Malcolm Glazer, the American billionaire owner of the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has reportedly bought a 2.9 percent stake in Manchester United for more than US$14 million.
Manchester United, the world's most popular soccer club, is already linked to an American professional sports team -- the New York Yankees, the world's most popular baseball team.
The English club, which enjoys a worldwide fan base estimated to be more than 50 million strong, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1991.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, Glazer's US$14.16 million purchase did not have to be declared to the Stock Exchange because it was less than 3 percent.
Glazer could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday and did not return messages.
Manchester United, which dominated English soccer in the 1990s and won the European Champions Cup in 1999, is facing its second straight season without a trophy.
The Red Devils have qualified for the Champions League quarterfinals, but they lost to Liverpool in the English League Cup final on Sunday, trail defending champion Arsenal by eight points in the Premier League and have been eliminated from the FA Cup.
Glazer, who transformed the Buccaneers from a perennial loser into a champion, bought the American football team in 1995 for US$192 million, a value that has at least tripled.
The Bucs beat the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in the Super Bowl.
Glazer made his money in a
variety of ways, starting at age 15 when he took over the family watch business after his father died. Now he runs First Allied Corp, a conglomerate of businesses with an estimated worth of US$1.5 billion.
Another foreign billionaire, Dutch television tycoon John de Mol, has reportedly bought 2.92 percent of Manchester United, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Manchester United is expected to open a four-city US exhibition tour in Seattle this summer.
The team will also play in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and in the New York-New Jersey area and is expected to be joined by Italian powerhouse Juventus and Scottish champion Glasgow Celtic.
The Yankees and Red Devils allied themselves about two years ago, agreeing to work together with sponsors and sell each other's licensed goods. Manchester United has a third link to the US -- athletic apparel giant Nike is the team's sportswear provider.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier