Thursday Night's, Channel Five - And The Hotel Owners Hopping Mad

There was a lot of bluster and nonsense surrounding Manchester United’s Champions league exit. A lot of people said some pretty stupid things.

It was “embarrassing” said Patrice Evra. It was a “penalty” according to Sir Alex Ferguson. And the headline writers went into overdrive.

And in fairness to Evra, the players probably should feel embarrassed, they are highly paid and excellent footballers and ones who should have managed to qualify from the group in which they found themselves.

You have to have less sympathy with Sir Alex, as his comments were a little bit ridiculous and met with short shrift from UEFA president Michel Platini who said: 'The world does not revolve around England, I like England a lot, it's football is fantastic, it's supporters are wonderful but you shouldn't criticise the Europa League just because you've played in three Champions League finals.”

But one fact that came out of all fluff and conjecture did make us take notice it is that Manchester United stand to lose around £20m in TV money as a result of their dismissal from the group.

That £20m is before, you suspect, the lost ticket revenue, the prize money the programmes, the shirts, the merchandise is taken into account – in short it is a big loss.

Dan Roan, Sports News Correspondent at the BBC paints a bleak picture, on his blog he wrote: "Given the interest repayments United have to pay each year to service their vast debt, an exit from the Champions League is highly damaging. Being condemned to what many fans will see as the Thursday night purgatory of the Europa League is an embarrassment for a club of such ambition. The defeat also raises serious questions about the Glazers' ownership and will intensify the pressure on them to invest in a blockbuster midfield signing.”

Now, that might just be hype, but whatever financial pressures are, it is quite clear it is a situation that would have been best avoided, and one which has wider implications than might have been first imagined.

It is not just the football club’s that are worried about lost revenue. The City of Manchester itself relies on football income to help its tourist industry – an industry that is worth £5.4bn annually, or to put it another way, the equivalent of 75,000 full time jobs.

The previous occasion when Manchester United didn’t qualify for the latter stages of the Champions League was back in 2005-6 and according to the Chair of the Manchester Hoteliers Association there was a marked drop off in hotel bookings in that period, of course this year there is the fall back – for both United and City – of playing on the Europa League, but are those games as attractive?

The average champions league visitor, it seems would spend on average £776 on their visit to the city and that is revenue that might be missed out on. Depending, of course on how seriously the two clubs take the competition.

So it seems that whilst the Manchester teams are smarting at the results last week, it is the City of Manchester as a whole that may have to pay the “Penalty.”

Welcome to Channel Five on a Thursday night – its not that bad, you know.