Manchester City F.C. Ownership And Finances
The Ownership of Manchester City Football Club traces back to 1894, when Ardwick A.F.C. dissolved and were reformed as Manchester City Football Club Ltd. Over recent years, the ownership and finances of Manchester City Football Club have been tumultuous with various owners of contrasting fortunes much in line with their inconsistent trend on the pitch and the club's hierarchy maintain the club is in a period of "significant transformation".
In the 2009–10 season, the club are the fifth richest football club in England by revenue and overall are the 11th worldwide with a revenue of €144m according to Deloitte, and have been consistently in the top 20 for numerous years. The club's most recent annual financial report revealed revenue increase rose 40% to €144m, strong figures for a club who were not in European football in the 2009–10 season. The club posted a loss of £121m which included the approximate £125m spent on transfers in the 2009/10 season. The club's hierarchy have noted that heavy investment on new players and modernisation of facilities has created the loss, investment is expected to abate in coming years now the club's infrastructure has been modernised and the squad has the necessary strength to challenge at the top.
As of September 2009, the club has been fully owned by Sheikh Mansour, one of football's wealthiest owners, with an estimated individual net worth of at least £17 billion with a family fortune of at least $1 trillion US dollars. Since taking over he has wiped off Manchester City's £305 million debt, and has donated to charitable causes linked with Manchester City Football Club whilst improving the club's infrastructure for staff and supporters. Large scale redevelopment of the land around Eastlands is currently being planned with the project being led by architect Rafael Viñoly with plans which will turn the city into a "European Mecca" for football with a new training facility and leisure complex.
More publicly, the club's spending has focused more on the acquisitions of new players. It was estimated that since the takeover by Sheikh Mansour in September 2008 the approximate spend on incoming transfers has been £300m not taking into account revenue which contributes to the transfer budget. At the time of the September 2008, Sheikh Mansour set £500m aside for the club to invest in transfers at immediate utilisation with the ulterior objective of pushing Manchester City to the zenith of English and European football.
Read more about Manchester City F.C. Ownership And Finances: Future Eastlands Redevelopment - Etihad Campus, History
Famous quotes containing the words manchester, city and/or ownership:
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“They had their fortunes to make, everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were schooled in and anxious for debates; forcible in argument; reckless and brilliant. For them it was but a short and natural step from swaying juries in courtroom battles over the ownership of land to swaying constituents in contests for office. For the lawyer, oratory was the escalator that could lift a political candidate to higher ground.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)