New York City FC Thread (new away kit P245)

[Falastur]

Re: New York City

What the hell are you on about?

Nobody is talking about ways to "rule bend" people are talking about ways to increase our revenue within the existing rules of FFP. We are not going to be able to compete with The Shite or Munich using their existing business model, so City will have to think creatively of ways to increase revenue within the existing rules.

Your crystal meth suggestion is rather far fetched, but not as far fetched as just expecting CIty to just pack up shop and say "Oh well, United, Barca, Real and Munich can never be caught now, so let's just stop trying." The people running the club are mega ambitious and mega intelligent, they will explore every opportunity to give us an edge (legally).

You say the rules are there, and cannot be "broken" or "bent" or they will just change them. Well, if the people running Google or Starbucks had your attitude they'd be paying hundreds of millions more in UK tax. Now morally, I understand the argument they shouldn't be avoiding paying tax, but the reality is they have the best accountants in the world working for them to ensure they are the most tax efficient companies they can possibly be, while still remaining legal and making a profit.

In any business, to be successful you have to find angles to be as successful as possible within the laws of the territory you are trading in. You can't have the attitude of "well there's no point in trying that angle, because they'll just close that loophole down the line". Wake up.

Lots of people have been talking about rule bending. For instance all the people who say that we should use the club to sign players for crazy money and then loan them to City. That's rule bending. But I'm pretty sure that UEFA would say that even running the club as a separate entity but claiming its revenue for City is rule bending. I mean, how do you think UEFA would react if we weren't looking at an MLS club, we were proposing to buy, say, Inter Milan, and everyone was saying "great, let's use their profits to fund our way through FFPR. Do you not think that that would look like blatant cheating? Just siphon off every pound over the break-even mark in City's bank account? It's part of the attitude people on this forum have of looking for absolutely any way of finding extra revenue, rather than using the ways you are supposed to go - sponsorship, match day revenue and merchandising.

I am instead putting forth my - admittedly slightly irritated - counter-theory that City are trying to play it by the book. UEFA are not going to let us claim NYCFC's revenue for our own, and we're not going to. The only way to beat FFPR is to stick so rigidly to the FFPR guidelines that they can't find a single thing to do us for, because I am certain that if we start using the kind of cheats that people here say we should do then UEFA will come down on us like a ton of bricks. Let's not forget here that FFPR exists for the sole purpose of stopping us. It's not like UEFA aren't going to move the goalposts if it looks like we're having to resort to dirty tactics. Heck, they might even end up moving the goalposts if it looks like we're actually going to make it legitimately.

 

[Beezer]

Re: New York City

True, profits are only seen by a handful of teams. However, if a team can attract a crowd, it can be profitable (I heard it was once like that in England). Given that since 1996, survival in the US sports market is not guaranteed, MLS is currently designed for self preservation, similar to the reasons for FFPR. The salary cap, draft, "allocation money", and myriad of other rules are in place to prevent one team from outcompeting the others to the point of instability. Team owners pay big money to join, and never be relegated. Investors are hoping that one day MLS will overcome one of the major sports, and earn that big TV money payday. NBC paying the big bucks for EPL rights next season is a step towards that long, long journey.

Man City gaining name recognition via a successful MLS club might help get shirts on the store racks. City has a long way to go though to gain some significant market share in the States. Rags, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Barca, Madrid, Bayern, are the international options for jerseys to buy on a store rack in the US. I once hassled a store manager about stocking City jerseys, and he said something rude about the club and would never stock them (an obvious rag supporter-never shopping there again). Similar to the UK, the US only gets the sensationalist news snippets about mercenaries, etc. Might help to have a local affiliation show how they actually run a club, and get some good press.

 

[Shaelumstash]

Re: New York City

What the hell are you on about?

Nobody is talking about ways to "rule bend" people are talking about ways to increase our revenue within the existing rules of FFP. We are not going to be able to compete with The Shite or Munich using their existing business model, so City will have to think creatively of ways to increase revenue within the existing rules.

Your crystal meth suggestion is rather far fetched, but not as far fetched as just expecting CIty to just pack up shop and say "Oh well, United, Barca, Real and Munich can never be caught now, so let's just stop trying." The people running the club are mega ambitious and mega intelligent, they will explore every opportunity to give us an edge (legally).

You say the rules are there, and cannot be "broken" or "bent" or they will just change them. Well, if the people running Google or Starbucks had your attitude they'd be paying hundreds of millions more in UK tax. Now morally, I understand the argument they shouldn't be avoiding paying tax, but the reality is they have the best accountants in the world working for them to ensure they are the most tax efficient companies they can possibly be, while still remaining legal and making a profit.

In any business, to be successful you have to find angles to be as successful as possible within the laws of the territory you are trading in. You can't have the attitude of "well there's no point in trying that angle, because they'll just close that loophole down the line". Wake up.

Lots of people have been talking about rule bending. For instance all the people who say that we should use the club to sign players for crazy money and then loan them to City. That's rule bending. But I'm pretty sure that UEFA would say that even running the club as a separate entity but claiming its revenue for City is rule bending. I mean, how do you think UEFA would react if we weren't looking at an MLS club, we were proposing to buy, say, Inter Milan, and everyone was saying "great, let's use their profits to fund our way through FFPR. Do you not think that that would look like blatant cheating? Just siphon off every pound over the break-even mark in City's bank account? It's part of the attitude people on this forum have of looking for absolutely any way of finding extra revenue, rather than using the ways you are supposed to go - sponsorship, match day revenue and merchandising.

I am instead putting forth my - admittedly slightly irritated - counter-theory that City are trying to play it by the book. UEFA are not going to let us claim NYCFC's revenue for our own, and we're not going to. The only way to beat FFPR is to stick so rigidly to the FFPR guidelines that they can't find a single thing to do us for, because I am certain that if we start using the kind of cheats that people here say we should do then UEFA will come down on us like a ton of bricks. Let's not forget here that FFPR exists for the sole purpose of stopping us. It's not like UEFA aren't going to move the goalposts if it looks like we're having to resort to dirty tactics. Heck, they might even end up moving the goalposts if it looks like we're actually going to make it legitimately.

But my point is, far from being a "cheat" there is actually a provision in the FFP rules for revenue generated from use of your brand worldwide not directly related to a club's core activities.

For example the Real Madrid property development in the middle east. You surely cannot argue that a load of apartments built on a man made island is a core activity of Real Madrid? An MLS franchise operating under the "City" brand is much more closely affiliated with the activities of a football club. I'm not saying it is that simple, but if Manchester City was bought as a marketing tool for Abu Dhabi, I think it is fair to assume NYCFC is being bought as a marketing tool for Manchester City, and Abu Dhabi.

You idea that we are going to cut our cloth and run on a tight budget to comply with FFP in the long term is naive. We will never be able to compete with the European "Big 4" with our current revenue. With FFP the way it is, our only hope is to challenge it in court (which I don't think we'll do) or double our revenue, which I think we are going to try to do. But we will need a new creative business model to do that, because we will not do it based on matchday / corporate activities similar to the big 4.

 

[Hung]

Re: New York City

que ?

As far as I am aware, there is no FIFA restriction on the same 'Club' having more than one team competing in other leagues around the World. There is a restriction on owning more than one club competing in the same competitions/area, so, I don't think you can own two clubs competing for places in UEFA competitions for example. However, since Premier League clubs do not compete with MLS clubs, one assumes that a single club can have a team in the Premiership as well as the MLS.

On this basis, it would follow that income generated from the MLS would be allowable income into the club. We are under no geographical restriction as to where we generate income from - the 'brand' can have global value (look at Utd).

Of course, like everybody else on here, I'm hypothesising, but on the face of things, it doesn't seem unreasonable. I dare say however that if this is a loophole that we can exploit, Platini with the support of Utd and Bayern will move to close it quickly.

I am 143.354% sure that UEFA will not allow this. Even if they realise that it's an actual loophole, they will just close it. But as others have said, it's Mansour and ADUG buying this club, not City. It may be City-branded but that does not mean we can claim their revenue. Seriously, for the love of God stop thinking that FFPR was just invented as a mental exercise in rule bending. And just to top it all off, as I said, MLS teams make virtually no money. In fact

MLS is well-known as an incredibly unprofitable league.

I put it in bold, underlined and on its own line in the hope that more people would read that and realise that this is not about trying to break FFPR. This is about selling City and Abu Dhabi's names around the world, and principally to the USA. Not about finding new profit margins by absorbing other companies. Just about selling City shirts indirectly. I mean, if City were that desperate to break FFPR don't you think they would have come up with something genuinely inventive, like installing a crystal meth lab under the Etihad or something?

You sound very authoritative on the subject, or somehow 'in the know'. Is that the case, or is your usual approach to matters that you have an opinion on one of uninformed arrogance?

 

[S04]

Re: New York City

Early in 2008 the Abu Dhabi top brass gave the nod to extended investments in the Sports & Media business.
The fact that Sheikh Mansour as a prominent member of the ruling Al-nahyan family himself started a mini media group as well as buying City the very same year was hardly a coincidence.

There was several reasons for this that I can go into later but one of them was absolutely to try to give a more positive picture of the whole Gulf-region to its western allies, of particular interest there is of course USA who tend to be rather..well, paranoid about muslims in general and arabs in particular.
All the stuff CiTC and the UAE Embassy does over there must be seen in this context.
So a venture like NYCity FC or whatever might fit right in for the US/UAE campaign.

 

[Falastur]

Re: New York City

You sound very authoritative on the subject, or somehow 'in the know'. Is that the case, or is your usual approach to matters that you have an opinion on one of uninformed arrogance?

The "arrogance" was not intended to be arrogance, it was exasperation. To me, this issue is similar to the "media agenda" thing that lots of people get worked up for or against in other threads of this forum, only it's worse because the split is something like 60-40 over whether there's an agenda, but it's about 95-5 over whether FFPR is there to be abused or to be obeyed. Basically, ever since FFPR was first announced people on this forum have been trying to find ways for us to sidestep it. The idea of using another club to incur our huge costs has been mentioned on several occasions - originally related to Sheikh Mansour's "other club", Al Jazira back in the UAE. A lot of people suggest that Abu Dhabi/Etihad Airways should just sign a £1 billion/year deal with us, or Mansour should buy a million shirts or the club should create a special £100 million season ticket for him to buy every season. It's not so much the way that people constantly come up with these crazy schemes but the way that they never think of the reasons it might not work, and then when the odd story comes out saying that we are about to fail FFPR and UEFA are considering whether to ban us soon, people start actually asking why the club isn't doing these crazy schemes as a get-rich-quick-scheme way of cheating the noose. In turn, I get exasperated because I see so many people either getting upset at the club for not doing this stuff, or simply constantly proposing these schemes and claiming that there is no way that UEFA can object since it's all above board.

I should probably just not get involved, but I go into these debates thinking that I can genuinely help persuade people that FFPR can be done right, and it never seems to work out.

As for the MLS stuff - the time that most of you guys spend watching German/Spanish football on your Sky/ESPN subscriptions when City aren't on, I just spend reading about football on the internet. Additionally I have a Maths degree and tend to just remember random facts about stuff, which is totally useless in normal life but actually quite helpful in forum conversations and helps me to kind of absorb numbers relating to club finances. And I mean what I say about MLS. I've read a number of blogs and such saying about how the MLS teams need to raise their revenue. Only five teams out of 19 posted a profit in 2011, and back in 2008 the largest revenue any club posted was $4m. By contrast the largest loss posted by a club in the same season was $4.5m, which gives you an indication of the small amount of money to be made there. I also was talking total fact earlier in this thread when I pointed out that MLS teams share their merchandising revenue equally among all clubs (in fact technically the league owns the merch and just gives handouts to the clubs) so there's precious little opportunity to absorb that money for the sake of our FFPR, and those above who have commented that the league owns the players so buying to loan to City isn't really viable either.

 

[acquiesce]

Re: New York City

Early in 2008 the Abu Dhabi top brass gave the nod to extended investments in the Sports & Media business.
The fact that Sheikh Mansour as a prominent member of the ruling Al-nahyan family himself started a mini media group as well as buying City the very same year was hardly a coincidence.

There was several reasons for this that I can go into later but one of them was absolutely to try to give a more positive picture of the whole Gulf-region to its western allies, of particular interest there is of course USA who tend to be rather..well, paranoid about muslims in general and arabs in particular.
All the stuff CiTC and the UAE Embassy does over there must be seen in this context.
So a venture like NYCity FC or whatever might fit right in for the US/UAE campaign.

Very much this. All these pitches they have opened up in NYC, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, et al have been hand in hand with the UAE embassies.

Even if we do not directly get revenue from this "franchise" or are unable to loan players (I'm not sure on the loan rules to be truthful), it would definitely grow the City "name" in the states where we are even behind the likes of Everton and Fulham in my eyes. It would be very easy to set up a City Store on site at the stadium. During halftime show highlights from the City matches, stuff from the youtube channel, CITC endevours. Propaganda to get the City name out there and sell merchandise and grow the brand. There are lots of ways that this can benefit City and I really don't see anything that could directly harm City.

 

[Falastur]

Re: New York City

Early in 2008 the Abu Dhabi top brass gave the nod to extended investments in the Sports & Media business.
The fact that Sheikh Mansour as a prominent member of the ruling Al-nahyan family himself started a mini media group as well as buying City the very same year was hardly a coincidence.

There was several reasons for this that I can go into later but one of them was absolutely to try to give a more positive picture of the whole Gulf-region to its western allies, of particular interest there is of course USA who tend to be rather..well, paranoid about muslims in general and arabs in particular.
All the stuff CiTC and the UAE Embassy does over there must be seen in this context.
So a venture like NYCity FC or whatever might fit right in for the US/UAE campaign.

Very much this. All these pitches they have opened up in NYC, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, et al have been hand in hand with the UAE embassies.

Even if we do not directly get revenue from this "franchise" or are unable to loan players (I'm not sure on the loan rules to be truthful), it would definitely grow the City "name" in the states where we are even behind the likes of Everton and Fulham in my eyes. It would be very easy to set up a City Store on site at the stadium. During halftime show highlights from the City matches, stuff from the youtube channel, CITC endevours. Propaganda to get the City name out there and sell merchandise and grow the brand. There are lots of ways that this can benefit City and I really don't see anything that could directly harm City.

Exactly this. This would be the right way of doing it to my mind.

 

[StrutterBlue]

Re: New York City

MCFC Ruining Soccer since 2013.....see what i did there ;)

 

[Peoria Blue]

Re: New York City

The Cosmos are joining the NASL and the MLS Commissioner Don Garber has said point-blank they are not in the running for an MLS franchise last week.