English Premier League soccer heavyweights Manchester City are guilty of all financial breach charges laid by the league and artificially inflated their organic revenue by over £900 million ($1.19 billion) across nine years, an independent commission has confirmed.
In an announcement made last night, Man City, who continue to protest their innocence and have until October 2 to submit an appeal, have been found guilty by a three-person independent commission, with a redacted version of the 40-page report now publicly available.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
It contains details of how the Manchester club – which won three Premier League titles during the nine years these financial breaches took place, between 2009 and 2018 – concocted 'sham' sponsorship deals with commercial partners to inflate their organic revenue and thus not fall foul of the league's Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. They filed inaccurate accounts for every single season during this time period – if these had been filed properly, the club would have broken league spending limits significantly, as well as those set down by European soccer's governing body UEFA.
Essentially, City used owner funding from their Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) ownership vehicle to top up and boost the value of sponsorship deals signed with Abu Dhabi-based partners between 2009 and 2018. As the commission put it, the club was "relying on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs."
In total, City recorded £949.9 million in sponsorship income across the nine seasons in question – the commission found that only £119.2 million of this actually came from sponsors, with the other £830.6 million simply provided by the club owners instead.
In addition, "sham" image rights deals were used to top up players' earnings, as well as those of former manager Roberto Mancini – the club claimed they were paid via a third party, when in reality those monies simply came from ADUG as well.
News of the guilty verdict first broke late last week.
The commission also found that – on top of the financial breach charges – City are guilty of all but one charge related to non-cooperation with the Premier League investigation, which has been taking place since late 2018 and which was only publicly unveiled in 2021, before formal charges were laid in early 2023 and a hearing took place in late 2024.
In addition, the commission established that – in what could lead to serious consequences for the individuals involved, beyond this process – several "important factual witnesses" provided by the club gave evidence "they knew to be untrue, and so had been dishonest."
In the Premier League's announcement of the news, league chief executive Richard Masters said: "The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade.
"It also vindicates the Premier League's decision to pursue this case against Manchester City. While the process to date has been both long and difficult, the League has remained determined that the facts be established independently."
In terms of reaction from Manchester City, club CEO Ferran Soriano sent an internal message to club staff, in which he said the process was simply a "Premier League conspiracy theory," and said that the club would eventually be vindicated in its claims of innocence.
It has been reported that City's appeals process will run alongside a hearing on how the club should be sanctioned – penalties could include a hefty fine, retroactive stripping of trophies, points deductions, and potentially even Premier League expulsion.
On top of the £830.6 million in sham sponsorship payments, meanwhile, City also hid costs to the tune of a further £70 million, partly through a fake image rights payment scheme, run by a company called Fordham, which turns out to have simply been another front for ADUG payments.
The commission concluded that "the purpose of these schemes was found to have been to artificially inflate the club's revenues, and reduce its costs, by more than £900 million during the affected period, to appear to comply with financial rules.
"The consequence of this … was that the club filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators."
City went from a mid-table Premier League side before the takeover by ADUG in mid-2008 to title winners four years later – in order to achieve this meteoric rise so quickly, they embarked on a significant spending spree in the transfer market.
However, without the organic commercial appeal to balance their books when embarking on this spree, they therefore had to rely on ADUG equity funding, disguised as sponsorship income.
The charges were first laid after German publication Der Spiegel published internal financial documents from City in late 2018, following which both the league and UEFA started their own investigations.
In terms of previous run-ins with the soccer authorities, they were first found guilty of breaking financial rules by UEFA in May 2014, and were fined €49 million, as well as having a transfer cap imposed.
Then, in 2020, they were fined another €30 million by UEFA for having "overstated [their] sponsorship revenue" in disclosing financial information to UEFA between 2012 and 2016 – only for this punishment to be overturned at the Swiss Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Aside from any potential punishment against City meted out by the league itself, there is also a strong possibility that any club or entity which feels City gained a material advantage against them through breaking these financial rules could attempt to bring legal proceedings against them as well, for lost revenues.
