by: Alan Snel and Gary Haber
In little more than a week, Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer and his sons gained control of the world’s most valuable sports franchise – England’s legendary Manchester United soccer team – and then helped persuade their fellow National Football League owners to pick Tampa over three other cities as the site of the 2009 Super Bowl.
Even as they worked on those deals, their chief business enterprise, a vast shopping center and apartment empire in 26 states, continued to gain value as the real estate market remains red hot.
Nothing, it seems, can go wrong for the Glazers. They play high-stakes poker and come up aces – a lot lately.
Despite the world of big money and big deals they live in, the Glazers eschew the limelight, rarely granting even the briefest of interviews. They are the antithesis of the Trump and Steinbrenner in-your-face approach to business.
As a result, the Glazers have taken it on the chin from the media and public for that reclusive bent. But that private approach to business, in the end, has served them very well, say those who know them and outside experts.
The keys to the Glazers’ below-the-radar business strategy, say experts: They are deliberate, strategic and secretive…
…”Many people thought it was a long shot for Glazer – or any American – to buy a controlling stake in an English soccer team,” said Sal Galatioto, president of Galatioto Sports Partners, a sports advisory firm in New York. “His ability to close the Man U deal was masterful. I don’t think you could describe it any other way.”