Tall blue cranes poke out from a construction site, manned by workers with helmets and fluorescent jackets, behind the Sir Ralph Abercromby in Manchester city centre.
On the outside of the 19th-century public house, “All Sky Sports available” is written in gold cursive letters. Inside, tucked away in the corner, is a room dedicated to Manchester United. It includes a picture of the 2014 squad entering the pub for their Christmas party, a signed Eric Cantona shirt and a framed picture of David Beckham.
Behind the pub is a 1.6-acre (0.6-hectare) site flanked by Jackson’s Row to the north, Bootle Street to the south and Southmill Street to the east. The area used to house Bootle Street police station, Manchester Reform Synagogue and car parking space. Now, after an initial backlash and reworked plans, it is the home to St Michael’s, a mixed-use development over 15 years in the making, and worth an estimated £400million ($499m). It is the largest project yet for Relentless Developments, a company majority-owned by Gary Neville.
Neville also co-owns two hotels, a university, a production company and a League Two football club, Salford City, all based in Greater Manchester. He is invested emotionally and financially in the area he grew up in and in which he still resides.
“It feels a bit w***erish to say I’m an entrepreneur,” Neville told Stephen Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast in 2022. He tried it. “‘Gary Neville, CEO and entrepreneur’. No! It makes my skin crawl.”
Despite not feeling comfortable with that title, the former England and Manchester United defender has built a large business empire. He is a director of 53 UK companies and has held 80 directorships in total. He invested in two businesses during his guest appearance on the British reality television business programme Dragon’s Den last year. Even when talking about football, the 49-year-old’s entrepreneurial brain is ticking. For example, last week’s episode of The Overlap’s Stick to Football podcast started with Neville providing a free advert for a young Irishman’s football shirt business.
On top of all his own entrepreneurial activity, he is also an erudite pundit on Sky Sports and recently won the 2024 Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) TV/Radio Pundit of the Year award.
Some of Neville’s uber-famous peers, such as Beckham and Gerard Pique, have used their notoriety and business acumen to become real players in the sports industry. Others have gone into football management, media, ambassadorial work and/or property but Neville seems to have done everything, everywhere all at once.
Relentless by name, relentless by nature. To say he is “busy”, as former England team-mate Joe Cole once described him, is an understatement. Neville has always been humble about his playing career, instead pointing to the talent of those around him, from Cantona to Beckham and many others in between. But he took pride in never leaving a stone unturned, repeatedly practising throw-ins against a gymnasium wall or perfecting his crossing. He consistently turned up and it is how he has lived his life ever since. Neville turns 50 on Tuesday and there is no sign of slowing down.
Neville launched his first company, Gary Neville Limited, with his father Neville Neville in 1996. This is not particularly unusual — players often create companies to manage their image rights. He is the sole director of that company, which now goes under the name of Tiger Sports Management and has nearly £7million in net assets.
Relentless Holdings, the investment business with nearly £5m in net assets that Neville set up in 2015 with his wife Emma, is the parent company of Tiger Sports Management and many of his other businesses, including Relentless Investments and Relentless Developments.
His relentless approach to life, from football to business, was ingrained at a young age from his parents and their parents. His dad’s mantra was “attack the day”. The lorry driver used to wake at the crack of dawn and complete his deliveries before embarking on other projects such as Bury Football Club, where he became director, or Lancashire County Cricket Club. There was a constant drive to maximise every second of every day and that has filtered down to Neville. Indeed, Neville presented the St Michael’s project at a council meeting on the morning of his father’s funeral.
At Manchester United, where he spent more than 30 years honing his craft, he was surrounded by leaders. On Diary of a CEO, he talked about the “monstrous mentalities” of Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane, who set the highest standards.
With boundless energy and ambition coupled with a quick mind and an eye for an opportunity, you can see why Neville was attracted to the business world.
Since the age of 22, Neville has had a passion for property. While still playing football, he started developing locally in Bolton, refurbishing barns and farmhouses. Just this week, he described how he had to hide this side of his life from Ferguson, who wanted his players to focus solely on football. He would be on-site in the afternoons after training, keen to soak up information.
“I love developing, contracting, designing,” he told trade publication Building in 2023.
In 1999, the year United won the treble (Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League), he bought Meadow Barn, an old farm building near Bolton and sold the refurbishment four years later. In 2008, the Bolton News reported the new owner had put the property on the market for £3.25m. In 2011, Neville also sold Alexander House in Harwood for £7.4m to the Venky’s, the family who bought Blackburn Rovers.
His first property business was Benev Enterprises, a letting business set up in 2002 with former United team-mate Ben Thornley and his father but the company was dissolved in 2011. In 2004, he bought “his own hamlet“, as described by the Manchester Evening News, Top o’th’ Knotts Farm, a Grade II-listed 18th-century farmhouse and surrounding buildings in Harwood, a village outside Bolton. Lancashire Life described the redevelopment as “award-winning” and you can still rent houses on the site today.
In 2010, Neville had planned to build a reported £8m eco-friendly property described in the media as the “Teletubbies” house because of its partial underground design. However, he abandoned the project and sold the land.
For St Michael’s, Relentless Developments co-founders Neville and Anthony Kilbride have partnered with American private equity firm KKR for phase one. For phase two, which Domis will build, they have partnered with Fred Done, who owns Betfred (one of the UK’s largest gambling companies) and is a co-owner of property developer Salboy.
In his speech at the official launch of the development, Neville asked, “Why should Manchester not have more than one five-star hotel? Why should we not have that aligned service element with the residential and commercial aspects in mixed-use developments? I wanted to raise the standards in products, services and design — that was always the aspiration for this site.”
Phase one of the project is St Michael’s office building. It will include a rooftop bar and Chotto Matte restaurant, an acclaimed Japanese-Peruvian dining experience. This stage was due to be completed last year and is set to open shortly. The offices are fully let and tenants include Channel 4 and law firms Hill Dickinson and Pinsent Masons, even before the building has been completed. It is expected to be the first fully net-zero carbon commercial development in Manchester.
Phase two is a 134.5 metre, 40-storey lozenge-shaped tower and will consist of a five-star hotel, luxury apartments, and office and retail space.
The Sir Ralph Abercromby pub stands on the corner of the St Michael’s development (The Athletic/Charlotte Harpur)
Initially, there was strong pushback against Neville’s plans, which would see a police station, synagogue and the Sir Ralph Abercromby pub demolished. The new office building has retained the stone facade of the old police station, Neville has bought and will refurbish the pub he once visited as a player and, according to information on Neville’s LinkedIn page, a new synagogue on the tower’s podium will also be built to replace the Manchester Reform Synagogue. A new public square with bars and restaurants will also be built. Manchester City Council is a partner in the scheme and states on its website that 1,800 jobs will be created. The project is expected to be completed by 2027.
Just around the corner, Relentless Developments has also redeveloped four Grade II-listed buildings, which can be rented out today.
A stone’s throw from St Michael’s on Albert Square is the registered address for his businesses, including multi-award-winning production company Buzz 16. Neville co-founded Buzz 16 in 2017 and has produced live and non-live documentaries and films such as Soccerbox and Class of ’92 Full Time. Since November 2022, however, Buzz 16 has been majority-owned by Miroma, the American marketing agency.
Out of Buzz 16 came The Overlap, a sports media platform. The Overlap’s Stick To Football won the 2024 Sports Podcast Awards prize for best football podcast and was runner-up in the British Sports Journalism Awards for television show of the year.
According to Neville’s website, the money generated from The Overlap’s YouTube channel in its first year was donated to Macmillan Cancer Support and the Alzheimer’s Society. Gary and Emma Neville also organised the Great Mancunian Ball and raised £565,980 for St Ann’s Hospice, opening the evening with a live showing of The Overlap with the show’s usual guests Jamie Carragher, Ian Wright, Jill Scott and Keane.
A 15-minute walk to the north of the city is the Stock Exchange Hotel, which is one part of GG Hospitality’s portfolio, a hospitality management company co-owned by Singapore-based Rowsley plc, Neville and former Manchester United team-mate Ryan Giggs.
The luxury boutique five-star hotel, co-owned by Neville, Giggs and hotelier Winston Zahra, opened in 2019. The aim was to create the best hotel in Manchester and raise the city’s standards of hospitality. It garnered a lot of attention when Madonna booked out the 40-room hotel while she performed in Manchester in October 2023. During the refurbishment, Neville’s website states that around 50 homeless people accessed the premises, declared squatters’ rights and stayed with the blessing of Neville and his partners. Forty of those people were later re-housed, it says.
The Athletic visited on a quiet Wednesday afternoon in January. The hotel’s restaurant Tender boasts high ceilings with plush green leather sofas, an open kitchen and a chic bar area. The dinner menu ranges from small plates such as Thai king prawns for £12 to larger plates for two, with the most expensive chateaubriand and tomahawk steaks for £100 or more. According to one waiter, Neville takes a hands-on approach, is often around, always polite and pops in for a family meal on a Sunday now and again. Small gestures — saying hello and mixing with his team — matter to him, a characteristic once again instilled from playing under Ferguson.
Inside the Tender restaurant at the Stock Exchange Hotel (The Athletic/Charlotte Harpur)
Tom Kerridge’s Bull & Bear restaurant used to be at the hotel but it closed at the end of 2022 and its replacement, The Stock Market Grill — the first restaurant venture of wine expert James Brandwood and brothers Joe and Daniel Schofield — also closed in July 2023 after only four months.
Latest accounts for the hotel, according to publicly available documents, show a pre-tax loss of £2.5m for 2023, following a loss of £1.8m the previous year. Meanwhile, the hotel’s turnover decreased from £5.1m to £3.9m during the same period.
“When compared to the competitive set in the Manchester hotel market the results for the property are extremely strong and very encouraging, with the property performing 50 per cent above similar hotels in the market,” read a board statement.
Hotel Football, Neville’s other hotel, is tailored towards a different audience. Located by the entrance to Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium, its clientele ranges from corporate guests to matchgoing fans.
Inside the hotel is Cafe Football, with prints of United’s Ruben Amorim, Andre Onana, Keane and Ella Toone lining the walls, as well as TV screens showing Sky Sports.
When The Athletic visited on one recent quiet weekday afternoon, a handful of customers tucked into their food. Breakfast for hotel guests is a busy time, as are matchdays. If Old Trafford’s Red Cafe, located at the stadium, is closed to visitors on the stadium tour, the most logical option is to pop into Cafe Football.
Hotel Football is a stone’s throw from Old Trafford (Alex Livesey – Danehouse/Getty Images)
Neville’s first hotel idea involved him, Giggs and former Burnley co-owner Brendan Flood setting up six companies in 2008, all preceded by the word Cuban. Cuban Living, Cuban Interiors, Cuban Spa, Cuban Style, Cuban Rooms and Cuban Residences. But most of the related companies were dissolved in 2018.
Neville, however, had clearly been thinking about football-themed hotels for a while as he set up Hotel Sport Limited, Hotel Football Limited and Hotel Soccer Limited in 2011. He has dissolved Hotel Sport and Hotel Soccer. Hotel Football Limited is somewhat confusingly a dormant company with no assets but in 2015 Neville and Giggs opened the hotel, named Hotel Football, just metres from where they used to play for United. The hotel itself sits within Old Trafford Supporters Club Limited and its ultimate parent company is owned by Peter Lim, a Singaporean businessman who is also president of Spanish club Valencia. Despite the increase in turnover for its latest accounts, Hotel Football is still losing money, according to accounts filed with Companies House.
A board statement, however, read: “Following the post-Covid turnaround in 2022, the company enjoyed a successful year in 2023 achieving the best financial metrics since it opened its doors to the public in 2015.”
Neville’s website also notes that during the Covid pandemic, Hotel Football and the Stock Exchange Hotel, which were closed to the public, opened their doors free of charge to NHS health workers so they could isolate themselves away from vulnerable family members.
“Success? Yes. Failure? Yes. Stop? No,” reads a caption on Neville’s website.
The former right-back has a high tolerance for risk and knows he is not always going to make the right decision. When things do not work out, he accepts it and moves on. As always with football, business and life, there are ups and downs and the entrepreneur has had his setbacks.
In 2017, Neville and Giggs opened Mahiki, a Polynesian-style cocktail bar, in Manchester. Beckham attended the grand reveal but it closed less than a year after opening.
Neville also agreed to, in his words, one of the most “instinctive and incredible deals” with former Great British Menu judge and Master Chef competitor Michael O’Hare. The chef presented Neville with his bill, a figure and a note following a meal at O’Hare’s restaurant The Man Behind the Curtain in Leeds. The figure entitled him to 50 per cent of the restaurant — and there and then, Neville became a co-owner of the Michelin-starred establishment.
O’Hare rebranded the restaurant as seafood-focused Psycho Sandbar in March 2024. Neville highly recommended it on his LinkedIn page and described it as “sensational” and “an unbelievable experience”, highlighting what a “brilliant job” O’Hare and his team had done.
The restaurant, however, closed in October and Neville resigned as one of the directors of The Man Behind the Curtain in September. The company is now in voluntary liquidation and, per the liquidator’s statement of affairs, Neville’s investment management firm is owed £366,849.
With Old Trafford on your right, a 15-minute walk from Hotel Football along Sir Matt Busby Way towards Warwick Road brings you to the red-brick building of University Academy 92 (UA92). It is right by Trafford Town Hall and Old Trafford cricket ground, the home of Lancashire County Cricket Club.
Set up by United’s ‘Class of ’92’, (Neville, Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil Neville and Nicky Butt) along with Lancaster University, the social project, which has partnerships with Manchester United, KPMG and Microsoft, was created to remove barriers to higher education.
The university, which has more than 1,000 students, also has a scholarship programme which covers three years of tuition fees for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Neville welcomes every first-year cohort and opens the floor to questions, while he also addresses students at their graduation ceremony.
“Say yes to everything, don’t be afraid, take every opportunity,” was the advice he gave to George Anthony’s cohort.
Anthony, a second-year student studying sports coaching, heard about the university because of the reputation of the Class of ’92. “It’s good,” Anthony, who wants to be a PE teacher and start up his own goalkeeper coaching business, tells The Athletic. “The Class of ’92 probably drags you to visit in the first place. In terms of actually joining, it’s then like everywhere else.”
Not every university student plays a five-a-side game against Neville and, Anthony casually adds, “a couple of others like Paul Scholes”, at the end of each year, though.
Football, inevitably, is never far away for Neville. It is 11 years since he and the Class of ’92 teamed up with Lim to buy Salford City and it is telling that when Lim pulled away from the club last year, it was Neville who stepped up to become the majority owner, buying Lim’s 50 per cent stake. They are looking for a new partner.
Neville has not stopped there. In March 2024 he was appointed as a member of the task force, chaired by Lord Sebastian Coe, responsible for exploring the regeneration of Old Trafford and its surroundings. In January it concluded that while redeveloping Old Trafford or building a new stadium will “deliver transformative benefits for the club as well as Trafford and beyond”, the new-build option would amplify these benefits. The club are due to decide between redeveloping Old Trafford or building a new stadium by the end of the season.
The project aims to lead to significant growth for Trafford, Greater Manchester and the north west of England, while Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said the “proposals offer the biggest opportunity for urban regeneration this country has seen since London 2012”.
Neville’s involvement in the task force raises the question of how closely his own interests are tied to those of United, whom he is also paid to analyse by Sky Sports. All Sky commentators and pundits agree to editorial guidelines and Neville is not an ambassador for the club, though he did make a one-off paid club appearance last year with Apollo Tyres.
Pundits used to avoid stating any alliance, but today’s analysts are encouraged to lean into their chosen team, even if the broadcast at large has to remain objective. “Otherwise, you’re a waste of time,” says Jon Holmes, chairman of his own media company and talent agent for sports broadcasters such as Gary Lineker and Stephen Warnock.
“He’s a Manchester lad, he played for Manchester United, he’s trying to promote and help with the regeneration and he’s put a lot into social projects in Manchester. Some people might see that as a problem, but that’s being over-keen to find a fault. I certainly wouldn’t find a fault.”
Neville has not held back in his criticism of the club’s failings and has focused on the wider issues as opposed to players or managers.
He has also previously been particularly scathing of the Glazers, United’s majority owners. “They’ve overseen 10 years of mediocrity on and off the pitch,” he wrote on X in 2023. “They set the culture of greed, ill-discipline, indecision and uncertainty that runs right through the club.”
Since Sir Jim Ratcliffe, United’s co-owner, has come in Neville has been less inclined to point the finger but he did call the club statement regarding Dan Ashworth’s departure from his role as sporting director “really poor”.
“Man Utd haven’t had a voice for 10 years,” the Sky Sports pundit told NBC. “They’ve lost their authority and their boldness. They’ve been getting it back a little bit in the last 12 months, but it’s really clear there’s a fracture here.”
More on United’s future under INEOS…
Neville described his life and business ventures to Bartlett as a black run on the ski slopes. He’s started the descent and there is no going back. But there have been warning signs about the consequences of living life at such an intensity.
He revealed on the Diary of a CEO podcast he collapsed and had a fit when watching Raheem Sterling score for England against Germany at the European Championship in 2021. After hospital checks, he realised he needed to slow down. Speaking alongside Emma on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, he said he had never experienced anxiety but had to stop a plane and disembark when he was flying back from Miami because he thought he was going to have a heart attack.
“What he can achieve in a day is never to be known as a man,” Emma Neville told Cotton. “He’s wired differently.”
Neville’s approach to rest is perhaps most telling following his description of weekend trips or holidays as “mini-retirements”. He is the first to admit he struggles to relax. It is hard to keep going at such a pace. Getting start-ups off the ground is difficult enough, let alone all of Neville’s other commitments, but he has always lived by this mentality of jampacking every second of his life.
Neville shared on the Stick to Football podcast that he would celebrate his 50th birthday by doing 10 new things, including watching the Ashes in Australia, getting a tattoo, going on safari and attending Glastonbury.
In this next decade, we may see a different side to Neville. Indeed, when Bartlett asked what would make him happier, Neville saw himself on a mountain skiing in the fresh air.
“Isolated away from everything,” he said. “Free from having to talk to someone. I’m a little bit tired of hearing my own voice. The next thing I do at the age of 50 has to be something that means that Gary Neville doesn’t speak as much.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Demetrius Robinson)
