What value do Irish fans get out of unrequited love affair with Man Utd?

The only ticket hotter these days than a Manchester United game is seeing an old player reminiscing about a decades-old match, writes James McDermott

Ruud van Nistelrooy left Manchester United in 2006, but two decades on tickets for his Cork Opera House show in March start at €80. Picture: Martin Rickett/PA

The oldest joke in football is that most Manchester United fans don’t actually live in the city but this ancient punchline never revealed where they do reside.

However data recently collected from the club by the Mancunian Matters website disclosed that the surprising answer is frequently Ireland, the country with the highest number of Old Trafford season tickets outside of the UK.

Out of a total of 46,800 Manchester United season tickets 1,616 (3.5%) are registered to Irish addresses.

For every Irish fan prepared to fork out up to £1,121 (€1,296) for a season ticket, there will be several keen to travel for an individual match meaning that most weeks Old Trafford has more Irish football fans inside it than any League of Ireland Premier Division ground (whose average attendance last year was 3,775).

In Ireland, the only hotter ticket than seeing Manchester United play live is the opportunity to hear stars of the past talking about matches that occurred decades ago. 

Ruud van Nistelrooy left Manchester United in 2006, but two decades on tickets for his Cork Opera House show in March start at €80. 

A ‘Platinum VIP Package’ including a signed Van Nistelrooy Manchester United shirt and a photograph costs €330. 

Remarkably these prices, though eye-wateringly expensive, are not even the highest being charged by an ex- Man United player visiting the Cork Opera House in 2026.

Eric Cantona's 'The King' show runs in the Cork Opera House in September, with tickets costing between €89 and €399.

Perhaps reflecting his exalted royal status tickets for Eric Cantona’s modestly entitled ‘The King’ show in September cost €89-€399. 

Manchester United fans determined to completely empty their pockets will be relieved to learn that the Van Nistelrooy and Cantona shows both include a “bespoke Manchester United memorabilia auction”. 

On his last visit to Ireland in 2024, the Frenchman showed that he was equally happy to literally, as opposed to merely metaphorically, sing for his supper when his ‘Cantona Sings Eric – En concert’ tour opened before a sold-out audience at Liberty Hall in Dublin.

Less affluent Red Devils fans keen to retain an element of surprise in their lives might prefer paying €45-€200 to attend ‘An Evening with Manchester United Legends — 1991 European Cup Winners Cup Special’ at the Talbot Hotel in Stillorgan in September.

Rather vaguely the organisers promise “…a minimum of three legends who played in the final” but no clues are given as to the trio’s identity. 

The line-up is unlikely to include the man who actually lifted the trophy 35 years ago, whose own ‘An Evening with Bryan Robson’ show visits both Cork and Dublin in March.

The visit to Stillorgan in May of “members of the 1999 Treble-Winning Manchester United squad including Andy Cole, David May and additional legends” is already sold out, illustrating that there is a lucrative living to be made playing hotel function rooms, theatres, and opera houses.

Goldmine for retired footballers

But for retired footballers keen to wring every last euro out of fleeting trips to Ireland the real goldmine is the 3Arena, whose 9,300 seats make it the comfortably the largest indoor venue in the country.

In March, Gary Neville and Wayne Rooney (alongside Jamie Carragher) return to the 3Arena with ‘The Stars of The Overlap” with tickets costing €75-€112.

Irish listeners to the podcast would have assumed that the first name on The Overlap teamsheet for any Irish fixture would be co-host Roy Keane but there are sound financial reasons why such a shared bill is not to his liking.

Having sold out three ‘Live in the Marquee’ shows in Cork last summer the ‘Roy Keane in Conversation with Roddy Doyle’ show visits the 3Arena in May 2026 for two nights with tickets starting from €75.

It’s obvious why long-retired players are keen to do such hugely profitable live shows but more uncertain is what value the Irish public get for their money listening to them tell (or sing) ancient anecdotes replying to soft ball questions posed by a friendly, hand-picked interviewer.

In the unlikely event that any of these ‘legends’ have some seismic revelation they are finally ready to disclose decades into retirement, then most of them already have multiple available outlets that don’t necessitate taking a day trip to Ireland.

For example Keane and Neville are long established pundits with Sky Sports and ITV and their Stick to Football podcast produced by The Overlap. 

And then there are the books, with Keane’s two volumes of autobiography appearing like a worrying example of writers block in comparison to Neville’s five book magnum opus with characteristically self-effacing titles such as How to Save Football.

Sadly, the Irish love affair with Manchester United appears to be an unrequited one. Thousands of Irish fans travel to Old Trafford for every match but the club rarely bother making the return journey.

In the last nine years the Red Devils have only visited Ireland once when in 2023 they played a friendly against Athletic Bilbao at the Aviva Stadium.

Roy Keane gives Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher a tour of his homeland before they take to the stage in Dublin in 2023. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Even then the club’s enthusiam for their trip to Ireland appeared limited to picking up their hefty appearance fee. Despite costing up to €110, tickets for the Aviva fixture sold out within hours. 

Shortly afterwards Manchester United unexpectedly added to their pre-season schedule a friendly fixture against Lens at Old Trafford the day before their Dublin trip with tickets costing just £20 (or £15 for members).

This meant that the Manchester United squad that travelled to Ireland were predominantly reserve players.

It remains unclear why Irish fans were expected to pay up to 500% more to see Manchester United’s second team play than a Mancunian audience had paid the day before to watch their first team.

This is a question I hope to ask the one genuine Manchester United star who played in the Aviva when, in 2046, he makes his inevitable appearance at the Opera House with his ‘An Evening with Harry Maguire’, show, assuming, of course, I can afford to buy a ticket.

James McDermott is a lecturer in law at UCD and an occasional commentator