City’s Guilty Finding Hands Rivals a Nine-Year Bill

An independent Premier League commission found Manchester City used sham sponsor deals to book more than £900 million ($1.19 billion) of owner money as commercial income. The Tuesday, September 29 ruling covers nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18 and leaves a separate sanctions hearing still unlisted.

City denies the findings and has until Friday, October 2 to appeal. Rival clubs now have a first-instance record they can take to a compensation claim, and that paper trail will outlast any points deduction.

Owner Money Booked as Sponsorship

The Premier League said the club arranged sham contracts with commercial partners and relied on sham agreements with others, so that sponsor companies paid only a portion of the fees on the books. Abu Dhabi United Group Investment and Development Ltd, which owned the club, funded the rest. The commission also found further sham arrangements, again funded by ADUG, that let City record lower operating costs than it incurred, plus a circular image-rights deal with an entity called Fordham.

The league’s Tuesday statement said the purpose of those schemes was to artificially inflate revenues and cut costs by more than £900 million during the affected period, so the club would appear to meet spending limits. Restated, the commission found, City would have broken both Premier League profitability tests and UEFA’s break-even rules by a very substantial amount in every season those tests applied.

THE HEADLINE SPLIT

• Recorded fees: City booked £949.94 million as Abu Dhabi sponsorship income from 2009/10 to 2017/18.
• Sponsor base: Those sponsors paid £119.25 million, 12.6 percent of the recorded total.
• Owner tagged sum: ADUG paid the other £830.69 million, 87.4 percent, which the commission treated as equity dressed as commercial revenue.

Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, tied the numbers to a decade of rule-breaking rather than a single accounting dispute.

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.

Richard Masters, Premier League chief executive, in the league’s September 29 statement

The commission concluded that by its conduct the club clearly intended to circumvent the Premier League rules. It also found that during a four-year investigation the club made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the inquiry, with three of four alleged co-operation breaches upheld and Charge 4(B) not proven.

The Tagged Sum Ran for Nine Seasons

ADUG took 90 percent of the club in September 2008 and the rest the following year, then put in more than £190 million of equity in the first season and a further £295 million in 2009/10. By late 2009 the club had missed its commercial budget and was staring at a loss larger than Chelsea’s then-record £140 million single-season hole from 2006, a mark City was adamant it should not break. Owner cash would not count as relevant income under the UEFA rules then coming in. Sponsorship would.

In early 2010, the commission found, the club devised a plan to disguise shareholder funding as commercial partner revenue. Deals were written at well above fair market value. Each fee split into a base sum the sponsor actually paid and a tagged sum ADUG paid. City booked the whole recorded fee as commercial income. Documents were generated so sponsors would not be on the hook for more than the base, and so regulators and even the club’s auditors would not see the tagged money as equity.

ABU DHABI SPONSORSHIP FEES BY TRUE PAYER

Across the nine seasons the recorded fees ran at 8.0 times the money sponsors actually paid, and the owner share climbed from 83.3 percent in 2009/10 to 92.5 percent in 2017/18. The commission rejected City’s later account, that the Abu Dhabi government rather than ADUG had subsidised the sponsors, as an explanation concocted well after the event. Evidence from several important club witnesses was false in key respects, and certain witnesses were found dishonest.

One working example sits in May 2013. Less than a week before the 2012/13 year closed, the club was £9.9 million short of UEFA’s test. Modified sponsor agreements were generated in a matter of days, without the sponsors even being approached, to raise recorded fees for events that had already happened and for a US tour. The shortfall was plugged. In 2012 the club also ran Project Longbow, a multi-strand push to lift revenue and cut losses. The commission said many strands were genuine. The Fordham Arrangement was not. Fordham, described as little more than a front for ADUG, bought the club’s image-rights entitlement at an inflated price, putting £24.5 million onto income and keeping £49.414 million of costs off the books. Three separate pay devices, of £8.866 million, £7.4 million and £0.5 million, were met by ADUG off the accounts.

Burnley Already Collected on a One-Season Breach

The sporting penalty is still unlisted. The civil bill is not theoretical. On June 10, 2026, a Premier League commission ordered Everton to pay Burnley £26 million in damages and a further £9.1 million in interest after finding that Everton’s 2021/22 profit-and-sustainability breach caused Burnley’s relegation. Everton had finished 16th on 39 points, Leeds 17th on 38, Burnley 18th on 35. Everton later took a 10-point deduction, cut to six on appeal, in a different season. Burnley argued the sporting advantage belonged in 2021/22. The commission agreed on the balance of probabilities.

That ruling is the first inter-club compensation award for PSR, and Everton has appealed it as fundamentally flawed in law and fact. The model still matters because the City decision is a finding of intentional, concealed misconduct across nine seasons, not a one-year overspend of £19.5 million against a £105 million cap. Causation and quantum will be fought over for years. The rule that lets a commission write the cheque is already in the book.

THE BURNLEY TEST RIVALS CAN COPY

• The sporting gap: Burnley had to show Everton’s breach, not some later penalty, caused a four-point swing and a relegation.
• The money: Burnley had sought £51.7 million; the panel assessed £26 million of loss and added £9.1 million of interest.
• The route: The claim ran under the league’s own disciplinary rules, not a High Court writ, once a first-instance finding of breach existed.

Section W of the handbook lets a commission, after it has found a complaint proved, order compensation unlimited in amount to any club. Rival clubs have already taken legal advice on that route. Liverpool is among those that reserved the right to claim if the charges stuck. A one-season, four-point relegation case produced a £26 million principal. A nine-season title case is a different scale, and the limitation clock on 2009-18 seasons will itself become a fight.

Who Finished Second in the Charge Years?

Three of City’s eight Premier League titles since the 2008 takeover sit inside the charged window: 2011-12, 2013-14 and 2017-18. Manchester United finished second in 2011-12 and 2017-18, and Liverpool finished second in 2013-14. The same span also covers the 2010-11 FA Cup and EFL Cups in 2013-14, 2015-16 and 2017-18, so the clubs that lost those finals now have a documented finding to put against lost prize money, European places and commercial follow-on.

The handbook does not name title-stripping as a listed penalty. It does allow a commission to impose any combination of the listed measures or such other penalty as it thinks fit, which is the clause everyone is reading for honours. Even if titles stay on the board, the compensation argument does not need them to move. It needs a proven breach, a sporting advantage, and a number.

TROPHIES INSIDE THE CHARGED WINDOW

Liverpool’s 2013-14 near-miss and the 2015-16 League Cup final sit on that list together, which is why the Merseyside club is treated as the side with the widest set of live claims. United’s two second-place finishes in title years are cleaner on the league table and messier on quantum, because a runner-up already banked a large share of prize money. Stoke, Sunderland and Arsenal have cup finals rather than titles, which makes the loss easier to price and easier to attack as too remote. None of those clubs needs the sanctions hearing to start a claim. They need the Tuesday finding to survive appeal, or enough of it to keep the breach intact.

City Must File Its Appeal by Friday

City’s public line has not moved since the charges went out in February 2023. The club’s Tuesday statement said it was disappointed and surprised, called itself innocent, and said the opinion contains clear material errors of law, principle and fact and is unsafe. It promised to be relentless in regulatory and legal forums. On Saturday, chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak told supporters that confidence and intent in proving innocence was as strong as when the case began.

Ferran Soriano, the club’s chief executive, went further in a video to staff, reducing the whole case to one accusation and calling the commission’s view a Premier League conspiracy theory.

The whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation: that the owner’s personal money was somehow and secretly put into the club via some sponsors from Abu Dhabi. This is just not true. Irrefutable evidence has been provided to the Premier League commission that shows that it could not happen and that it did not happen.

Ferran Soriano, Manchester City chief executive, in a video to club staff

He said the evidence included bank statements, money transfers and witnesses, and that lawyers would now file an appeal. He reminded staff that in 2020 the club went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on related issues and won. That route is closed here. A Premier League appeal goes to a three-person Appeal Board appointed by Sir Gary Hickinbottom, chair of the judicial panel, and the board’s decision is final under the rules, with only a narrow later path into arbitration on process. Soriano also said the club would seek compensation from any party that tries to damage it, which is the same weapon rivals now hold in the other direction.

THE PATH TO TUESDAY

1. December 2018: The Premier League opens its investigation after leaked club emails and documents appear.
2. February 2023: The league issues a complaint under Section W, later described as 115 alleged breaches in four broad categories.
3. 16 September 2024: A 42-day independent hearing opens; 27 factual witnesses give evidence, 24 of them for the club.
4. 6 December 2024: The hearing closes, leaving about 7,000 pages of transcript and a core bundle of tens of thousands of pages.
5. 29 September 2026: The league publishes a redacted core decision after an Appeal Board confirms it is a final award.
6. 2 October 2026: City’s deadline to file an appeal against the findings.

The commission itself called the wait after the hearing much longer than it had wished and regrettable. The delay is now part of the compensation fight, because older seasons sit closer to limitation arguments and because City kept the titles, the prize money and the time value of that cash while the decision was written.

A Sanctions Hearing Will Not Settle the Debt

Now that the charges have been proved, sanction is a further private hearing before the same independent commission. No date is set. Masters called the case the most significant in Premier League history and said the league was committed to moving swiftly through the rest of the process. Swift, in this case, still means an appeal window, a sanctions hearing, possible appeals against the penalty, and then the inter-club claims that do not need the league to finish first.

WHAT RULE W.55 PUTS ON THE TABLE

• A reprimand: The floor of the menu, and not the expected landing point after a finding of intentional concealment.
• An unlimited fine: Money the club can pay without touching the league table, and the option most easily absorbed by ADUG.
• Points scored or to be scored: The live sporting lever, including a deduction large enough, in theory, to force a relegation fight.
• A recommendation of expulsion: The commission can recommend that the league expel the club from membership; the board still has to act.
• Compensation to others: An order, unlimited in amount, to pay any person or club, which is the clause that turns Tuesday’s finding into a bill.

Compared with recent PSR cases, the scale is different. Everton’s six-point deduction and Nottingham Forest’s four points were single-cycle overspends. Chelsea’s self-reported hidden payments ended in a £10 million fine and a suspended transfer ban. None of those cases produced a nine-season finding that owner equity was run through sham sponsor contracts. Pep Guardiola left the Etihad at the end of last season, so whatever sporting penalty lands will fall on a squad and a manager who were not in the room for 2009/10. The compensation claims will still point at the titles and places those earlier squads took.

Unused Football Leaks material is already being talked about as a second wave, which tells you how clubs and supporters are reading the document: not as a closed file, but as a first extract. City can still overturn findings on appeal. Until Friday it does not even have to have filed. The commission has already found that £830.69 million of recorded sponsor income was owner money, and that finding is the asset other clubs will try to cash.