That’s why City are cleverer in my opinion. By having an individual as the legal owner they can operate at arm’s length and claim with justification that Etihad and the other Abu Dhabi based companies are not related parties and therefore not subject to fair market value considerations. PSG can’t do that with your government-based sponsorships. Although you appear to be relying on those a lot less now.
Not really.
As SWP's back explained PSG is owned by QSI that is a subsidiary of QIA. Of course, QIA will be under the supervision of the Emir and his close men but, as a company, it is not technically related with the companies that have sponsorship contracts with PSG, except for QNB.
However, UEFA aren't fools and they treat it all as related parties and it is the same for City : "If a club's owner injects money into the club through a sponsorship deal with a company to which he is related, then UEFA's competent bodies will investigate and, if necessary, adapt the calculations of the break-even result for the sponsorship revenues to the level which is appropriate ('fair value') according to market prices. Under the updated regulations, any entity that, alone or in aggregate together with other entities which are linked to the same owner or government, represent more than 30% of the club's total revenues is automatically considered a related party."
The important part here is the "fair value". PSG would have no problem with that if they were receiving PL money, they are just forced to funnel inflated deals to compete with that. So it is not a problem of structure per se, but more of the result of an economical context.
Also, you have to keep in mind that UEFA FFP is highly biased and manipulated according to lobbying. They had no problem with those values before the Neymar/Mbappé deal where Tebas and Barça/Madrid/Bayern started crying wolf. Then, the agreed by UEFA
fair value went down from 100 M to 58 M. Then, they decided the 58 M value they chose after 1 year audit by 2 certified companies wasn't good anymore and they needed to put it down again.
So City was smarter than PSG to not piss off the big boys, in that way they were clever. Even then, i fully expect Qatar to have weigh in the aftermath of this action and maybe the improved brand was worth it. At a long term, PSG and L1 brand will grow and the club will receive revenue streams other than Qatar streams. The big problem is to tank the fall of QTA contract value in the short term (new TV rights kicking in 2020).