The pandemic has kept fans out of Premier League soccer games all year, but the fan base’s fury toward the team’s owners hit a breaking point on Sunday.

With frustration over the attempt of 12 high-revenue soccer teams, including six in England, to form a Super League tournament fresh on everyone’s minds, fans poured into Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium, setting off flares, and calling for the team to be sold.

Protestors are demanding for the Glazer family to sell Manchester United. The Glazers own the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers as well as malls and other commercial properties across the U.S. through its First Allied Corporation.

The protest canceled a match against Liverpool, who also faced recent protests, as have Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham. 

Liverpool is now partially owned by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, who bought into the Fenway Sports Group in March. Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek is putting together a bid for Arsenal.

Anger has been simmering against the Glazers since they bought the team for $1.1 billion in 2005, especially since 2013, the last time the team won the Premier League.

The Glazers borrowed heavily to purchase the team, and then transferred that debt to the club’s books. The team still carries $629 million in debt from the 16 year-old transaction.

The Glazers are apparently willing to sell, if someone meets their ask of $5.6 billion. Forbes valued the team at $4.2 billion in April. Manchester United weathered the pandemic well, with revenue rising 2.6% in the last quarter of 2020, due to tremendous growth in broadcasting revenue.

As Elon Musk prepares to host “Saturday Night Live” this week, the company whose board he joined in March just went public.

Endeavor, owner of the UFC, hit the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday through an initial public offering. 

In addition to UFC, Endeavor owns the Hollywood agency WME and modeling agency IMG. Its CEO, Ari Emanuel, was the inspiration for Ari Gold on HBO’s Entourage. 

UFC restarted competitions soon after the initial lockdowns in 2020 and hosted a full-capacity, indoor fight night last month. UFC president Dana White has been vocal about getting back to “normal.”

Endeavor, which currently owns 50.1% of UFC, plans to buy the rest of it, according to SEC filings.

The stock surged after its initial open, and has attracted the attention of the WallStreetBets Reddit forum — famous for its leading role in driving up the price of GameStop earlier this year. By close of business on Friday, Endeavor stock had risen 15% from its opening price of $24 to $27.56.

The company brought in more than $500 million through the IPO, and raised another $1.7 billion through a separate private placement. The company lost $625 million last year due to the pandemic despite $3.5 billion in revenue. 

Endeavor almost went public in 2019, but pulled back due to limited interest at the time.

The company will likely be opportunistic with future acquisitions, eyeing events, media, and marketing companies.

With supply reduced, tickets to a baseball game can run up to $220 or even higher — but even at that price, you could get 10 million tickets for what it would cost to start a new team.

Speaking at a SporticoLive online discussion, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred floated a price tag of $2.2 billion as the cost of admission into the league. That’s about 17 times the $130 million the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays paid to join in 1998.

And that number is simply the entry fee. It doesn’t include stadium costs, player salaries, or any other expenses associated with running a team.

Manfred cited the need to offset the dilution of revenue sharing from adding teams to the league as a big reason for the hefty price tag, as well as the expected value of a franchise.

Anyone hoping to own an MLB team might want to look and see if any existing ones are on the market first.

• Steve Cohen paid $2.4 billion for the New York Mets, baseball’s sixth-most valuable team, per Forbes, in November.
• The median team in Forbes’ valuations, the Toronto Blue Jays, was worth $1.68 billion.

The league is expected to add two teams at some point, though Manfred has said that won’t happen until the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays, the 26th- and 29th-most valuable teams, have new stadiums. The price tag for the A’s new ballpark comes in at $12 billion.

Charlotte, Las Vegas, Nashville, Portland, and Montreal, which lost the Expos in 2004, are oft-named candidates for a new team, when the time comes.

What are the most popular sports in the U.S.?

For now, the answer remains the “big four” of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, in that order, but look at Gen Z (ages 6-24) and a different picture emerges.

The youngest of the four demographic groups studied by analytics firm Two Circles has the most sports fans — 34 million — and preferences that stand out from its predecessors. 

Football was still the most popular sport at 47.5% interest among Gen Z sports fans, edging out basketball at 44%. 

The next two sports on the Gen Z list: soccer and boxing.

At 32.2% interest among sports fans aged 6 to 24, boxing surpassed baseball (30.8%) for fourth place. 

The surge in interest in soccer comes at an opportune time for up-and-coming leagues like the National Women’s Soccer League, which has attracted investors such as Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, and Mia Hamm.

Data seen exclusively by Front Office Sports shows other key differences in the Gen Z profile.

• Gen-Z has broader sports interests than previous generations. Its 10th-favorite sport, esports, is more popular with Gen Z than every other generation’s fourth-favorite sport, hockey.
• Hockey is not among the top 10 most popular sports for Gen Z.
• MMA is the generation’s sixth-most popular sport, followed by three common high school sports: track and field, volleyball, and wrestling.

The youngest generation also prefers bite-sized sports consumption rather than sitting through lengthy contests, which may be why Facebook patented technology that generates game recaps.