Man Utd bosses exploring innovative 'seat licences' at £2billion new stadium

Manchester United are exploring the controversial idea of selling seat licences for the club’s proposed brand-new stadium. Plans for a state of the art arena were unveiled by the Red Devils in March.

If those plans come to fruition, the new ground would take United’s capacity to around 100,000, with the project estimated to cost around £2billion. And in an effort to recoup some of that, Ratcliffe and fellow Man United chiefs have explored a radical plan.

According to The Athletic, the club are exploring the option of selling seat licences. The club have sent a survey to match-going fans that would see supporters pay for the right to buy a specific seat. It is suggested that the licenses will be optional and will be targeted towards those in premium areas of the stadium. The plan is already in place in a number of stadiums in the United States but has yet to be adopted by clubs in Europe.

Ratcliffe has been desperately attempting to rectify the club’s poor financial outlook since he arrived at Old Trafford. Despite record revenues, United lost around £33m in the past financial year.

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Ratcliffe has attempted to change the tide by enforcing two rounds of redundancies at the club - decisions that have not gone down well at all. But he believes that they were necessary for the future of the club.

"The costs were just too high,” Ratcliffe explained after featuring on The Business Podcast, produced by The Times and The Sunday Times. “There are some fantastic people at Manchester United, but there was also a level of mediocrity and it had become bloated.

"I got a lot of flak for the free lunches, but no-one has ever given me a free lunch. The biggest correlation, like it or not, between results and any external factor, is profitability. The more cash you have got, the better squad you can build.

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"A lot of what we have done in the first year is to spend an awful lot of time putting the club on a sustainable, healthy footing. We are not seeing all the benefits of the restructuring that we've done in this set of [financial] results, and we were not in the Champions League."

Meanwhile, Ratcliffe has predicted the situation to improve dramatically once the new stadium is completed in the future. He added: "Those numbers will get better.

“Manchester United will become the most profitable football club in the world, in my view, and from that will stem, I hope, a long-term, sustainable, high-level of football."

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