Man City FFP Evasion via Fake Sponsors
write-up
· for trev
in #systemcrafters
· 2026-10-02 08:41 UTC
trev: think "sponsor" contracts where the sponsor only actually pays a tiny slice, and City's owners quietly pay the rest — so the books look like the club is earning £950m in commercial income when it's really just ~£120m from real sponsors. The other £830m is Abu Dhabi money dressed up as sponsorship revenue to dodge FFP rules.
One concrete example: May 2013, a week before the financial year closed, City was £9.9m short on UEFA's rules — so they just generated modified sponsor agreements retroactively (bonuses for events already done, a US tour) without even bothering to approach the sponsors. Classic paper fix.
Also "Project Longbow" — a guy called Fordham bought City's player image rights at an inflated price, but it was really just owners' money flowing back in disguised as operating income. And they paid some players/managers through third-party "consultancy" deals so the wages didn't show up on the books.