City Football Group was founded in 2013 and Manchester City contribute 77% of its annual revenue
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Sheikh Mansour, Owner of Manchester City (middle) and Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak (left)
Sheikh Mansour, Owner of Manchester City (middle) and Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak (left)
(Image: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
The parent company that owns Manchester City has posted losses of £122.2million for the 2023/24 financial year, taking the cumulative losses of the business to almost £1billion.
City Football Group (CFG), founded in 2013 and majority owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, with US private equity giants Silver Lake holding an 18% stake, has become one of football’s ownership powerhouses, creating a huge portfolio of clubs across the globe.
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Manchester City, the dominant force in English football over the past decade, winning seven Premier League titles since 2014, as well as a UEFA Champions League crown and two FA Cup triumphs during that period, have turned their competitive success into financial success, and they are by some distance the most valuable asset in the CFG portfolio.
For the 2023/24 financial year, a year in which the club won the Premier League title, City posted a pre-tax profit of £74million, with record revenues of £715million. It was the fourth year in succession that the club had posted a profit, a feat now a rarity at the top level of European football, an unprofitable environment.
But the successes of City haven’t made significant enough inroads to turn CFG into a profitable enterprise, with the latest set of financials for the group taking cumulative losses since the business was founded to £972.8million.
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CFG has 13 clubs in its portfolio, including the likes of Girona, Troyes, Lommel, New York City FC, Palermo, Mumbai City, Yokohama F. Marinos, Melbourne City and Bahia.
Revenue for the group as a total stood at £933.1million, but Manchester City accounted for almost 77% of that figure. For context, Girona, a side that has outperformed expectation in Spain’s La Liga, generated around £60million, while New York City delivered less than £50million in revenue for the group.
Manchester City are very much the club that sits at the top of the chain for CFG, with colours and branding aligned with many, although not all of their teams.
Multi-club ownership groups have become increasingly prevalent in football over the past decade, with the likes of Red Bull and Chelsea owners BlueCo22 acquiring multiple sporting assets.
The motivating factor behind why clubs doing can differ, with some clubs seeing it as a way to create a player pathway that has tentpoles in every key market and can ultimately find players that can be impactful for the biggest fish in the pond at some stage, which is, of course, Manchester City. But even if players don’t progress in that way, player trading can be a valuable revenue stream across a portfolio of clubs.
It also has benefits in terms of finding synergies, whether that is through data and scouting or player recruitment, as well as potential commercial benefits for clubs that can sell deals across a multitude of clubs. It also provides revenue diversification.
But next year’s CFG results will likely tip the club over the £1billion mark in terms of cumulative losses given that Manchester City are expected to see a more challenging set of results for 2024/25 given they could yet miss out on the top four in the Premier League, have spent considerably in the January transfer window, and suffered an early elimination from the Champions League in the play-off round having struggled through the revamped league phase.