An independent commission reports that Manchester City artificially boosted its finances by more than £900 million through commercial arrangements it describes as “sham” deals. The commission says the club arranged sponsor-like transactions intended to disguise the true sources of funding.
The Premier League is cited as stating the club used “sham” arrangements to distort its reported financial position. According to one outlet, the commission finds that some sponsors paid only part of the agreed fees, with the remaining amounts supplied by the club’s owner, Abu Dhabi United Group. The differing outlet accounts focus on the scale of the alleged distortion and on how the mechanism worked, but they describe the same core issue: sponsor payments that were supplemented by ownership funding rather than reflecting the full amounts that were contractually represented.
