Glazer: Not bad for a kid watch salesman

Posted May 28, 2009 by Tom McEwen

Updated May 29, 2009 at 07:37 AM

Most were apprehensive when Malcolm Glazer bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, as were followers of Manchester United when he bought that English Premier League team. Most felt he was a money man simply out to make more.

And, well, he was, but Manchester U was a rock of a soccer (football) power. He was buying a champ. He was. But Glazer, a financial wizard, does his homework. Manchester U was where it ought to be, could be fixed pretty easily. Tampa wasn’t. When he bought the Bucs, he was buying a National Football League team to put wherever it would take to buy it.

At the time, he thought Baltimore was the right place, and said so at the sales meeting here. He intended to do that, which was the reason he was outbidding George Steinbrenner at nearly $200 million. But wait, Tampa Mayor Dick Greco said, hold up. We’ll build you a new stadium, too.

Now, Glazer and his family are so glad they did. They also have a lot of land around it out on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near what became new Raymond James Stadium, where he and his family have all the Buc facilities and will have much more on an extensive piece of prime property.

Sons Joel and Bryan Glazer are Tampa residents (Harbour Island) and the family is settled in, despite a Malcolm illness that has slowed him a bit (but only a bit). He kept his mansion in Palm Beach, where singer Rod Stewart also resides. Glazer’s team has won a Super Bowl, and I guarantee you he told his coaching staff he wants another very quickly. 

Meanwhile, that other Glazer franchise, Manchester United, was there before us all Thursday on ESPN from Rome, playing hard but not hard enough to win the European Champions League title. Barcelona played better, played harder, played more skillfully for a 2-0 victory over Glazer United. Oh, yes, his money dealing that bought United for 660 million pounds a few years ago angered old hand Uniteds then, too.

Glazer and his family were not manor-born, either. But, as Glazer did here, he was not rash. He did not make sweeping changes, did not fire Sir Alex Ferguson, the veteran coach, but kept him. Ferguson served Glazer well, as did his football men, but, well, then there is the shutout by Barcelona and the loss after the drive to the Champions League title. The anxious may hit the streets again to demonstrate. Won’t rattle Glazer or his kids, Bryan, Joel, Darcie, and all the others.

Glazer’s got a wry — or cover-up — smile about him, which I am sure he’ll wear when Coach Ferguson and the others on sidelines or on the pitch come to see him and explain. He was not handed his money and told to make more. He was out early on the streets, selling watches, or, about anything else. On our first meeting at old Malio’s, I asked Mr. Glazer if he ever, and I took my right hand and opened my coat, asking, “Do you want to buy a watch?” to which he responded with both hands sweeping back both sides of his coat and asking, “You wanna buy a watch?”

“From 8 years old he was earning money,” a sister told the New Yorker. “He was like a machine.” He bought land, sold it, bought shopping malls, Houlihan’s, an oil company named Zapata, Harley-Davidsons, the Bucs - and when Tampa said don’t take them to Baltimore, he said, build it and I will stay. He did. He’s here. He’s part-Tampan. Joel and Bryan Glazer may be all-Tampans, by now.

And this American success story with the Bucs is an English success story with Manchester United. He’s owned the Bucs over a decade, and in 2005 purchased Manchester for a billion-and-a-half dollars, the most money ever put up for a franchise in England. And he was jeered there when he did. Not now.

He kept this team’s great corps with Coach Ferguson, redid Old Trafford, and is operating in a pro sports atmosphere so different from America. In England, in the Premier League, unregulated is the byword. There is no salary cap, players are freely traded, league administrators have no say over who buys and sells teams.

Now, with the economy as it is, salaries are down and some are cuffing fees for fans, but not all. Manchester will, a modest $1.6 a game. But costs may go down if smaller squads are in vogue. But the revenue is there with television money on the upturn.

The truth is, the man who opened his coat on a corner, the son of a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, the man who started with zero isn’t dealing in zeroes anymore, except those which have numerals in front of them.

Shalom!