Purchase has a price

Russian petroleum oligarch Roman Abramovich received a warm welcome when he invested hundreds of millions of pounds into the soccer club Chelsea. Abramovich attends nearly every Chelsea match, and his money helped the club finish in first place in England's Premier Division this year for the first time since 1955.

Malcolm Glazer's approach to taking control of Manchester United has not been as smooth. Glazer, who initiated his bid in 2003, has completed the takeover, acquiring the 28.7 percent stake of two former stockholders, Irish racehorse millionaires John Magnier and J.P. McManus, last week, and yesterday reaching the 75 percent of shares necessary for majority control. Glazer's hostile takeover concluded with an offer of 300 pence for all outstanding shares, putting the club's value at 790.3 million pounds ($1.46 billion).

But Glazer is not welcome by many Manchester United supporters at Old Trafford, the club's 76,000-seat home stadium. Glazer, who owns the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is meeting strong resistance from a vocal, well-organized segment of fans.

"The feeling is they are going to make life very unpleasant for the new owners," said John Williams, director of the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research at Leicester University. ''He may think he can make a more efficient profit at this club, but will he be able to show his face at the stadium? And, how are sponsors going to respond to possible demonstrations and picketing?

"United fans are very angry, partly at the way this was done. In the end, who owns the club is something the fans get used to. But what was done reads and feels like real arrogance. Glazer has said very little about the team and his ambitions for the club. It has been approached crudely, as a business proposition, and he has done nothing to recognize the cultural significance of the club. There has been no attempt to woo fans or get them on his side."

Manchester United has emerged among the world's most popular teams, with an estimated 53 million supporters worldwide, challenged by Flamengo of Brazil and Real Madrid of Spain, and is the most profitable of European clubs, with a net profit listed at 171 million pounds last year.

United is in third place this season, having been eclipsed in the league by London clubs Chelsea and Arsenal, and in the Champions League competition by Liverpool, which will meet Milan in the final next Wednesday. But United remains the most marketable of British clubs.

"The question is, how long can fans keep up the hostility?" Williams said. "Now we are into the postseason, after the FA Cup final [Manchester United vs. Arsenal], and people's anger diminishes as time goes on, especially if they see there are not going to be that many changes at the club.

"But the other thing that is important is the peculiar mythology of Manchester United. Ownership is not just a material thing, it's a symbolic thing."

Glazer apparently acted on the advice of sons Avi and Joel, who are expected to become involved in decision-making for the club. But Manchester United supporters are suspicious partly because of Glazer's financing methods. Manchester United is debt-free, but Glazer is having to borrow against the asset to complete the deal. The expectation is that he will then raise ticket prices, though he could also raise capital through global marketing and television rights.

"Manchester United is massively oversubscribed for every game, so they are not reaching market saturation as far as pricing," Williams said. "They have kept ticket prices quite low, and that's important, too. They have ridden this different horse; on one hand, they are a global club, and they are also a cultural institution. The new owner has to realize the importance of that.

"The club has never been owned by the fans, really, but this feels like naked business, where the [owners] don't understand anything about what it means to fans. And these are organized fans, not just a kind of blunt group of working-class fans with no organizational skills. These are professionals -- lawyers, accountants, solicitors, upwardly mobile working-class people who use these skills in their own jobs.

"My guess is that [Glazer] underestimates the level and nature of opposition of the fan base. He thinks this is like a US sport, where you buy and move the team, fans protest and it looks nasty, but it blows over."