Manchester United plans Old Trafford exit

Club set to build a new 100 000-seater stadium.

Manchester United plans to build a new 100 000-seater stadium in an attempt to catch up with modern facilities built by some of Europe’s biggest clubs.

The Premier League team said it plans to build the new venue next to its existing Old Trafford site. The historic venue comfortably has the league’s highest capacity at over 74 000, but its leaky roof and other deteriorating facilities have aged badly compared to Premier League clubs, including crosstown rivals Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur in London.

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“Our current stadium has served us brilliantly for the past 115 years, but it has fallen behind the best arenas in world sport,” Manchester United’s billionaire co-owner Jim Ratcliffe said in a statement Tuesday.

Manchester United is set to consider a range of funding options. A new stadium on that scale is expected to cost north of $2 billion, and Ratcliffe made clear the timeline for the move was dependent on the wider regeneration of the area. The club had also considered refurbishing its current stadium.

“We are looking at all our options on financing,” said Omar Berrada, chief executive officer at Manchester United. “We must stop losing money first.”

The new plans come just over a year after Ratcliffe spent about $1.5 billion to acquire almost a third of Manchester United. The team has struggled and currently ranks 14th of 20 teams in the highest tier of English football. Off the pitch, Ratcliffe has been cutting jobs as he tries to get costs under control, with Manchester United facing a looming debt cliff.

Manchester United’s shares in New York are down just over 20% since the start of the year through Monday’s close.

Ratcliffe has previously talked of building a “Wembley of the North,” a reference to the home of the England national team in northwest London that also implies a degree of public interest in the project. Manchester United said a new stadium, combined with wider regeneration, could create 92 000 jobs and deliver an additional £7.3 billion ($9.4 billion) a year to the economy.

Ratcliffe said he would seek public financing for part of the project. But any funding from the government would be politically difficult at a time when the UK government is warning about wider spending cuts, including to welfare. The Labour Party came to power promising growth and infrastructure investment, though voters unlikely had helping a Premier League football club in mind.

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Still, Labour’s Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said the project would benefit the city, telling reporters “if we get this right” it could be better than the regeneration in east London around the 2012 Olympic Games.

Manchester United has gone from being the second highest revenue-generating club in Europe in 2015, according to Deloitte, to the fourth largest, overtaken by Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, with Real Madrid still out in front.

While it remains one of the world’s largest clubs in terms of commercial clout, rivals including Real Madrid and Barcelona FC have all committed significant sums to regenerate their famous stadiums in order to boost revenues.

© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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