What is the business model behind City Football Group?

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Marvin

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Why are the City Football Group buying clubs across the World?

Is it to leverage Manchester City? If it is, it wont work because no club wants to be a project for another. I don't understand the footballing or business rationale behind it.

I can see that it may offer at the margins some synergy for clubs associated within a wider group, but it must be a massive drain on financial and management resources.

I can think of two reasons for doing so

1) City have always faced efforts to marginalise us. Perhaps through making City a global phenomena we win friends and influence

2) Because we can. All clubs are projects of their owners. It enables the owner to have fingers in more pies. We have a concept of football that we want to spread throughout the world and if you are a billionaire why wouldn't you do it?

I am struggling to see a compelling argument about why it benefits MCFC or the supporters. I see no big downside either, but I struggle to get the concept.

Can anyone explain to me why I should be interested in the wider City Football Group? I can't explain it beyond the vague notions above.
 
One of the core ideas is that you make massive amounts of money through sponsorship when you can offer representation in all areas of the world. Would you like to spend £50m/year sponsoring Chelsea, or £70m sponsoring City, NYCFC, Melbourne, Yokohama etc.

Then there is the scouting and development side of things. We can have a top scouting department in Uruguay, Japan, China, Australia, Spain and bring players in under one umbrella. There will be 8 year olds in Uruguay getting recruited to and trained in the style of play we want, producing players who in theory would fit in perfectly if they're good enough. Those players can then get loans across the group to develop in the best way possible and then either sold or ultimately, ideally, join the big clubs in the group.

Personally I'm not that bothered about the other sides. I'll pay attention to loanees at them, and I'd vaguely like them to do well, but that's it. They should be beneficial for us overall and worth the grief we get because of it but there's no need to care about them past that.
 
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Marvin said:
Why are the City Football Group buying clubs across the World?

Is it to leverage Manchester City? If it is, it wont work because no club wants to be a project for another. I don't understand the footballing or business rationale behind it.

I can see that it may offer at the margins some synergy for clubs associated within a wider group, but it must be a massive drain on financial and management resources.

I can think of two reasons for doing so

1) City have always faced efforts to marginalise us. Perhaps through making City a global phenomena we win friends and influence

2) Because we can. All clubs are projects of their owners. It enables the owner to have fingers in more pies. We have a concept of football that we want to spread throughout the world and if you are a billionaire why wouldn't you do it?

I am struggling to see a compelling argument about why it benefits MCFC or the supporters. I see no big downside either, but I struggle to get the concept.

Can anyone explain to me why I should be interested in the wider City Football Group? I can't explain it beyond the vague notions above.
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I can't answer as I don't know enough about it. But what I do know is whatever the reasons you can take City out of the equation. As far as I know it's a concept Soriano had originally when he was at Barca so whatever the reasons it's something that could apply to any club, just so happens it's us.
One things for sure there will be very good reasons, and when the rest catch on we'll be 15-20 rears ahead.
 
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domalino said:
One of the core ideas is that you make massive amounts of money through sponsorship when you can offer representation in all areas of the world. Would you like to spend £50m/year sponsoring Chelsea, or £70m sponsoring City, NYCFC, Melbourne, Yokohama etc.

Then there is the scouting and development side of things. We can have a top scouting department in Uruguay, Japan, China, Australia, Spain and bring players in under one umbrella. There will be 8 year olds in Uruguay getting recruited to and trained in the style of play we want, producing players who in theory would fit in perfectly if they're good enough. Those players can then get loans across the group to develop in the best way possible and then either sold or ultimately, ideally, join the big clubs in the group.

Personally I'm not that bothered about the other sides. I'll pay attention to loanees at them, and I'd vaguely like them to do well, but that's it. They should be beneficial for us overall and worth the grief we get because of it but there's no need to care about them past that.
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Thanks. That makes sense specifically in relation to Puma
 
Not sure its purpose is to benefit City.
Certainly City benefit now because most of the major investment has been placed our way but beyond investment stage we will financially mature and generate profit.

From a financial point of view this may be where the Holding Company comes into its own because without physically shifting our profits they can be used to offset any losses sustained by other members of the Group ie they can be invested in. We don't lose those profits we simply don't pay tax on them.

I'm not an accountant but I know the Holding Company path can be extremely good at saving tax as long as investment can be shown in other Companies within that Group.
Things change rapidly but that's how it was 20 or so years ago.
 
decmancity said:
Advertising power
A headstart on other teams in terms of scouting and developing young players.
Ability to sell our 'consultancy package' e.g Scouting, training, marketing and so on.
Capture the hearts of all the youngsters out there who have known nothing other than Man City being successful.

EDIT; Hear it from the man himself, https://www.mancity.com/citytv/behind the scenes/all or nothing prime/global club prime all or nothing additional scenes
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I'll always as a Manchester City fan view my world from my seat at the Etihad. I struggle to take on this vision. My outlook is how does this benefit my football club in terms of players, finance to buy more players, improvements to the ground etc. This seems to be a bit more altruistic, enabling a vision for sport because we can. I wonder how much this comes from the boardrrom of MCFC or the owner. if I had just created one of the best football clubs in the world, I think my ambitions might grow.
 
It’s benefited us in the past with the Lampard situation with New York City and we made some money on Aaron Mooy.

Soriano wanted to do it at Barcelona but never got it off the ground, New York has been a bit of a disappointment as they went big with the overseas players in Villa, Lampard and Pirlo but then never replaced them and they look nothing like being competitive at the moment.
 
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