Manchester United picks NYSE for IPO

Iconic soccer team, UK's Manchester United has picked the New York Stock Exchange to make its stock market debut with its IPO, ending months of speculation over where the world's best-supported soccer club would list.

After first eyeing a Hong Kong IPO, the former English Premier League champions had planned a $1 billion listing in Singapore in the second half of last year before putting plans on hold because of market turmoil.

The U.S.-owned club filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of its Class A ordinary shares in New York.

In the United States, the amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Thomson Reuters publication IFR reported last month that the club, which has been English champions a record 19 times and features players such as England's Wayne Rooney, had dropped its plans for an Asian listing in favour of a U.S. listing.

The company filing for a much lower amount than $1 billion originally expected does not come as much of a surprise, said Josef Schuster, founder of Chicago-based financial services firm IPOX Schuster LLC.

The smaller the float, the higher the relative valuation can be...This may just be a strategy initially to make it appear like a low float IPO, Schuster said. Traders may believe if the deal is very low, then the company can pop at the opening.

GLOBAL FAN BASE

Manchester United has a global fan base of 659 million, according to a survey commissioned by the club and carried out last year by market researcher Kantar. Almost half of United's supporters were in the Asia-Pacific region.

It remains to be seen how much the football club is going to benefit in the U.S. where the sport is not very popular ... The perfect place for it to have listed should have been London, Jay Ritter, a University of Florida IPO expert told Reuters.

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