City pin hopes on substantial financial clout
Manchester City’s enormous financial power and influence will pose a significant challenge to UEFA’s decision to ban the club from the Champions League, according to a leading academic.
The Premier League champions are to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against their punishment, which included a fine of
30million (£24.9m), after an investigation into accounts submitted by the club between 2012 and 2016.
While the two-year exclusion from European competition imposed by the governing body would mean a significant loss of revenue, City have the weight of the Abu Dhabi and Chinese Governments and United States private equity firm Silver Lake behind them in what will be a hotlycontested and hugelysignificant court battle.
And the future of UEFA’s whole Financial Fair Play model hinges on the success of this case, said professor Simon Chadwick, director at the Centre for the Eurasian Sport Industry.
“Many people believe at this point Manchester City are on the back foot, but I could argue UEFA is more exposed in all of this,” Chadwick said.
“In essence, UEFA has to try to win this because, if it doesn’t win or is undermined in any way, then its position on Financial Fair Play begins to unravel and FFP is scuppered.
“However, they are not taking on Wigan, they are taking on Asian governments, US tech investors and some of the smartest, most-talented people in football.
“In many ways this is just as much, if not more so, about the vulnerabilities of UEFA as it is about the vulnerabilities of City Football Group (CFG) and Manchester City.
“It is transnational power versus localised governance.
“This i s not Manchester City, it is City Football Group.
“You have the Abu Dhabi Government invested into it, you have the Chinese Government invested into it, Silver Lake invested into it, and they are operating franchises across seven or eight countries including China and India.
“This is not about what’s going to happen to a football club, it is fundamentally about the power of an organisation to challenge the continental governance by a body like UEFA.”
CFG agreed a £265m sale of shares to a consortium of Chinese state-backed investment firms China Media Capital and CITIC Capital in 2015 and in November Silver Lake bought a £389m stake.
A lack of Champions League action could potentially cost them £100m a season.