Well, Not a relatively new stadium with a capacity of 50k. That to for a club of City’s fanbase. I do think that proved a major point in the Sheikhs deciding to buy the club and also Thaksin Sinawatra before them.
How much did Tottenham have to pay to get the new stadium done ? As did Everton etc.
City paid what 22m initially for the stadium of close to 50k capacity and , Yes. They have done upgrades to it later. But it’s still a substantial asset in hand.
They have put a billion quid into the stadium since they bought it. What the city council contributed to the original construction is about what city paid in legal fees a year to fight this case
And the Shiekhs could afford to easily spend on the global Etihad campus etc etc because they already had a modern , built up stadium for them.
Tottenham built their stadium for close to a billion, Everton got theirs for 750m , City got their stadium for relative peanuts and had the money to obviously build other football infrastructure around it.
Spurs built a state of the art entertainment complex that included a football pitch. The city of Manchester built a relatively cheap athletics stadium on a strict budget that was needed enormous investment to match the state of the art football stadiums of the time, or to keep pace with the next generation stadiums that would come later.
You can probably make an argument that the new location was a better one than the old Moss Side location for this sort of expansion
And Manchester City negotiated the rights for the name of the stadium and gave it to Etihad for 15m a year. They give the City of Manchester the amount on the lease and pocket the rest.
I disagree. After the calciapoli scandal in Italy, that season’s winner was left void due to Juve winning the league but being heavily involved in the scandal.
Inter do go around claiming it, but the record books leave it empty, as the league never officially gave it to them. Same thing needs to happen here
The Etihad stadium rights deal is 15m a year , Man City paid the City 3m a year on lease for the stadium.
They probably got 120m over a 10 year period from that money laundering scheme alone. And then added a bit more to build that academy. That academy is a huge source of profits to them now.
During the same time, They could keep their teams very competitive as well because the stadium wasn’t eating into their revenue. Not that they didn’t cheat there too with all the other 130 charges cases.
All the time when other clubs have had to spend out of their own pockets or take exorbitant loans to increase their stadium footfall to maximize their earnings as per FFP.
And you’re not allowed to offer extra incentives to sign individual academy players, like private school education. So City offer that to everyone. No favouritism, so not against the rules. But other clubs can’t compete with that.