Sheikh Mansour has sold a Chinese consortium a 13 per cent stake in Manchester City for £265m. It will also give the investors a stake in the Manchester City Group’s (CFG) clubs in Melbourne City and New York City. They also have a minority stake in Yokohama F Marinos.
Sheikh Mansour has sold a Chinese consortium a 13 per cent stake in Manchester City for £265m. It will also give the investors a stake in the Manchester City Group’s (CFG) clubs in Melbourne City and New York City. They also have a minority stake in Yokohama F Marinos.
The deal values the City group at $3 billion, a tenfold increase in the £200m spent on purchasing the English club in 2008. City and its offshoots are now the fourth most valuable franchise in the world.
Not only has Sheikh Mansour recouped some of his substantial investment in the club, the collaboration should help City build their expanding fan base in the growing Asian market. Rivals Manchester United employ 55 people in their Hong Kong commercial office.
Khaldoon Al Mubarak, CFG chairman, said the company had worked for months to secure the deal to help it tap into the ‘incredible potential that exists in China’. CFG is expected to open an office in China. The purchasers, China Media Capital (CMC), are a leading private equity firm specialising in sports, media and entertainment.
The chairman of CMC, Li Ruigang, recently paid $1.3bn (Rmb8bn) for five year broadcasting rights for the Chinese Super League. These rights had previously cost Rmb50m a year. Peter Schloss, who is chief executive of a sports and media advisory firm in Beijing, told the Financial Times, ‘He wants to do for Chinese football what Rupert Murdoch and Sky TV did for the Premier League.’
President Xi included a trip to Manchester City’s academy during his official visit to the UK in October. There he appeared in a selfie with prime minister Dave Cameron and Sergio Aguero, the Argentine forward.
The move is in line with the growing trend for investors to take minority stakes in clubs as football becomes more financially secure and broadcasting revenues continue to grow, not least those from outside the UK.