Metalartin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 15 Jul 2015
- Messages
- 12,372
Firstly, he said he found the details of 7 major deals via publicly available information. Only 3 of those are UAE based. The smaller deals are guesses but they are listed publicly as commercial partners. Don't they sort of have to be by definition? You're not buying this "hidden deals" bollocks are you?I referenced cityblue brain before and his work is good.
I think he has underestimated UAE sponsorship income and the £65m-£67.5m was confirmed over 8 years ago.
That's a long time ago and presumably increased since then. Before anyone jumps on me again this is irrelevant as per the "Abu Dhabi" clause but is a nice to know or guestimate.
Harder still for the other Abu Dhabi sponsorships which back in 2014 (Etisalat, Aabar and TouristCA Abu Dhabi) were reported as a collective c£50mi)
So the smaller deals are guesses, but because we know our maximum commercial value(deloitte) for last years accounts, we know there's only £78m(or less) to settle between 38 different commercial partners for the rest of it. Only 4 of those are UAE based. Is it really reasonable to suggest out of 38 partners, most of it is coming from 4 UAE based partners?
He's done some guesstimation based on what we know sure but I don't think we throw it all out of the window on pure speculation. Maybe the Etihad deal has increased, the rest of the UAE deals, I very much doubt have increased that much. Aren't they mostly recent deals bar Etisalat? Visit Abu Dhabi is likely up to date information which settles the major deals. We had some smaller short term event based deals(Expo Dubai) if I remember right. It does look like we are keeping the number of those UAE deals down deliberately, by swapping them out like that. I doubt City would want more attention drawn to the Etisalat deal in particular again(if it has increased, they'll have gone with conservative valuations at negotiations), so it would be a stretch to assume most of the increases last year and this year are attributed to Etihad.
Personally, I would want to see something of substance before I believe the increases in the past two seasons is "all UAE money". Even if we do have the 30% rule to fall back on, it's the optics as well. The club were even looking for a new shirt sponsor(confirmed) in 2018/19 up until the pandemic hit. That says to me the ownership/board want to show the club is global player now. Less reliant on UAE based deals, not more reliant.
Edit(confusing): 8 Years ago would make 2014. What am I looking at firstly because it looks like that source is suggesting we increased from £45m in 2011/12, to £65m in 2012/13. A £20m increase after just one year of the deal we signed in 2011. It just doesn't seem likely we'd risk renegotiating so quickly into a 10 year deal to me. Maybe we did though.
Or were those projections to work out if we had a right to increase our deal(s) in 2014?
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