City cheating?

Here’s a response to recent 606 articles and tabloid reports questioning how City can afford to buy Bony and by rather obtuse extension, innuendo and downright lies, strongly inferring that City are ‘clearly cheating’ by finding ways around FFP rules.

Here’s the latest Deloitte’s Money League in today’s Guardian for those that haven’t quite got the message yet - tabloid hacks; City haters; Mourinho; Wenger et al:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/22/manchester-united-tipped-overtake-real-madrid-money-league

As you can see City are doing rather well as are all PL clubs due largely to the new TV deal. Staggeringly, ALL 20 PL clubs are in the Top 40 richest clubs in Europe!!

But, but, but…….in City’s case it’s all a bit fishy I hear you cry. City’s commercial revenue is largely UAE-based and therefore, related-party and shady dealings are going on – so City are cheating and finding loopholes in FFP that way. Hold on cowboy! UEFA have declared all of those UAE deals as absolutely fine in last year’s accounts and there’s no reason for them to change their mind – so actually, that’s all kosher. In any case, City's non-UAE sponsors now easily outnumber their UAE sponsors and their numbers continue to grow very quickly indeed.

Why don’t you take a step back and ask yourself, is City really any different to other top teams’ commercial deals? The reality is, not at all. Business deals are normally conducted through professional networks and people tend to deal with people they know and trust and share similar values with. For example, US-owned Utd & Liverpool predominantly have major deals with US businesses and Chelsea have significant sponsorship from Russian giant, Gazprom. So it’s hardly surprising that City’s headline sponsors are UAE-based.

Finally, Utd’s new Chevrolet deal is staggeringly bigger than any other PL shirt sponsorship deal. So big in fact that the Chevvy executive who negotiated it got fired immediately afterwards. Something dodgy going on there perhaps? Should UEFA investigate as it’s so far above current ‘market value’?

The default assumption appears to be; Utd are ‘established’ and so everything must be okay, City are ‘upstarts’ so everything must be dodgy. Life’s really not that simple.

Personally, I think Utd are doing excellent business deals and City are just following the commercial model trail-blazed by Ed Woodward at Utd. Like Utd, we also happen to be very good at it too. Just look at the numbers!