Manchester United crisis is just the beginning? Ratcliffe s £2.2 billion sports empire is enmeshed

Sir Jim Ratcliffe promised a new dawn for Manchester United.

However, more than a year has passed, and the club has received its worst Premier League rankings and worst domestic season performance since its relegation in 1974 - and has also laid off up to 450 employees.

If Manchester United beat Tottenham in the Europa League final next week, the situation may be reversed, not only qualifying for the Champions League, but also adding glory to the grand plans recently announced by Ratcliffe and his Ineos.

Manchester United is just part of Ratcliff's sports empire worth more than £2.2 billion, a once-looking powerful empire is now beginning to show rifts. "The Sun" sports reporter Martin Lipton takes you to take a look at the current status of Sir Ratcliff's sports investment...

Club Football: From Lausanne to Nice, and then to Manchester United

Manchester United will usher in the worst results in Premier League history

Before Manchester United, Ratcliff already owned the Lausanne Club in Switzerland and Nice of France.

In 2017, Inex announced the acquisition of the Lausanne Club, saying the move was part of the company's "continuous investment in local youth training and community sports." They promised to "full support" coach Fabio Cellestini - but the promise lasted only six months before the team was relegated.

Under the control of Inelis, Lausanne has always been the lift team. But it is now away from the relegation zone, and the Tuiyer Stadium game is steadily launched in 2020, which can accommodate 13,000 people.

Two years later, Ineos acquired Ligue 1 team Nice for £89 million. "We made some mistakes in Lausanne, but we learned very quickly. These problems have been solved and we have seen results," Ratcliffe said. When Inelos took over, the coach was Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira, but he was fired 15 months later. After that, four formal coaches took office and were dismissed one after another. Currently coaching is Frank Hayes, who has completed his first season and is expected to lead the team to refresh the best result of the Inez era - fifth in the league.

Despite not winning a single Europa League, Nice ranked fourth in Ligue 1 with only one last game left. They scored 57 points with the other two teams, and the worst was likely to fall to seventh. But as long as you beat Brest at home this Saturday, you can basically ensure that you qualify for the Champions League qualifiers.

However, due to UEFA's restrictions on ownership of multiple clubs, Ratcliff had to transfer most of Nice shares to the trust after acquiring Manchester United last summer.

"They are better without us."

Nice has achieved great success in the Ligue 1

Ratcliff admitted in March this year: "Nice's season is the best season, and that's precisely because we can't participate in management. They play better than us! Maybe that means something."

When Ratcliff confirmed to acquire more than a quarter of Manchester United's shares from the Glazer family, he promised to lead the Red Devils back to their peak, saying: "It may take two to three years." Now it seems that this estimate is too conservative. The sack of Tenghach should have been done long ago, but it was a costly embarrassment to spend £3 million to introduce sporting director Dan Ashworth from Newcastle and dismiss him in just five months. Although Ratcliff publicly supported Ruben Amorin as head coach, he also criticized some of Manchester United's players.

Recently, he announced the ambitious "New and Old Trafford" plan: a new stadium with a capacity of 100,000 people next to Old Trafford, as the core of the entire development.

Formula One (F1)

As Ineos' financial situation is under strict scrutiny, it is rumored that Ratcliff may leave Mercedes

Inelos signed a five-year cooperation agreement in 2020 to become the "main partner" of Mercedes F1 team, worth a total of £100 million. At the end of that year, Ineos invested one-third of the shares.

In the first two years of cooperation, Mercedes won the team championship in a row, achieving eight consecutive championships; Hamilton won the 2020 driver's championship, only losing to Verstappen in the last lap of 2021.

However, since then, Mercedes' dominance has disappeared, and Hamilton has switched to Ferrari this season. Although George Russell is still a favorite to win the championship, his racing performance is currently behind McLaren's Norris and Piastri, and Red Bull's Verstappen.

It is reported that Ratcliff may withdraw from F1 due to financial pressure in Inex. But team leader Toto Wolf responded: "The three of us - Mercedes, Jim and I - are the 'Three Musketeers' who will never be separated." In 2021, Ineos became the "high-performance partner" of the New Zealand rugby team "All Blacks", signing a six-year agreement worth £4 million per year.

However, the cooperation has reached a deadlock. In February this year, the New Zealand Rugby League launched a legal lawsuit accusing Inex of “breach of contract” - the reason was that Inex failed to pay the first sponsorship fee in 2025 and officially notified it would withdraw from the cooperation. The New Zealand rugby team filed a lawsuit accusing it of "breach of contract"

Inelis explained that Europe's rising carbon tax has made the chemical industry "extremely difficult to operate" and the company is under economic pressure.

Ratcliffe complained in March: "We communicated with New Zealand rugby through real difficulties, hoping to reach some kind of compromise - as long-term sponsors, they should have listened to us, but they are completely reluctant to listen."

Currently, the All Blacks are in the second place in the world rankings..

Bike

Led by Sir Dave Brasford, Team Sky was once the ruler of the world's road cycling, with several Tour de France champions such as Froome, Wiggins and Thomas.

In 2019, the team was renamed "Team Ineos" and the following year was renamed "Ineos Grenadiers". The company promised to continue to offer a budget of even more than £34 million a year.

Ineos provides 40 million pounds annually to the cycling team

Colombian Egan Bernard won the seventh Tour de France championship for Ineos in 2019. But since then, the team has not been the champion of the event.

Currently, Inex still provides a £40 million budget for fleets each year, but is also approaching another petrochemical giant, TotalEnergies, to finalize a multi-million-pound cooperation agreement. In 2018, Olympic sailing legend Sir Ben Ansley and Royal Yacht Association president Jamie Sheldon jointly announced the establishment of the Ineos Team UK with the goal of winning the Americas Cup Race.

In 2021, the team reached the finals in the "Prada Cup" qualifiers, but lost to Italy's Luna Rossa. The latter was easily defeated by defending champion New Zealand.

Inelis invested more than 110 million pounds and changed the team name to "Ineos Britannia" to continue to compete in the 2024 Copa America.

In this event, the British team joined another Olympic champion, Dylan Fletcher, and drove a catamaran with Ainsley, and finally reached the final in the competition held in Barcelona waters. But they lost again, losing 2-7 to the New Zealand fleet.

In January this year, Inex announced that it would launch its third challenge - this time no longer being participated by Ainsley. In January this year, Inex announced its third challenge - but Ainsley no longer participated in it, Ratcliffe explained: "I wanted to do my own thing, and that's fine." But Ainsley responded that he retained his qualification as a "Challenger of Record" and had the right to obtain information that other competitors could not get.

Ainsley's team called Ineos' move "shocking" and said it "had serious legal and practical problems." In 2019, Kenyan long-distance running legend Erud Kipchoger completed a feat of breaking the limit of a two-hour marathon, and this "INEOS 1:59 Challenge" was fully funded by Ratcliff.

In 2022, Inex signed an agreement to become the "performance partner" of Eliud Kipchoge's NN running team

He ran 1 hour, 59 minutes, 40 seconds 2 in Vienna, becoming the first marathon runner to run for two hours. Although this result has not been identified as an official world record (due to non-public events, speedmen use, etc.), it is still recorded in the history of sports.

Then in 2022, Ineos signed a cooperation agreement with the Dutch NN long-distance running team where Kipchoger is located to become a "high-performance partner".