Manchester United abandons negotiations with Amazon Prime to make a documentary filming plan of 10 million

The Athletic ace reporter David Ornstein exclusively reported that due to opposition from head coach Ruben Amorin, Manchester United club gave up on plans to negotiate with Amazon Prime to shoot a documentary.

reported that Manchester United has withdrawn from negotiations with Amazon. The documentary was originally planned to show the club's internal operations in a "panoramic" way next season, and will break Amazon's paid record, becoming the highest bid for the club.

People familiar with the matter revealed that Manchester United had negotiated with Amazon for several months as early as the end of the 2024-25 season. Amazon's offer of more than £10 million to Manchester United will be the largest payment in the history of its "slap-all-or-nothing" documentary series.

Manchester City, Arsenal and Tottenham have worked with Amazon to produce documentaries in the series in the past few years. If Manchester United agrees to cooperate, it will be the latest and largest in the "Stop-all" series.

However, Manchester United finally decided to stop the plan, mainly because of Amorin's objection, who believes the program may interfere with the normal development of the first team. In addition, some commercial terms and urgent timing are also factors of abandonment.

As we all know, Manchester United is facing severe financial pressure: the club's debt exceeds 700 million pounds and will also miss the European game next season. Sir Ratcliffe said in March that if costs are not cut, Manchester United could go bankrupt before Christmas.

Manchester United's commercial revenue has also been hit. Tezos, a blockchain platform with a sponsorship fee of 24 million pounds in the previous year, will no longer renew the training service sponsorship agreement; Marriott International Hotel Group also announced that it will not renew the contract, which means that Manchester United will lose two important business partners in a row in the short term. Manchester United did not hide its need to raise funds. After the season ended at the end of May, they went to Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong to play two complaining tours, just to earn £8 million in appearance fees.

This Amazon shooting proposal will bring £10 million in revenue, so the club's business team, including Inex Group and CEO Omar Berrada, support the promotion of the project.

But when the club solicited comments from Amorin, the Manchester United coach made it clear that he believed that this program was not suitable and did not benefit the first team. This will only become a distraction "unwanted distraction", and Manchester United's problems in recent years have become complicated enough to be overwhelmed.

At the same time, any such related documentary requires the consent of the players, and Amazon will have nearly unlimited access. Without Amorin's support to convince the players, it would be almost impossible.

After hearing Amorin's feedback, the Executive Committee of the Manchester United Board of Directors unanimously recommended that the project be abandoned. This reflects that Amorin's opinion still has weight in the club, and even though the team is at a low point, the senior executives still choose to support the coach.

More than Amazon came to Manchester United to shoot documentaries. In April last year, Disney also negotiated a multi-million dollar agreement with Manchester United, and initially decided to shoot a documentary from the Sir Ferguson era.

The documentary was originally scheduled to focus on the golden age of Florence's 26 years of coaching Manchester United. It includes a large number of interviews with Sir Jay. Manchester United will provide club precious archives and interviews with some former players, and invite club ambassadors such as former Manchester United captain Brian Robson and goalkeeper Schmeichel to participate in the story.

However, the project requires the approval of Freud and his old subordinates, but the documentary project has been unlimitedly shelved as Manchester United canceled Freud's millions of pounds of annual ambassador contract to save money late last year.