Sorry to be pedantic and I know Nobbins has studied law and probably knows a heck of a lot more about it than me but I think he's got himself turned around at 10:48 of the video(and still hasn't corrected it), due to, in my opinion, the deliberately ambiguous terminology used. It's a matter of:
"Artificially inflated revenue" - Where the inference is that the sponsors are only paying a small portion and the owner is thereby inflating the revenue the club is receiving from a sponsor, by the way of disguised equity(by paying the difference themselves). Or in other words, overstating what a sponsor is actually paying.
vs
"Artificially inflated sponsorships" - Whereby, the value/amounts of the deals themselves is considered overvalued/overinflated. PSG as an example, were accused of this in two different monitoring periods. To deem a deal overvalued/inflated, requires FMV valuations carried out by firms from a list approved auditors, chosen by UEFA and the PL themselves AND then proof that the sponsor is in fact a related party. Neither the PL or UEFA have ever tried to charge City on the basis that the deals themselves were overvalued because their own valuations came back showing they were within the acceptable range.
So City were 'worth' what those deals represented, regardless of who was paying what, in principle. If you were to be picky, UEFA said Etisalat's(and Abaar's?) was slightly high(and that they felt it was a related party, perhaps for this reason alone) but not enough to make an issue of it and simply asked City to agree not to increase it during the next monitoring period. City disagreed with their assessment but did sign off on the terms not to increase it, in the 2014 agreement.
The two are very different accusations, I'm sure everyone can agree. Which is why it's never a good idea for an organisation to use separate terms, with different meanings, which are so similar. It leads to confusion and the wrong conclusions being drawn, even from people who are generally well educated on these matters. Since UEFA changed the name FFP because by their own admission, it was too misleading. Surely they've noticed how much confusion having such similar terms for two different accusations is causing? Perhaps they have but are quite happy for it to continue.
