It was a mixed bag of financial news for Manchester United. Thanks to reform in the U.S. tax code, the club suffered a £21.1 million half-year loss at the back end of 2017. The Donald Trump administration passed legislation this past year that altered corporate tax rates within the United States, and MUFC took a hit as a result.
The club, a publicly traded company, unveiled their latest set of financial results on Thursday, and it revealed a revenue increase of 4% to £163.9 million. This adjusts projected revenue for the year 2018 to £585 million.
United’s official press release today, on the topic of their financial books, indicated that they will write off £48.8 million in non-cash expenses for this fiscal quarter.
In better, and much less boring news, new acquisition Alexis Sanchez broke the club record for shirt sales among January arrivals three times over. Yes, the man who inherits the legendary number 7, perhaps the most storied in United history, has made an instant impact from a brand perspective. Not just from shirt sales, but also on social media.
“Alexis Sanchez has set a new January signing record in terms of shirt sales, three times the previous record,” MUFC Executive Vice President Ed Woodward said on a conference call with investors today.
“It was the biggest United post on Instagram with two million likes and comments, the most shared United Facebook post ever, the most retweeted United post ever, and the hashtag #Alexis7 was the number one trending topic on Twitter worldwide,” Woodward claimed.
“To put that into context, the announcement posts generated 75 per cent more interactions than the announcement of the sale of the world’s most-expensive player last summer when Neymar moved from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain.”
Thus, it was a good news, bad news kind of day for Manchester United football club in the corporate board room.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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