Rafael Zielinski

Örebro, 7th of October
1. How do you evaluate the international competitiveness of ManUtd after the takeover by Malcolm Glazer?
After Malcom Glazer invested 1.4$ billion in Manchester United he had to create new strategies and face some challenges. To be sucessful Manchester United had to raise their profit, because of the globalization. Football clubs are not only sport teams, but they are quite normal companies. They had to go with the time and charge with their global brand the whole world. So they went global and attack the asian market in form of creating a Mandarin (most known language in the world) website, making Asia tours with some friendly games and establish a football school in Hong Kong. By the way they had another benefit. From 2005 to 2012 the player Park, Ji-Sung was playing for them who was treated like a hero in Asia and especially in Korea. Moreover Glazer changed the financial thinking of the club by cutting costs in many non-profit-making sectors e.g. many players were lending to other clubs or by cutting executives. Second he raised the revenue in form of raised ticket prices and good sponsorship. The interest in ManU and the global brand of the „Red Devils“ grew. This can be seen in the better getting sponsorship which led to raising revenues every year. All in all Malcolm Glazer had to go through fire with his aggresive strategies, because many fans were against him, but in the end he was succesful and developed Manchester United finally to a global company.

2. Discuss and explain how the different alliances can increase the international competitiveness of ManUtd.
Alliances or joint ventures make only sense for two or more firms when they can extract advantages from it. There are several reasons why companies want a share of the cake of the sucess of Manchester United. First of all global companies can get space for