Manchester United confirm new 100,000-seat stadium will add to club's £1.3bn debt

Manchester United have acknowledged that building a new 100,000-seat stadium will deepen the club’s existing £1.3 billion debt, with stadium development CEO Collette Roche insisting the project will ultimately generate enough revenue to justify the borrowing.

The club moved closer to realising the project on Thursday after confirming the new ground will be built on land 350 metres from the current Old Trafford site, as part of a broader regeneration of the surrounding area. United say all funding options remain on the table — including debt, equity, outside investment, and share sales — and Roche revealed there had already been “a lot of approaches” from parties keen to be involved.

Roche urged supporters not to become “over-obsessed” with the debt question, arguing that a stadium of this scale would pay for itself over time. “Through building a stadium of 100,000 seats, where it’s football first, and we deliver all our matches, but then in and around the matches, we do other stuff — people come, they stay for longer, we’ll have other facilities, other experiences. That’s going to generate a lot more revenue,” she said.

“The revenue that’s going to be generated — that’ll go back into the club, that goes back into the team, that goes back into growing our football. Whilst we can get over-obsessed with debt and borrowing, there’s no stadium, I don’t think, where you would not have some form of borrowing. We just need to make sure it’s sensible and that it generates income and doesn’t distract from what we’re here for, which is winning competitions, winning trophies, winning matches.”

The precise cost of the project remains uncertain. United have stepped back from the £2 billion estimate offered by chief executive Omar Berrada in March last year, citing volatility in the global economy. Roche acknowledged the difficulty of pinning down a figure for a stadium unlike anything previously built. “That is the £2 billion question, isn’t it really? We don’t know, is the answer,” she said, pointing out that no comparable stadium — at this size, at this stage of planning — exists as a reliable benchmark.

Roche was keen to frame the project as a practical necessity rather than an act of ambition for its own sake. “We’ve been really clear from the onset this needs to be a sanity project, not a vanity project,” she said. United’s current debt of £1.3 billion already ranks among the highest carried by any club in European football, making the funding structure for the new stadium one of the most consequential decisions in the club’s recent history.