Manchester City Set To Announce £50m Deal In Coming Weeks
In terms of bringing in commercial revenue, the English Premier League title holders Manchester City are not known to be in the league of clubs with such acumen but now, reports have revealed that in the coming weeks, the fortune of the Billionaire-owned club is poised for a turn around. A sponsorship deal worth about £50m-a-year is expected to be announced in a couple of weeks which would really boost their financial standings this year. Manchester City is reportedly tying loose ends in the construction of their £200m Football Academy training facility, which they plan to move into by next week.
The facility is an 80 acre state-of-the-art site with 7,000 seats. It also has its central performance centre and footbridge linking to the Etihad Stadium. The idea of this sponsorship deal is to attract sponsors whose names and brands would be attached to sections of the facility and talks with a number of major global companies like Nissan are said to be in high levels now. With their Etihad shirt and stadium sponsorship deal alone, City earns about £40m-a-year and a string of other sponsorship deal such as the one to be announced soon, is said to be in the offing. It seems Manchester City is remodelling their mode of generating revenues and finances due to an adaptation conferred on them by the UEFA Financial Fair Play Rules. They were hit with a record £50m fine for breaching the rule this summer, a repeat of which they are not likely to want.
UEFA has been a big complainer about overspending from especially Billionaire-owned football clubs in England and around Europe but in a bid to avoid the hammer imposed by UEFA for flouting the Financial Fair Play rule, football clubs at such risks are likely to device ways to bypass the rule or device means of generating revenue to survive. Recently, Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain, bankrolled by Middle East Investors, appeared to have broken UEFA’s FFP regulations and were thought to be on the brink of being punished as a result of their relentless quest to permanent members of European football’s affluent elite. UEFA, the European football’s governing body, has made its first rulings based on club accounts from the past two seasons – 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, and clubs are expected under this monitoring period to have at most €45m in losses as long as club owners could cover such amounts.
Manchester City, who have franchises in both the United States and Australia, posted combined losses of €149m for the last two seasons and may just somehow, be trying to survive the murky waters of doing business outside the self-financing concept proposed by the governing body. Before now, the Abu Dhabi owners of the club were known for financing player signings from funds other than ones generated from football activities and they as a result have in their possession many top rated stars like Yaya Toure, Samir Nasri, Sergio Aguero, Stevan Jovetic, Vincent Kompany and the likes. They currently are defending their English Premier League title this season and a lot still needs to be done on and off the pitch to ensure a successful season.