Official £1bn reveal at Premier League HQ piles pressure on Man United's new stadium plans

Manchester United earn more money through the turnstiles than any other English club, with the Premier League having now broken the £1bn barrier for matchday income.

Data collected by United in Focus shows that the club-record £160m the club earned in 2024/25 saw the league as a whole reach the ten-figure mark, with all 20 clubs having now filed their accounts for the season.

Matchday income – once the ugly duckling of the Premier League’s three primary revenue streams, below commercial and media cash – has had a renaissance in recent years.

Premium and hospitality ‘experiences’ at Old Trafford have driven up revenue, as has the extra money being made on the concourses and around the ground itself. But most controversially, the Glazers and Sir Jim Ratcliffe have increased general admission ticket prices.

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Announced in March, next season’s five per cent hike to the cost of season tickets will be the fourth campaign in succession that prices have risen. Prior to that, costs were frozen for the best part of a decade.

United defended their position by saying that it would help them return to “the top of domestic and European football.”

Aside from the specious logic (United and the Premier League at large’s problem is cost control, not insufficient revenue), it also puts the ownership under huge pressure to deliver at a new stadium.

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After all, if a five per cent increase in prices at Old Trafford boosts the club’s prospects of returning to the European elite, what could matchday incomes of £250m-a-season at a 100,000-seater stadium do for the club?

As the anniversary of Ineos unveiling their plans for Europe’s biggest stadium approaches, a number of questions remain unanswered – and the timeline appears hazy.

Finance is the biggest stumbling block. United already have over £1bn in debt all told, with a new stadium likely to double that figure at the very, very least.

Ratcliffe and the Glazers meanwhile aren’t in a position to fund the construction, while the acquisition of a piece of land owned by Freightliner which is crucial to the proposed build is pushing the projected cost of the project up. High interest rates, United’s existing cash flow issues and complex dynamics within the ownership structure make finance a thorny issue.

Elsewhere, Everton moved into their new stadium this season. Tottenham, while in a pitiful place on the pitch, are catching up to United in terms of stadium revenue.

Arsenal plan to expand to 70,000 at least, Chelsea are exploring a stadium revamp or move, and Liverpool and Man City are now at 60,000-plus. Leeds United, Aston Villa, Birmingham City too – wherever you look stadiums are being expanded or built.

The Premier League’s total matchday income of £1bn could very quickly become £2bn.

United, therefore, the club with the biggest earning potential, cannot afford to ponder their new stadium for too long, lest they cede their competitive advantage on the pitch.

“When the Premier League started, matchday income was the single biggest revenue driver,” explains University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to United in Focus.

“Because of the success of the TV deals, that declined. It dropped to about £1 in every £8 coming through the turnstiles.

“Because we’re now in an era of plateau as far as the domestic broadcast deals are concerned, it means that the clubs who were able to freeze season ticket prices over a long period of time – such as Man United – were in an oligopolistic market. In an oligopoly, you have local monopolies that don’t want to break ranks.

“We had the Glazers freezing season ticket prices at Old Trafford for 10 years out of 11. They were trying to find an excuse to adjust that, and Covid gave them that opportunity.

“On the back of that, once one of them [Big Six clubs] went for it, the rest said to their fans that they had to do the same.

“They now have a convenient scapegoat in PSR and SCR because you do need additional revenues and matchday income counts towards that. For United, though, it’s a cash issue rather than a PSR one.

“There is no collective desire to control costs. Therefore, we have ended up in this mess where everybody tries to second-guess everyone else. On the back of that, everyone increases their prices.”

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