Your statement which ends “unless they are owned by the same people” is plain wrong.
IAS24 which UEFA use is about related companies. That is defined in the standard. It includes ownership and major influence, fine. But the new PL rule goes well beyond that and is about ‘associated companies’ What exactly this means is unclear because the drafting of the rule is opaque and convoluted. But common ownership is not necessary to be caught by the rule. Some interpretations of the rule suggest that merely being from the same country is enough to be caught. If the PL has called our Etihad sponsorship ‘associated’, it will be interesting to see their reasoning, as City has no director, executive etc etc on the Etihad board and Etihad has none on our board. So why is it associated?
(We do not actually know if the PL has made this ruling, but it’s a good guess.)
That’s the rub.