Avram Glazer has reportedly billed two private jet flights to Manchester United in recent months, with the club's majority shareholder allegedly spending £250,000 on separate trips to watch matches at Wembley Stadium.
The Athletic report details of the flights - with the first of which being a trip to watch the Carabao Cup final at Wembley in February, a match in which United won their first trophy for nearly six years. The second is claimed to have been earlier this month, with a luxurious journey to watch the club's women's team in their FA Cup final defeat to Chelsea.
It is reported that on both occasions the flights were billed to United, with the price being cited on the club's accounts £250,000. The same bill was attributed to the flight on both occasions bringing the total cost to £500,000, with the Glazer family continuing to do little to endear themselves to the club's fans amid continued protests against their ownership.
The family, which includes Avram's brothers Joel and Bryan, have owned United for 18 years and last year announced their intent to seek new investment in the club. This means that a long-desired takeover may finally take place, with fans of the club long having expressed their discontent at the reported £741 million debt incurred by the Glazers in their time at the helm.
Such expenses, such as the £250,000-a-time trips to Wembley will leave a bitter taste in the mouth, however, with fans left footing the bill of such expensive travel. The Manchester Evening News report that the club have raised season ticket prices for next season, citing 'rising costs' as their reason for doing so, leaving questions to be asked about why such a trip had to be made by such expensive means.
The Glazer family are expected to soon give up their control of the club, with a takeover expected to take place at the end of the season. The latest deadline in the bidding process is expected to be the end of May, with two bidders, Qatari billionaire Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani and INEOS owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe the remaining frontrunners.
The Glazer family have cited an asking price of £6billion to take over the Red Devils, although this has been disputed as a valuation previously. The Raine Group are currently brokering a deal, with the American equity firm having negotiated Todd Boehly's £4.2bn takeover of Chelsea last year.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has questioned their valuation of the club, He told the Daily Mail : "When you look at cash generated by the business it is nowhere near £6bn. Last August, the market valued United at around £2bn. Potentially it is now worth double, but any more and you really should be crossing your fingers. Coming up with a valuation is more art than science.
"You look at how much cash the business is likely to make in the next 10 years and then you add a couple of magic numbers. I did that with United and, being generous with the predictions, came up with £2.8bn. The only way it would be worth near £6bn would be if you could take control of broadcast rights and sell them yourself. As we saw with Project Big Picture that is not going to happen, so the numbers simply don't stack up."
Both bids are currently believed to be in the region of £5bn, with Sheikh Jassim proposing additional investment to clear the club's debt as well as investment in infrastructure and the local community. Ratcliffe, meanwhile, is believed to have opened the possibiluty of the Glazer family remaining as minority shareholders in an attempt to seal a deal.
