The Biggest Sports Company You Have Never Heard Of 😲
Plus Apple to fight for the Premier League rights, PSG needs a new stadium and Rafa Nadal is not happy!
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
INEOS is everywhere. In the last few years, the company has spent more than €450 million acquiring some of the biggest brands in sports:
⚽️ OGC Nice
🏎 Mercedes F1 Team
🚲 INEOS Grenadiers (Formerly Team Sky)
🏉 New Zealand Rugby Team
⛵️ INEOS Britannia America’s Cup Team
The company was also responsible for funding the successful attempt by Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge to run a marathon in less than two hours.
It seems like INEOS has managed to sneak into almost every aspect of sport, and now it has its sights on ownership of Manchester United.
This brings us to a very important question, that we can imagine you are all thinking right now:
What on earth is INEOS?
Well, the company’s full name is INspec Ethylene Oxide and Specialities.
That clears everything up right…?
For those of you without a chemistry Ph.D., INEOS is best described as a privately owned collection of refineries, offshore gas fields and chemical works that produce the raw materials needed for everything from plastic and paint to food and medicine.
The company has an annual turnover of about $60 billion and its majority owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has a personal net worth of around $15 billion.
So, why would a company that makes industrial chemicals want to invest in Manchester United, one of the biggest brands in sport?
After all, you can’t imagine that they plan on selling their fracking services to life-long season ticket holders Jeff and Linda.
Critics of the chemical industry would point to one likely motivation…Positive PR.
Ownership of sports teams, especially those from the Premier League, has the power to distract attention away from unwanted areas and re-focuses it on the positive images of joy and success that are inherent to sport.
In 2016, INEOS was found guilty of releasing dangerous chemicals into a public waterway. Two years later, one of their fracking locations was handed the lowest possible rating in a compliance test.
Despite this, if you ask the average person in the street about INEOS, they will probably be reminded of Formula 1 or football.
This tactic is not unique to INEOS or even rare in football.
INEOS remains adamant that its investments are born purely from the owner’s love of sport. The passion project of a Manchester United fan, who also loves skiing, cycling and sailing.
Some have even gone as far as to say that Sir Jim Ratcliffe does not expect any financial gains from sport, only emotional ones.
Whatever the main motivation, the more interesting part of this story is how the company plans to utilise Manchester United, one of the biggest assets in European football.
Insiders within INEOS have revealed that the company is working towards a unique new model for sport: an interconnected web of professional athletes, coaches and experts who share information and assist each other with the aim of winning the world’s toughest competitions.
Meteorologists from the sailing team helped decide when Eliud Kipchoge should start his sub-two-hour marathon attempt. The cycling team gets aerodynamic advice from the Mercedes F1 team and some of the cyclists have trained with the OGC Nice football team.
Manchester United has a deep culture of success and would provide this ecosystem with a wealth of sporting expertise.
The INEOS approach has many of the same benefits as the Multi-Club Model that has been championed by clubs such as Man City and the Red Bull Group. These global networks of clubs share everything from scouting networks and data analysis to players and coaches.
Much like the Red Bull Group which encompasses a wide variety of sporting disciplines, each team in the INEOS ecosystem gets the added advantage of being able to draft in experts from different areas, such as nutritionists, physiotherapists and other technical experts.
After years of hardship under the Glazers, Man United fans are desperate for a breath of fresh air. For many that probably means billions being pumped into the squad and facilities, but the unique sporting approach offered by INEOS may be a more effective way for United to return to the top.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🍏 Another reason for INEOS’ interest in Man United could be down to something Apple is planning.
The U.S. company is reportedly considering a bid, through its Apple TV+ arm, for the Premier League rights in the U.K.
Such a move would be huge for the Premier League. The value of the domestic rights package has stagnated at around $5 billion over recent years, with Sky holding the majority of the rights from BT and Amazon.
Some argue that there is still room for growth, and the presence of competition for the rights would undoubtedly increase the value of the overall package.
Furthermore, Apple knows that it would need to pay a premium above the market rate to convince teams to abandon the tried and tested cable TV for an untested streaming service with a much smaller audience.
If Apple does make the move, Premier League teams could see their TV income drastically increase, a prospect that will be enticing for INEOS and other potential bidders for Man United.
⛷ Not that United are just sitting around and waiting for new owners to fall into their laps.
The Premier League side recently unveiled a temporary storefront in the Swiss town of Davos, that will exist for the entirety of the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos meeting (which ends today.)
So, what is the purpose of this pop-up shop? To sell Bruno Fernandes bobbleheads to random billionaires?
Not exactly, the annual Davos meeting of the WEF sees 3,000 of the wealthiest and most important people from business and politics descend on the town of Davos for networking and debates.
Man United claim that their shop is there simply to discuss new commercial partnerships with the biggest names in business.
That being said, a bunch of billionaires stuck in a small Swiss town sounds like the perfect opportunity to fish for potential new owners.
🇸🇦 Who watched the friendly between Messi’s PSG and Ronaldo’s Riyadh 11?
Hopefully, a lot of you, because it must have been one of the most expensive friendlies of all time.
It’s not just the salaries of the players that drove up the cost, PSG reportedly received around €10 million for their participation.
Some of this cost will have been earned back through ticket sales, with 2 million people requesting tickets before the game. VIP tickets also brought in some extra revenues, with one Saudi businessman paying around $2 million for a ‘golden ticket’ which reportedly gave him access to the team dressing rooms.
🏟 PSG will be thankful for the extra money, after news came out that the club could be forced to look for a new stadium.
PSG’s Qatari owners had initially planned on purchasing their current Parc de Prince home, which is owned by the Paris City Government, before investing more than $500 million in refurbishing it.
PSG are insisting that they own the ground before putting any more money into it, a plan that the mayor of Paris has rejected.
PSG are therefore looking at other options. One is the purchase of the government-owned Stade de France or the development of empty land nearby.
What is clear is that PSG are determined the make more money from ticket sales and want to follow in the footsteps of Tottenham who have doubled ticket revenues with their upgraded stadium.
🎥 We end this week’s newsletter with some of the weirdest things we found on social media.
We start with this absolutely surreal clip from the BBC’s coverage of Liverpool vs Wolves in the FA Cup.
It was later revealed that a YouTube prankster had gained access to the studio before the match and taped a phone to the set which he then called and fed with some ‘interesting noises.’
That wasn’t the only weird thing to happen in that game. Moments into the start of the Wolves vs Liverpool game, the stadium suffered a power cut which cut the lights for a few seconds and interrupted a Wolves attack.
All of this just goes to show how good organization is key when it comes to major sports. Much like Rafael Nadal. He is notorious for having a specific system for how he uses his equipment during a game.
Just ask this ballboy…
The Biggest Sports Company You Have Never Heard Of 😲
David Walsh of the Sunday Times wrote a great article a while back on the 'Ineos Curse' and how Ratcliffe's investments turned sports teams from winners into losers.
He described how Ratcliffe has realised that he has more money than he could possibly spend in his lifetime and has decided to spend as much as he can on sports teams.
For all the money he has invested in sports teams, they have very little success to show for it. From the America's Cup, to the Tour de France, to the All Black's, no sport or team has avoided the curse!
Will Man Utd be victims of the same curse?
Worth a read and maybe a video 🤔