Zillacus is willing to clear the debt that the Glazers have put on the club.
Hopefully, this whole saga doesn’t turn out to be an episode of the Glazers playing investors to push up the price to create leverage for loan, which we believe is something some interested parties are concerned about.
Surely they know their time is up?
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