Who Owns Manchester City FC?
Manchester City are one of the richest football clubs on the planet. With an estimated total worth of €825.9m, they're easily the Premier League's wealthiest team and on the world stage only Real Madrid generated more cash than them in 2022/23. However, City's vast wealth and resultant success is a recent development; while other Big Six clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool have been challenging at the top of the English top flight for decades, Manchester City were nowhere near the summit of the football pyramid at the turn of the millennium.
The club's upward trajectory can be traced back to a seismic change in ownership that took place just over 15 years ago. Most football fans have a good idea of the level of wealth held by Manchester City these days, but plenty of supporters still don't know exactly where it comes from. In this article, we'll be exploring that question by explaining who owns Manchester City, providing you with all the key details about the Manchester City owner, the group they belong to, and the legacy they've built since taking over the club.
Who Owns Manchester City FC?
At the end of the 2007/08 Premier League season, Man City finished 9th in the English top flight, over 30 points away from the league champions, their arch-rivals Manchester United. It's a far cry from today, with the east Manchester club having just wrapped up a record fourth consecutive English top-flight title.
But this success can be traced back to that summer; in September 2008, the football club was acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), an investment group owned by the Emirati royal, politician and billionaire businessman Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (commonly known as Sheikh Mansour).
Despite being an experienced businessman — in 2007, he had been appointed vice-chairman of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala Investment Company, effectively an investment arm for the royal state — Mansour had no previous experience in football before this point. But when it became clear that the club's previous owner, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was willing to sell, the Emirati royal jumped at the opportunity and bought the club for a whopping £200 billion, according to reports.
This was more than double what Shinawatra paid to acquire the club just 14 months beforehand. Straight away, a huge amount of money was poured into Manchester City, both on improving the squad and on building infrastructure for the future.
The Abu Dhabi royal family's wealth is estimated to be around $300 billion, a staggering sum that explains how they were able to invest, through ADUG, such substantial cash into their English footballing project (we'll discuss their investments in more detail shortly). Within days of taking over they signed Brazilian forward Robinho in a hugely lucrative deal that indicated the new owners' lofty ambitions, and in the following years it became clear that their vision went far beyond just one club in one English city.
What Is The City Football Group?
In 2013, Mansour founded the City Football Group, a British-based holding company designed to control multiple football clubs in what has since become known as a multi-club ownership group. Under the ADUG ownership umbrella, City Football Group (or CFG) administer a network of clubs across the world, the founder club and centre of the network being Manchester City.
Abu Dhabi United Group are 81% shareholders of the business, while the American film Silver Lake owns 18% of the group and Chinese businesses CITIC Capital and China Media Capital together make up the remaining 1% of shares.
The name City Football Group was chosen after the business' flagship club Manchester City, and one of the biggest early moves made by the group was to establish a new US-based club, New York City FC, and enter it into the MLS, in 2012.
Over in Australia, they took over Melbourne Heart and rebranded the club as Melbourne City to match this identity, and in various other countries around the world they've acquired both minority and majority shares in professional clubs, from Girona in La Liga to Montevideo City Torque in Uruguay and Mumbai City FC in the Indian Super League. CFG have also expanded into women's football, and over the coming years you can expect ADUG's football ownership group to continue growing.
The Mansour Era: What Is The Legacy Of The Man City Owner?
Manchester City have enjoyed an era of unprecedented success since Sheikh Mansour took over the club. Within four years of the Abu Dhabi takeover they won their first ever Premier League title (and their first top flight title since 1967/68), with Aguero's dramatic late winner against QPR making Roberto Mancini's side Premier League champions in 2011/12. They won the league again in 2013/14, this time with Manuel Pelligrini at the helm. During these two managers' stints, they also got their hands on two FA Cups and an EFL Cup.
In the background, Mansour's chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and the club's sporting director Txiki Begiristain (appointed in 2012) were putting the structures in place that would eventually persuade Pep Guardiola — considered by many to be the best coach in world football — to join the club. The club hierarchy believed that Guardiola would be capable of taking the team to the next level, and they were right; since his appointment, City have won six Premier League titles (including a record four consecutive wins from 2020/21 to 2023/24), four League Cups, two FA Cups and the UEFA Champions League.
Evidently, these achievements owe plenty to the many high-profile players City have signed and developed, all of whom are on extremely lucrative deals, with stars like Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne rumoured to be on over £300,000 per week.
A key factor behind all this silverware is the significant amount of money the Abu Dhabi ownership group have funnelled into behind-the-scenes infrastructure at City. When Mansour took over, the first team were training at a Carrington base that Vincent Kompany described as "a dump", and before long plans emerged for a new state-of-the-art training ground that would provide top quality facilities not just for the first team, but also for numerous youth teams and the Manchester City women's team, who in recent years have become one of the standout sides in the WSL.
The £700m+ Etihad Campus (named after the club's main sponsors) opened in 2013, with the unveiling of a modern 7,000-seater Academy stadium, a vast main building equipped with gyms, hydrotherapy areas, meeting rooms, offices and conference spaces, plus overnight accommodation for players and staff and a 56-seat auditorium which featured on the famous Man City 'All Or Nothing' documentary.
Currently, there are plans in place to further expand the Etihad Campus (on which the Etihad Stadium also stands), with the club aiming to boost stadium capacity to over 60,000 and add a new City Square fan zone and entertainment space to the area. To find out more about this project, check out our guide to the Manchester City training ground.
Controversy Around The Manchester City Owner
The vast majority of Man City fans are full of praise for their uber-wealthy owners, and it's not a massive surprise. If an ownership group is prepared to pump billions of pounds into improving a football club, generating tons of success on the pitch while also investing in the local area, supporters are likely to be onside. That being said, Sheikh Mansour, the Abu Dhabi United Group and the Manchester City hierarchy in general have received some criticism over the years.
The most high-profile controversy around City pertains to the 115 charges the club is currently facing for alleged breaking of Premier League Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR). These charges correspond to a period stretching from 2009 to 2018, in which City won three Premier League titles (as well as several other domestic trophies).
According to the Premier League, Man City did not provide them with accurate financial information during this period, and financial remunerations made to one manager over a four-year spell were not disclosed. The charges are a dark cloud over Man City's head, but the matter is moving closer to a resolution, with the club set to appear in court to face the charges on September 16th, according to ESPN.
There has also been plenty of controversy surrounding the ruling of the United Arab Emirates by the Abu Dhabi royal family, the owners of the ADUG. Human rights organisation Amnesty International have consistently criticised the United Arab Emirates, stating that the country "unduly restrict[s] the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly," and that "Authorities continued to arbitrarily detain 26 prisoners of conscience, and denied or severely restricted some prisoners' communication with their families." Accusations of sportswashing (aka using elite sport to launder the image of a country with dubious records on human rights, political freedom etc.) have followed City around consistently over the last 15 years, and that isn't going to change any time soon.
However, while those outside the club continue to have legitimate concerns about the way Manchester City Football Club is run, the supporters continue to revel in the team's success. Pep Guardiola, his players and his staff have created a winning machine, and they remain heavy favourites to win the 2023/24 Premier League title.