The Deal: After Malcolm Glazer spent $1.5 billion in May 2005 to snag the world’s most valuable soccer team, Manchester United Football Club, a little buyer’s remorse would have been understandable. Fans rioted outside the team’s stadium, enraged that United had been bought by an American billionaire (who had saddled the team with massive debt and taken it off the London Stock Exchange). Glazer, president and C.E.O. of First Allied and owner of the National Football League’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, fronted about $500 million to buy the team. He also borrowed $493 million in senior debt from a banking syndicate led by J.P. Morgan and $512 million in high-interest pay-in-kind debt from hedge funds Perry Capital, Citadel Investment Group, and Och-Ziff. Even after the debt was refinanced in 2006, the yearly interest payment still runs about $81 million.

The Aftermath: Glazer has not raised revenue by selling the best (and most expensive) players, as fans feared, but ticket prices rose 12.5 percent in 2006 and 14 percent in 2007—even as many rival teams, endowed with increasingly lucrative TV licensing, have frozen or lowered the price of admission. But United’s 2007 Premier League championship, its first in four years, has pacified fans. And between June 2006 and June 2007, the team posted a $115 million profit and league-record revenues of $473 million (including a $98.9 million, four-year sponsorship deal with A.I.G.), up from the previous season’s $310 million.

The Bottom Line: The deal looks pretty smart today—so far. “People are willing to pay to watch an attractive and successful team,” says Tom Cannon, a Liverpool-based sports-finance analyst. “The apocalypse hasn’t happened.” But Glazer draws a yellow card from Philip Long, a partner at PKF International, who cautions, “If there is any falloff in success on the pitch, then Manchester United will undoubtedly have problems."