Special report: Manchester City’s sponsors, the links to Abu Dhabi and what it means for Newcastle United
Adam Crafton 6h ago
On January 6, Manchester City unveiled a new global sponsorship agreement. The club website promoted the partnership with Masdar, a renewable energy and sustainable development company, by highlighting the launch of a campaign aimed at raising awareness around climate change.
What the City press release did not mention, however, is that Masdar is owned by the Mubadala Investment Company. Mubadala is a sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi and the chief executive officer of Mubadala is a businessman named Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who is also the chairman of Manchester City.
Al Mubarak, 46, does not sit on the board of Masdar. Yet on the eight-person board, his sister Razan Al Mubarak has a seat, in addition to four senior personnel from Mubadala, plus two members of the United Arab Emirates federal government.
Three weeks later, City unveiled another partnership with an Abu Dhabi company. This time, Aldar Properties became the club’s official real estate partner.
Mubadala, run by Al Mubarak, is a continuing shareholder in Aldar, along with other state-owned companies which include the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi National Hotels and the National Corporation for Tourism and Hotels. The chairman of Aldar’s board is Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, who is also the chair of the department for culture and tourism in Abu Dhabi. He also happens to be the brother of City chairman Khaldoon. Martin Edelman, a member of the Manchester City board, is also listed as a director of Aldar.
These two deals followed a previous announcement, on January 4, of a new luxury hotel partnership between Manchester City and the Emirates Palace complex in Abu Dhabi. The club’s manager Pep Guardiola formed part of a recent promotional video filmed at the hotel and he posed for photographs with children training as part of a Manchester City scholarship programme in the Middle East.
City do have a long-standing level of engagement with the Emirates Palace and have visited for over a decade, including a mid-season camp in 2009. The Emirates Palace Hotel is operated by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group but falls under the ownership of the Emirates Palace Company, which is another state-owned Abu Dhabi enterprise.
These are only three of City’s 49 global and regional partnerships but demonstrate an increasingly identifiable pattern. Through conversations with numerous industry sources and close examination of publicly available information related to senior City personnel and the club’s sponsors, The Athletic has examined all 49 of their sponsorships.
We have identified numerous companies who, via personnel, businesses, or directorships, can be connected to individuals who sit on the board of the City Football Group.
Many of those highlighted relate to business interests in Abu Dhabi, but others include a sponsorship agreement with one company which has since named the City chief executive, Ferran Soriano, onto its own board as an independent director and another firm which has listed City Football Group director Egon Durban as a board member.
There is nothing legally wrong with any of these relationships. They have all been properly entered into. What is of interest is how having such wealthy and well-connected owners opens up opportunities. This has attracted the attention of the Premier League and City’s rival clubs both at home and on the continent.
Manchester City declined to comment on the points raised in the article and Mubadala did not respond to questions from The Athletic.
The question of sponsorships has regained its relevance following the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United in October 2021. This is because Newcastle’s Premier League rivals fear the club will imitate City’s approach, by striking a series of sponsorship deals with Saudi businesses as a way to turbocharge their rise to the summit of European football.
City, it ought to be stressed, are not alone in benefiting from sponsorships linked to a club’s ownership. Leicester City, for example, have a deal to sponsor their stadium and front-of-shirt with their Thai owners King Power. Everton have also received funding from a subsidiary of USM Holdings, a Russian fund chaired by Everton’s largest shareholder Farhad Moshiri. But scrutiny is inevitable for a team that have won three of the last four Premier League titles and are on course to win another.
City’s sponsorship deals have been a regular topic for debate both in the Premier League and at UEFA since Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan acquired City for £150 million in 2008.
Sheikh Mansour, whose name is sung by the City supporters, is the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the minister of presidential affairs. The 51-year-old is also part of the royal family and his half-brother, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is the president of the UAE. Sheikh Mansour is the majority shareholder in City via Newton Investment and Development, a company he wholly owns and which is registered in Abu Dhabi. As such, it would be legally inaccurate to describe City as state-owned, despite Sheikh Mansour’s prominent political positions in both the UAE and its capital, Abu Dhabi.
Newton possesses a majority shareholding in the City Football Group. CFG, as it is known, was the brainchild of the club’s chief executive Soriano and established in May 2013. CFG operates a multi-club model, whereby the parent company owns or has stakes in numerous clubs around the world. CFG has full ownership of New York City in the USA and Melbourne City in Australia, as well as Manchester City in the Premier League.
The group also has investments in clubs in China, Japan, India, Uruguay, Bolivia, Spain, Belgium and France. CFG is still majority-owned (77 per cent) by Sheikh Mansour’s investment vehicle Newton, but it also sold a 13 per cent stake to the China Media Capital (CMC) consortium in December 2015 and a 10 per cent stake to the American private equity firm Silver Lake in November 2019.
Sponsorship deals have become more pertinent because of the dramatic developments that followed the takeover of Newcastle United by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) in October 2021, in partnership with Amanda Staveley’s PCP Capital Partners and Jamie Reuben’s RB Sports and Media. The PIF board is composed of six government ministers, a Royal Court advisor and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in addition to Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who governs the fund and is also the chair of state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco. Al-Rumayyan, as the only PIF board member not directly linked to the Saudi state, has taken the position as the chairman of Newcastle United.
The Premier League found that Newcastle’s ownership is a separate legal entity to the state. Yet it is anticipated that PIF will secure a slew of sponsorship deals with companies associated with personnel or businesses that share an interest with the Saudi state. This would appear to be the view of Newcastle’s Premier League rivals, who, after witnessing the extraordinary rise and dominance of City, acted swiftly after the takeover of Newcastle.
A report by the Mail on Sunday newspaper in July 2021 underlined how City have benefited from lucrative sponsorship deals, as they earned £1.7 billion in commercial income in the ten years to the end of 2020, while Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal averaged £1.1 billion each. City’s most recent accounts, published in January, revealed commercial income had risen to £272 million, which is the highest in England.
Critics say this is surprising because a club such as Liverpool or Arsenal would have a larger pull due to bigger fanbases and a history of silverware, albeit varying levels of recent on-field success. In 2020, however, City’s commercial income of £249.5 million greatly exceeded both Liverpool’s at £213.5 million and Arsenal’s at £142.3 million. They would also argue City’s commercial revenue is owed, to a large extent, to continued support from Abu Dhabi-linked companies. City could argue they have numerous partnerships, too, with companies that have no relationship with Abu Dhabi, such as Puma, Nissan and Cadbury.
Newcastle’s owners, the PIF sovereign wealth fund, have access to billions of dollars and Premier League clubs are concerned that there may become a competitive imbalance, as Newcastle will have the means to buy the best players and pay the highest wages. The Premier League already negates this risk by implementing profit and loss regulations, in which clubs may only lose £105 million over a three-year period of accounting. Yet clubs are keen to make sure that no-one is tempted to circumvent these rules by disguising cash injections through sponsorship funding.
On the evening of Monday, October 18, Premier League clubs attended an emergency meeting, which culminated in 18 of the 20 clubs voting in favour of a temporary amendment to ban any commercial opportunities involving pre-existing business relationships from going through, with a view to forming new regulations. This was designed to stop a company from instantly sponsoring a club at an inflated valuation. There is no evidence any such deal was being contemplated but the league was keen to make sure it could not ever happen.
Newcastle voted against the temporary ban and Lee Charnley, the executive who attended on behalf of Newcastle’s new owners, also threatened legal action against the Premier League. Charnley was the longstanding chief executive of former owner Mike Ashley but he remained in situ for a short period to help smooth the transition for the new ownership.
At the Premier League meeting, Manchester City were the only other club not to vote in favour of the interim block. They abstained and sources suggested this was because the club had received legal advice to say the ban may be unlawful. They also received legal advice to say the Premier League were acting “like a cartel”.
In December, the temporary freeze on activity evolved into more strenuous regulations. Despite both Newcastle director Staveley and City officials forming part of a working group that developed the new regulations, both Newcastle and City voted against the reforms. Additionally, The Times reported that Staveley wrote to the 19 other Premier League clubs to warn the regulations would be legally vulnerable to challenge. Newcastle declined to comment when asked to explain their motivations for voting against the new rules and also declined to state whether any proposed commercial deals with Saudi companies are currently awaiting Premier League approval.
The new rules mean that any commercial agreement worth more than £1 million must be submitted to the Premier League to check whether it is an “associated party” transaction. The wording of the updated Premier League handbook is significant as it warns clubs will be judged not only on legal descriptions but also “the substance of the relationship” with associated parties.
The definition of an associated party has been broadened to be defined as any party having “material influence over the club or (being) an entity in the same group of companies as the club.” The definition is also extended to cover close family members, as well as cases where a club and entity are “directly or indirectly controlled, jointly controlled, or materially influenced by the same government, public or state-funded body or by the same party”.
The Premier League then reserves the right to independently assess whether a deal has been conducted at fair value. This, in layman’s terms, means that a sponsorship agreed by an Abu Dhabi or Saudi based company should be equal to the market rate. The objective of the assessment is to prevent a club from receiving unlimited funds through inflated sponsorship deals from organisations related to the owners.
In 2018, the German newspaper Der Spiegel raised a different concern when they published leaked documents which implied that City had deceived UEFA’s Financial Fair Play model by presenting sponsorship funding from Abu Dhabi companies as a source of funding, when, in fact, the money was coming in from City’s parent company Newton.
Etihad are on City’s shirt and their stadium (Photo: Visionhaus)
That funding has been the subject of repeated investigations by European football’s governing body, UEFA, and in 2020, City won an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against a two-year ban from the Champions League.
UEFA, whose verdict was overruled, had found City to have breached cost control rules but the CAS panel decided that some of the most grave allegations should be dismissed as they were more than five years old and therefore “time-barred” from punishment under UEFA’s own regulations. It should be said that CAS also identified “insufficient conclusive evidence” to uphold UEFA’s conclusions, although UEFA would say this is better than “no evidence” at all. City were still fined €10 million (£9 million) — down from the original fine of €30 million (£27 million) — which was a nod to City’s failure to cooperate with the investigation.
End of story? Not quite. Although the UEFA investigation concluded, the Premier League’s own investigation into Manchester City, triggered by the leaked emails published by Der Spiegel, is ongoing. The Premier League is not bound by the same “time-barred” rules as UEFA and, as such, may apply sanctions retrospectively if it finds against City.
While City and Newcastle’s Premier League rivals seek to restrain the growth and dominance of the two clubs, it is important to remember that the aim of the Premier League rule changes is not to eliminate deals with businesses that may be linked to senior personnel at the two clubs, but to ensure that any commercial deals are conducted at fair value.
As for City’s three agreements with Abu Dhabi companies announced in January, The Athletic understands that these were not submitted to the Premier League for approval, either because the deals were agreed before the rules were formalised or because the valuation of the deals was not beyond the £1 million valuation. The Athletic understands a club can sign and announce a deal prior to receiving approval, so long as a clause is inserted in the contract to say the deal is subject to Premier League approval.
In Manchester City’s financial report for the year ended 2020-21, the club listed several “related party transactions”. In official filings, a club is only required to list those transactions that have been completed with other members of the overall City Football Group, such as New York City and Girona, as well as other companies owned by Newton. This therefore means that City’s many sponsors, who appear to have links to Abu Dhabi, are not required to be listed in the club’s official accounts, as they are neither part of CFG or part of Sheikh Mansour’s private investment company Newton.
In the case of Leicester City, whose owners King Power have sponsored the club’s stadium, jersey and training kit, these are filed as a related party transaction in Leicester’s accounts. In the club’s financial report for 2020, King Power is declared as paying £16 million for the privilege and it is declared in this way because the companies form part of the same group.
Before the Premier League rule changes, the League would only have scrutinised those deals filed as related parties within club accounts. City’s 49 partners are not listed there but the revamped and the new Premier League rules are defined more broadly.
The motivation for Abu Dhabi investment into City is a source of contention. In a recent interview with The Athletic’s Business of Football Podcast, the former Manchester City chief executive Garry Cook described Sheikh Mansour’s acquisition of the club as “all part of a major global strategy for Abu Dhabi as a nation”.
Cook is an ally of the ownership and his description would likely reinforce the view of critics who believe the club acts as a vehicle to project the soft power of Abu Dhabi, diversify the economy and deflect from attention on the UAE’s poor record on human rights.
This perception is further underlined when we highlight how City’s chairman Al Mubarak was described by the Financial Times as one of the closest advisers of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. Indeed, he is trusted to the extent that he is the CEO of the $243 billion (£180 billion) Mubadala wealth fund, which owns many of City’s sponsors. Additionally, Al Mubarak is the chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority, which is described as a specialised government agency mandated to provide strategic policy advice to the Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed.
CFG would always argue the ownership is motivated by the hope of developing a sustainable and profitable business. Al Mubarak has previously stressed that City is not a state-sponsored project. He claimed that Sheikh Mansour is a “huge football fan” who has always wanted to build a European club into a superpower. Al Mubarak added: “(Sheikh Mansour) believes that you can create a value proposition in football that has not yet been accomplished.”
In 2009, Manchester City signed their first sponsorship agreement with the UAE airline Etihad Airways, which is the second largest in the region behind Emirates. Etihad, to this day, sponsor the front of City’s shirts and the club’s stadium, as well as the surrounding academy building known as the Etihad Campus, in addition to exposure at City’s stable of clubs in cities such as New York and Melbourne.
Until August 2021, Mohamed Al Mazrouei was the chairman of the Etihad Aviation Group, which is the holding company behind Etihad Airways. Al Mazrouei was also a member of the Manchester City board from 2010 until a memo dropped on Companies House on New Years’ Day this year to say he was no longer a director of the club. The new chairman of Etihad Aviation Group is Mohamed Al Shorafa, who is a member of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, along with the Manchester City chairman Al Mubarak.
According to the council’s own website, its purpose is to assist the ruler of Abu Dhabi “to carry out his duties and powers” and “achieve the general well-being of the country.” It is answerable to its chair, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of City’s owner Sheikh Mansour, who is also the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and the Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE armed forces.
It should be said that a majority of the three-man CAS panel ruled that Etihad Airways should not be judged as a related party, despite links such as these, as the panel did not identify control or instruction from City’s ownership or board within the commercial operations of sponsors.
Al Mubarak’s sister is on the board of Masdar, one of City’s newest sponsors (Photo: Laurence Griffiths – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
City are understood to now receive in excess of £67.5 million per year from Etihad for their sponsorship of the club. The deal has been renegotiated at least four times since 2009 and, despite the club employing Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to aid the search for a new shirt sponsor in 2018, the club continues to sport the Etihad logo.
The length and valuation of Etihad’s current deal is not disclosed, and neither they nor City wished to clarify when asked by The Athletic.
Some sources have pointed out how Etihad’s contribution would appear to be a burden on an airline that reported core operating losses of $1.7 billion (£1.25 billion) for 2020, amid the traumatic impact of COVID-19 on the travel industry, but the same could be said of airlines which sponsor a number of other major clubs.
Asked to outline the benefits of the partnership to Etihad, the company said “the partnership remains very important to us as the cornerstone of our global sponsorship strategy, providing brand awareness through people’s passion across international borders”.
City too insist that all their commercial deals are conducted on an arm’s-length basis so are free from conflicts of interest.
There are another series of partnerships that demonstrate links to Abu Dhabi, beyond Etihad Airways, Emirates Palace, Aldar Properties and Masdar, albeit they are much looser ones.
For example, Manchester City have a long-standing partnership with Etisalat. Its chair Jassem Mohammed Bu Ataba Al Zaabi also has a seat on the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, on which City chairman Al Mubarak also sits.
We can also point to City’s partnership with Visit Abu Dhabi, which is the Department of Culture and Tourism for the Emirati state. Just like Aldar Properties, this is chaired by Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, the brother of City’s chairman Khaldoon. City’s relationship with the Abu Dhabi tourist board goes back to 2010 and predates Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak’s appointment as chair in 2015.
City also have a regional credit card partnership with First Abu Dhabi Bank. Its chairman Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the brother of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed, as well as the brother of City majority shareholder Sheikh Mansour, and he also serves as the national security advisor of the UAE.
In June 2021, City unveiled a new training kit partner with Expo 2020 Dubai, the international festival that has played out over the past six months. Manchester City are not alone in promoting Expo 2020, as both Arsenal and AC Milan agreed partnership deals. The branding has been regularly seen across the Etihad Stadium and City training pictures, while Guardiola and his players Jack Grealish and Ruben Dias have been involved in promotional events. Last year, Human Rights Watch warned that the “United Arab Emirates authorities are using Expo 2020 Dubai to promote a public image of openness that is at odds with the government’s efforts to prevent scrutiny of its rampant systemic human rights violations”.
While Manchester City’s owner Sheikh Mansour is a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, Sheikh Mansour’s official title is deputy prime minister of the UAE. The Athletic spoke to a gulf expert who explained that Expo 2020 Dubai, which reads on City’s training kit as Expo 2020 Dubai UAE, has been viewed in diplomatic circles as a projection not only of Dubai but the UAE as a whole. As an example, the Dubai prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum received Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at Expo in December 2021 but the meeting was also reported to have been attended by Sheikh Mansour in his role as deputy prime minister and minister of presidential affairs for the UAE.
City are not the only Premier League club who have unsettled their rivals. Everton’s largest shareholder is the British-Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri, who also chairs USM Holdings, which is a fund founded by Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov.
In their 2019 accounts, Everton also declared £12 million in sponsorship for the club’s training ground from USM Services as a related party transaction. This was because Moshiri, as Everton’s owner, was also a shareholder of USM Holdings, which is the parent company of USM Services.
However, rival clubs became more suspicious in January 2020, when Everton announced that Usmanov’s USM had agreed to pay £30 million in order to have the first right of refusal for naming rights of Everton’s new stadium. To reiterate, this was not for the actual rights, but merely the right to buy them.
This deal, however, was subsequently not declared as a party related transaction in the club’s 2020 accounts. This is understood to be due to Moshiri, despite remaining the chair of USM Holdings, having reduced his stake either in the USM Holdings fund or USM Services to a percentage at which it no longer needed to be declared as a related party.
Later in 2020, Everton raised eyebrows when the club’s women’s team agreed a deal with MegaFon, the Russian digital and communications company, to become a front-of-shirt sponsor. The value has not been revealed, but Everton said that it represented the largest commercial deal in the history of their women’s team.
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Everton announced deals with MegaFon and Yota to sponsor their women’s team (Photo: Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images)
Moshiri, the Everton owner, has a stake in MegaFon and the majority shareholder of the company is Usmanov. Everton also announced a deal with Yota, a Russian smartphone company, to become the sleeve sponsor of the women’s team. Yota is also part of the MegaFon group. Additionally, Usmanov’s nephew Sarvar Ismailov was, at the time, the sporting and commercial director of the Everton women’s team. Usmanov has never been a shareholder of Everton.
There is nothing wrong with any of this, but it matters to rival clubs when they want to be reassured that Everton, who have spent vast sums of money on players and managers, are operating within tight Financial Fair Play restrictions. Other clubs would no doubt welcome greater transparency so they could see plainly that there is no question of avoiding Premier League sanctions for incurring excessive losses. Everton are not under investigation by the Premier League for anything related to their commercial or financial activity and say that all of their deals have been conducted on an arm’s-length basis.
American businessman John Textor invested in Crystal Palace in August 2021, becoming a partner and director at the club. Textor is the founder, largest shareholder and CEO of Facebank, a technology company focused on a “digital likeness” — working with the human face in a series of apps, video games, social media and entertainment.
On August 14, three days after Textor’s investment was confirmed, Palace announced a sponsorship deal with Facebank. It became the club’s sleeve partner, with its logo appearing on the club’s playing kits. Facebank also has hoardings on the Arthur Wait and Holmesdale stands at Selhurst Park, and further advertising on pitch-side LED boards.
Palace signed the Facebank sponsorship deal before the new related-party rule was in place. However, The Athletic understands they are confident it would pass any test on market value, and that the figure is equivalent to previous sums Palace have received for the same advertising. It is also worth noting that Palace, along with Everton and Leicester, voted in favour of the Premier League’s new related-party rules, unlike Manchester City.
Some Manchester City partners are less close to the tentacles of power but have struck up close business relationships in the UAE.
Take, for instance, the water company Xylem, which became a global partner of Manchester City in 2018, two years after signing a partnership with the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, which is associated with the Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi. The university is chaired and vice-chaired by two members of the Abu Dhabi executive council and Masdar, as explained earlier, is owned by the Mubadala Investment Company and the chief executive officer of Mubadala is City chairman Al Mubarak.
A different City partner, Power Horse energy drink, was founded in Austria but in 2016, the investment company Vis Mundi and the Middle Eastern private equity firm Levant Capital announced an acquisition of a significant equity stake in the company. Vis Mundi has a presence in numerous major cities, including Dubai, Cairo, Istanbul and Moscow but Levant was established in 2006 and is based in Dubai within the UAE. Levant’s own website states that it counts leading Gulf Cooperation Council family offices as investors.
None of these partnerships would be described as related party transactions in the Manchester City accounts, regardless of whether the club may be viewed as part of a broader project for Abu Dhabi, as the City ownership does not control the commercial decisions of their sponsors.
For many years, Manchester City’s rivals, both at home and in Europe, have been concerned by the club’s rise under Sheikh Mansour. City’s advocates would argue the envy can most easily be explained by City winning five of the last ten Premier League titles, five of the last six League Cups and regularly competing in the latter stages of the Champions League. City’s allies would add how this reflects a broader concern for American owners of clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal.
The argument follows that City have created a more competitive environment, which jeopardises the possibility of their own clubs qualifying for the Champions League and receiving the financial windfall associated with it. American owners, such as United’s Glazer family, bought in via a leveraged buyout and have never demonstrated a desire to run the club by injecting their own cash into United. As such, City’s supporters would argue that these owners are opposed to City both because of the competition provided and because City’s owners are more willing to invest both in the club and the region in order to succeed.
On the other side, owners such as Liverpool’s Fenway Sports Group would argue they have a virtuous circle, whereby it is possible to have a club with a successful and profitable team, while returning money to investors and demonstrating financial sustainability stemming from the strength of their fanbase and their heritage. Those owners, along with major European clubs such as Real Madrid and Juventus, say that the spending and wage inflation triggered by City and Paris Saint-Germain has forced others to overspend in order to keep up.
Javier Tebas, the La Liga chairman, has repeatedly criticised City and PSG along these lines and, in return, stories have often appeared in British newspapers suggesting City were preparing to sue Tebas for his comments. La Liga confirmed to The Athletic that City have never taken legal action against their chairman.
Mubadala is the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi (Photo: Jonathan Drake/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Additionally, several senior sources told The Athletic that the Super League represented an attempt to straightjacket City and PSG into tighter cost controls and it is little surprise that PSG did not enter, while City were the first club to jump out as the breakaway collapsed. City and PSG would counter that the recklessness of a club such as Barcelona, €1 billion in debt, is not the responsibility of anyone but themselves.
In 2019, City chairman Al Mubarak said: “I will not accept for this club to be used as a diversionary tactic on poor investment decisions from other clubs. People make decisions, they’ve got to live by them. We’ve managed ourselves well and we will be judged by facts and facts alone. This is a well-run club. That’s a fact; a well-managed wage-to-revenue ratio that compares to some of the best run clubs in his (Tebas’) La Liga but frankly in all of European football.”
Speak to those mediating and there is a more balanced argument. Football’s ownership models have dramatically diversified and the truth is that nobody in the Premier League is seeking to remove the right of sovereign wealth funds to own football clubs. There must also be an appreciation that wealth funds such as the Saudi PIF are likely to have a spread of investments across other businesses which it would like to promote.
We should also note that funds such as PIF and Mubadala have indirectly assisted other clubs. Consider, for example, Cazoo, the British online car retailer, has received millions in funding from Mubadala, but it is also the front-of-shirt sponsor for Everton and Aston Villa. PIF, meanwhile, have a stake in EA Sport and they sponsor numerous Premier League clubs.
Nevertheless, it remains reasonable to scrutinise the extent to which City are still dependent on sponsors with business links to Abu Dhabi. And some of City’s other sponsors, while from the outside seeming that they have no link to Abu Dhabi, do in fact have some connections.
In March 2017, Manchester City attracted praise and headlines when they made history by becoming the first Premier League club to sign a sponsorship deal for the sleeves of their jerseys. City publicised the agreement with the Korean company Nexen Tire and The Athletic understands the deal was worth £9 million per season.
While there is no direct link here to Abu Dhabi, in July 2017, Nexen and Mubadala Investment Company, the fund run by City chairman Al Mubarak, signed a memorandum of understanding to explore strategic partnership opportunities. A statement on Mubadala’s own website confirmed the fund had made a “direct investment into Nexen” as part of the agreement. Subsequently, in September 2020, it was confirmed that Nexen’s sponsorship of City had been extended. We should note here that Manchester United’s sleeve sponsor Kohler pay a reported £15 million per year, so City seems to have set about the right market rate.
Mubadala’s links to City’s sponsors go further. Take, for example, the case of Healthpoint, which became a City partner in 2014 and renewed its deal in August 2021 for a third term. Healthpoint is described as a leading centre for sports-related injury treatment and rehabilitation, but it is also partnered by Mubadala Health, which is part of the overall Mubadala fund.
Several sources with experiences of negotiating similar contracts stressed that there are reasons, beyond Manchester City’s aspirations, as to why a sponsor might want to partner with the club. One says: “Manchester City is currently the most successful club in England and playing in the most popular league. It is a great reflection of Abu Dhabi and it is normal that an Abu Dhabi company would like to partner with it. It’s not as though people are being tapped on the shoulder and told to do it.”
Other links between City and their sponsors are more remote. In November 2021, Manchester City unveiled a partnership with Sony by which the companies would collaborate on tech projects to apparently benefit supporters in the metaverse. This followed a previous agreement in May 2018, whereby Sony acquired Mubadala’s 60 per cent equity interest in EMI Music Publishing. This is an example of the crossover that happens when a $243 billion wealth fund invests across sectors.
Separately, Manchester City have enjoyed a partnership with the tech company Intel since 2019 and this agreement was renewed in June 2020. In June 2021, Yahoo reported that Intel had conducted a feasibility study of acquiring GlobalFoundries, which is owned by Mubadala, after the Wall Street Journal claimed the parties had engaged in talks over a $30 billion sale. Manchester City director Edelman is on the board of GlobalFoundries.
Another example can be seen in City’s partnership with the digital marketplace Noon, which launched in April 2021. Noon was founded in 2017 both in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The company was founded by Dubai billionaire Mohamed Alabbar but in October 2021, it was announced that Noon, which aspires to rival Amazon in the Middle East, will draw up to $2 billion in financing from investors including PIF, the Saudi wealth fund who own an 80 per cent stake in Newcastle United.
A relationship with Abu Dhabi is demonstrated by the fact Waleed Al Muhairi, the deputy group chief executive officer at Mubadala (in other words, the second in command to City chairman Al Mubarak), is also on the board of Noon. Al Muhairi is a common presence on the board of sponsors linked to City, as he also has seats at Aldar Properties, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Mubadala Health. The importance of Noon to the UAE was underlined in July 2019, when the Chinese company Neolix signed a preliminary agreement with Noon to trial autonomous vehicles in both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The parties signed the agreement during the state visit of UAE crown prince Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan to China.
In November 2019, Manchester City’s ownership sold a $500 million (£370 million) stake in the City Football Group to the US private equity firm Silver Lake. In doing so, the deal, which valued CFG at $4.8 billion (£3.54 billion), broke a record for sports valuations.
In September 2020, Silver Lake itself received a $2 billion (£1.47 billion) investment from Mubadala Investment Company, which City chairman Al Mubarak, speaking in his role as chief executive of Mubadala, described as an exciting partnership.
The Silver Lake chief executive Durban, who has subsequently taken a seat on the City Football Group board, said he was pleased to deepen the fund’s relationship with Mubadala.
In October 2021, another partnership emerged. This time, City announced a sponsorship from the software company Qualtrics. Durban, the CEO of Silver Lake and member of the CFG board, is also an independent director of Qualtrics.
Qualtrics, however, were acquired by the German company SAP in early 2019, before the Silver Lake investment into Manchester City. City’s relationship with SAP predates Durban’s appointment onto the CFG board, as City had a partnership with SAP as far back as 2015.
Silver Lake are also leading a €3.5 billion (£2.9 billion) investment into Europe’s largest veterinary group IVC Evidensia with Nestle, another sponsor of Manchester City. City announced a partnership with Nestle in October 2019. This followed Nestle’s $10 billion (£7.4 billion) dollar sale of Nestle Skin Health to a consortium led by EQT investment fund and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in the same month. Silver Lake politely declined to comment.
Durban is not the only CFG employee who appears on the board of businesses that sponsor City. We have already mentioned that CFG director Edelman is on the board of Aldar but another sponsorship reveals a prominent role for City’s chief executive, Soriano.
The website design and hosting company Wix have enjoyed a partnership with Manchester City since 2016 and they have since become a sponsor of the overall CFG group. In 2019, Mark Tluszcz, the chairman of Wix, took up a role with City CEO Al Mubarak’s Mubadala Capital, which is the financial investment arm of the Mubadala Investment Company. Tluszcz was appointed as a senior advisor to the business, “providing strategic counsel.” Tluszcz tweeted on October 9, 2019 to say: “Happy to say I am playing on team Mubadala.”
On November 12, 2020, CFG chief executive Soriano became a director of CFG sponsor Wix. It should be said that it is not unusual in business for smart people who have worked together successfully to then seek to work together again and sources insisted that both Tluszcz and Soriano possess qualities that would benefit Mubadala Capital in the former’s case and Wix in the latter.
City did look into other sponsors instead of Etihad (Photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)
The web between businesses is once again amplified when we examine City’s partnership with WeWork, which became the club’s official workplace partner in September 2021. Once again, we can pinpoint a company that had previously benefited from Mubadala investment.
In February 2020, WeWork launched a partnership with a company named Hub71, which describes itself as a global tech ecosystem at the heart of Abu Dhabi. Hub71’s partners include Al Mubarak’s Mubadala, as well as the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, which is the government hub supporting investment in Abu Dhabi.
The partners of this venture also include Microsoft and Japanese conglomerate Softbank. Mubadala previously made a $15 billion (£11 billion) investment into Softbank, chaired by the Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, in 2017. As such, we can already see a financial relationship between WeWork and businesses linked to the Manchester City chairman Al-Mubarak but closer scrutiny reveals another link.
In January 2021, the Bolivian outfit Club Bolivar became a partner club of City Football Group. Marcelo Claure is Club Bolivar’s president, while he is also a co-owner of another City Football Group club in Girona. Claure had also been the chief operating officer of Softbank, before leaving last month. Most interestingly, he has been the executive chairman of WeWork since 2019 and, according to his own LinkedIn page, Claure is “recognised for turning the company around and putting it on a path to profitability as well as taking the company public in October 2021”. As stated earlier, WeWork became a partner of Manchester City in September 2021.
Shortly before Christmas, the Premier League approved the reformed regulations for “associated parties” despite Newcastle and Manchester City opposing the changes.
However, an 18-2 majority won the day and the Premier League have now been asked to form a databank of existing sponsorship deals. This meant that every Premier League side has been required to submit details about all sponsorship agreements dating back to 2016.
This has been an onerous process, including the requirement to report the fees received from sponsors and the value that the sponsor has received in return. As examples, these may include access to players, social media engagement, matchday hospitality and tickets, or access to a club mailing list.
The idea, therefore, is that the Premier League has a databank by which it can benchmark the going rate or market value of sponsorship deals. Therefore, should Newcastle secure a partnership with a Saudi bank for the front of its jersey, it can then be compared to the value of other clubs of a similar standing. Equally, while the process will not backdate, it is expected that the renewal of any existing deals, such as those involving City, would be subject to scrutiny.
The problem, however, is that the value of sponsorships is extremely subjective and open to different methodologies. One club may hire a consultant who insists their valuation is correct, while a regulator may hire a consultant who uses a different method of valuation.
This is one of the issues encountered by UEFA during their attempts to investigate PSG, who are owned by Qatar Sport Investments. PSG had a sponsorship with the Qatar Tourism Authority, for which they received €110 million (£92 million) per season, yet when Octagon, a consultancy hired by UEFA, reviewed the valuation, the company believed the deal should be worth only €5 million (£4.2 million). Yet separately, a different consultancy, Nielsen, hired by the club, felt the deal was closer to PSG’s original valuation. PSG denied that the valuation was inflated and UEFA subsequently cleared PSG of breaking FFP rules in 2018.
If Newcastle, then, strike a deal this week for a shirt sponsorship, which would be the correct club in the Premier League to compare against? Some may argue Newcastle should be compared to Leeds United, as a one-club city in a relegation battle with a good stadium and a large fanbase but without a recent history of success. Others would argue that Newcastle’s valuation should be higher as the club has access to a sovereign wealth fund, is likely to be competing in European competition in the short-to-medium term and is encountering growing exposure and fascination across the world.
PSG are another example of a club that is difficult to benchmark. Most people would accept PSG cannot be compared to other French clubs, in terms of sponsorship valuations, when their wage bill is three times higher than its closest French rival, Lyon. PSG, based in the French capital, would also argue it unfair to compare themselves to Arsenal or Chelsea, as Paris is home to one major club, while London clubs have fierce competition within the capital.
There are other complications with benchmarking. There are differentials to consider within social media reach and engagement. One consultant pointed out to The Athletic how TikTok records a “view” as soon as a user scrolls down the page, even if the level of engagement is questionable, whereas YouTube requires a viewer to watch for thirty seconds to record a “view”.
As such, it is of little surprise that Newcastle’s part-owner Staveley sent that letter to Premier League clubs to warn that the new regulations may be vulnerable to legal challenge. In reality, it would seem unlikely that the rapacious Premier League would want to regulate itself to the point that it routinely jeopardises commercial opportunities for member clubs.
Yet the rules were approved in December and within the first month of the new year, City announced three new deals with Emirati companies. Two of these deals were signed off by City before the Premier League reforms and the third deal was below the £1 million threshold for Premier League review.
Several clubs are understood to want further tightening of the regulations, while other sources argued the purpose of the new Premier League rules is less to challenge major deals on the front of shirts, but more to counter the approach taken by City of having a high number of lower-valuation sponsorships with links to Abu Dhabi as a way to top up their commercial revenue. It is why any deal over £1 million will be subject to review by an independent assessment.
A different Premier League marketing executive said his club could send out fifty messages to brands and receive ten responses, of which only two might be positive. “People think it is easy and glamorous, but it is a tough world out there. A brand such as Vodafone will have approaches from football, rugby, cricket, various marketing agencies and individual representatives of players. It is a major risk, in these times, for a chief executive of a big brand to sign off on long-term deals. On global deals, these clubs are competing against Real Madrid, Barcelona, golf tournaments and Formula 1.”
One well-placed source at a Premier League club, speaking on the condition of anonymity, concludes: “If you ask the Liverpool or Arsenal commercial team to find another £15 million per year, that’s difficult. The salespeople are out there every day, sweating for every pound, following a pandemic in which sponsors across sport have been requesting rebates, deferrals and discounts. Not every club has the comfort of being underpinned by sponsors known well to those who run their club. It is why more regulation is needed.”
Adam Crafton covers football for The Athletic. He previously wrote for the Daily Mail. In 2018, he was named the Young Sports Writer of the Year by the Sports' Journalist Association. His debut book,"From Guernica to Guardiola", charting the influence of Spaniards in English football, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018. He is based in London.
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