PAY TV

'I would imagine Manchester United has more or less reached its full potential within the UK market,' said Joe McLean, football specialist and partner at accountancy giants Grant Thornton.

'Obviously, they will be able to generate more in gate receipts from the impending stadium expansion but there is a limit to the number of shirts and other merchandise you can sell within your home market.”

'Presumably, what Glazer is looking towards is major expansion in the Far East and the United States and there is a serious possibility he could be right”.

'Around the world there are around 250 million people who have heard about, or expressed some interest in Manchester United. That figure alone suggests there is an untapped market, the question is how do you get into it.

'Undoubtedly, pay-TV is one of the answers.'

Currently, the Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is responsible for negotiating both domestic and overseas contracts, with each member club receiving a proportion of the income.

For the domestic deals with BSkyB and BBC, 50 per cent of the revenue is allocated equally to each club, 25 per cent is paid out in `facility fees' to clubs appearing on TV, with the remaining 25 per cent divided up into merit payments for league position.

However, the entire sum generated from the overseas contracts is divided into five per cent chunks for each club, and it is this area McLean believes Glazer will be most interested in.

'The Premier League already has a problem in that the European Commission will not sanction a similar TV deal to the one currently in place,' he said. 'That is almost certain to mean a drop in revenue which the big clubs are hardly likely to willingly accept because they are trying to compete against major rivals across Europe.

'So, if he is ruling out things like sale and lease-back of the stadium, that may be an area Glazer is looking at.'

The obvious problem for Glazer is that he would require another 13 like-minded clubs to side with him in order to scrap the collective agreement, which seems unlikely given United are still the most glamorous and popular club in the Premier League, ensuring most of the remainder receive more cash than they could hope to collect on their own.

If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner has thought of a way round this tricky problem, he hasn't made it public.