City’s united front leading the way
Global network of football clubs is blueprint for modern game
Manchester City may have fallen behind in the race for this year’s Premier League but, off the pitch, the club and its ownership group are leading the way for modern football. City Football Group (CFG) has expanded their stable of football clubs to South America with the purchase of Uruguayan side Club Atletico Torque. This means that CFG now owns five teams – in the US, Australia and Japan – and an even larger network beyond that.
CFG might be the most highprofile but they are not the first group with multiple football clubs in their portfolio. The ENIC Group, the current outright owners of Tottenham Hotspur, invested in a number of European clubs in the 1990s, with stakes in Glasgow Rangers, SK Slavia Prague, AEK Athens, Vicenza and FC Basel in addition to Spurs. ENIC fell foul of UEFA regulations about teams with common majority owners being in the same competition, which led to a rule change.
Crumbling empires
While ENIC made UEFA’s law change moot by selling its other investments in order to concentrate on Spurs, thankfully for UEFA, their current legislation on common ownership is not going to be put to the test anytime soon. There are a number of owners who have multiple clubs but they are not troubling continental competition. Charlton Athletic’s Roland Duchatelet also owns Carl Zeiss Jena in Germany, Spanish side Alcorcon, Hungary’s Ujpest and Belgian’s Sint-Truidense but even for the teams in their country’s top divisions, they are not troubling the European places. The same can be said for the clubs owned by the Pozzo family who count Serie A side Udinese, Premier League team Watford and Primera Liga side Granada in their empire, and for Cardiff City and FK Sarajevo owner Vincent Tan.
This newer wave of network ownership is a different model to what has come before and is truly global. Energy drinks giant Red Bull own two European football teams – Austria’s Red Bull Salzburg and Bundesliga highfliers RB Leipzig – but they are only a part of their global football network, which in turn is a small part of their sports network that includes an F1 team and ice hockey sides. Red Bull’s is the closest to what CFG is doing now – both own Major League Soccer franchises in New York City after all and now a team in South America – but it could be argued that CFG has gone from following to leading the way when it comes to networked ownership.
Rapid rise
CFG was only established in 2008, under its initial name of the Abu Dhabi United Group, in order to take over Manchester City. In less than a decade it has made the side a household name, serial trophy winners and Champions League regulars. It has also created a worldwide brand of networked sides in the process.
In 2012, CFG took their first step into expansion by becoming the owners of the 20th franchise in Major League Soccer with New York City Football Club registered the following year before joining the league in 2015. The club have not won either the Supporters Shield or the MLS Cup yet but there is no denying that they are the highest-profile team in the league, helped by the presence of David Villa and Andrea Pirlo and the team playing its home games in Yankee Stadium, home of the New York Yankees baseball team – one of the cathedrals of US sport.
Network for success
The establishment of Melbourne City in 2014 followed a similar pattern to its New York sister side, although CFG took over ownership of the existing Melbourne Heart franchise in Australia’s A-League. The rebrand has increased the Melbourne club’s profile, as have signings such as Socceroo stars Tim Cahill and Aaron Mooy. CFG has owned the A-League side outright since 2015 and the club’s newly created women’s team and it’s National Premier Leagues (second tier) feeder club, both also called Melbourne City. It’s a similar story with NYCFC, where CFG’s network expands beyond the main team. In New York’s case there’s also affiliations with San Antonio FC in the United Soccer League and the Long Island Rough Riders.
Both New York City and Melbourne City provide good examples of how CFG’s network operates. Patrick Vieira went from coaching Manchester City’s Elite Development Squad to head coach in New York, while Frank Lampard was sent on loan to the Etihad after his move to Yankee Stadium; meanwhile Aaron Mooy, currently starring on loan for Huddersfield Town, moved from Melbourne to Manchester.
Going global
The purchase of Club Atletico Torque adds another continent to CFG’s network. It’s a side that is on the up. Only founded 10 years ago, they currently compete in Uruguay’s second division and have finished sixth of 15 teams in the last two seasons. Success on the pitch for Torque will be one goal as CFG aims for global dominance but the expansion to South America, which also includes a newly inked partnership with Venezuela Premier League side Atletico Venezuela along the lines of existing CFG affiliations with the Ghana FA and Ghana’s Right to Dream Academy, is expected to reap dividends for the group at large such as finding players like Melbourne City tops corer Bruno Fornaroli.
CFG is building a new model for success and embracing the globalized nature of football today. It’s a model that other sides may want to take note of for fear of being left behind. When Manchester City were taken over, the club were valued at 200 million pounds ($250 million). It’s worth much more than that now if the 2015 investment by China Media Capital Holdings is anything to go by – they paid 265 million pounds for a 13 percent stake in the company. CFG sources have suggested that the nascent football markets of both China and India are on the radar for their next franchise. We’re at a new dawn in the world of football and CFG is making sure that blue moon is on the rise.