Man City owners agree new deal with Etihad as £620m project in the US key
Yesterday at 05:05 PM
Manchester City’s relationship with Eithad Airways is among the longest running and – rightly or wrongly – is certainly the most controversial in the Premier League’s 32-year history.
Etihad is effectively owned by the United Arab Emirates state, whose Abu Dhabi royal family are in turn the de-factor owners of Man City.
It is through the front-of-shirt and naming rights partnership that City are alleged to have disguised equity funding from their owners in order to circumvent Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
City themselves have denied every one of the 115 charges levelled at them by the Premier League in the strongest possible terms.
Significantly, the Court of Arbitration for Sport deemed there was insufficient evidence that Abu Dhabi United group covertly funded City via the Etihad relationship when UEFA brought similar charges in 2022.
Whatever the outcome of the 115 charges case, which is currently being heard at London’s International Dispute Resolution Centre, City’s partnership with Etihad will always be contentious for what it represents.
Kicking off in 2009, the Etihad deal has been City’s single largest source of income outside of TV rights in recent years, roughly equivalent to the cash they earned from 31 home matches in the last financial year.
City have evolved into commercial titans since the ADUG takeover, earning £341.1m un annual revenue from sponsorship merchandise and events at the last count.
Analysts agree that the way City have cultivated their brand in recent seasons is a work of genius, with the club almost always found leading digital marketing and content production trends.
Part of that strategy has been orchestrated in tandem with their 11 sister clubs in the City Football Group network.
Now, the latest news from City’s sprawling multi-club empire shows that the owners do not intend to cut their ties with Etihad any time soon.
Man City sister club gets new Eithad Airways naming rights deal
Some critics that the other 11 clubs in the City Football Group are more like subsidiaries than sister clubs.
However, that is manifestly not the case at New York City FC, where considerable resources have been diverted to turn the MLS side into one of the biggest names in American football in their own right.
By far the most significant funding commitment Abu Dhabi United have made to NYFC is the £620m they are spending to build a new purpose-built football stadium in Queens.
Set to open in 2027, the team have now announced that the stadium will be named Etihad Park in a similar move to the deal that has seen the airline sponsor Man City’s home stadium since 2009.
With Man City looking to extract more cash from the Etihad deal after the Premier League was forced to rewrite its Associated Party Transaction (APT) Rules, the news from New York is particularly prescient.
Man City’s APT case: The latest from Premier League HQ
The APT case that City claimed victory from in October has been seen by many as a warm-up for the crescendo of the 115 charges hearing.
If that is the case, it bodes relatively well for City as they have managed to get the Premier League to make several concessions over their APT rules.
The two biggest victories have been to hand over access to the Premier League’s database of commercial deals in order to give better ground to establish fair market value, plus the reconsideration of soft loans as a subsidy.
Among the revelations from the 175-page summary of the tribunal’s findings was that City have tried to get a new and improved Etihad agreement past the fair market value assessment to no avail.
They may now feel they have more flexibility to eke a few extra million out of their signature commercial partnership, although their primary aim is to have the whole APT system declared null and void.
Indeed, the next big juncture will come in February when a tribunal will give their ruling on the legality of the APT system as a whole.
