Post by Macmoish on Jul 8, 2011 6:34:14 GMT
Guardian
Manchester City to test financial fair play with naming rights deal
• Etihad Airways to buy naming rights for Eastlands
• City stand to earn more than £100m from deal
* Daniel Taylor and Owen Gibson
Manchester City are close to announcing a record sponsorship deal to allow Etihad Airways, the airline owned by the Abu Dhabi government, to take naming rights for the stadium in an agreement that will be a significant boost to the club's attempts to fall in line with Uefa's financial fair-play rules (FFP).
The deal will be confirmed at a news conference at Eastlands on Friday, with the club potentially in line to bank well in excess of £100m over the course of a long‑term arrangement.
The details have not been disclosed but City's new position within the game, backed by the enormous wealth and ambition of the Abu Dhabi United Group and their involvement in the Champions League for the first time, means they could bank an estimated £10-£15m a year from the airline and possibly even more.
The naming rights could provide an early test, however, for Uefa's FFP panel, which requires any sponsorship deal with a party related to the club's owners to pass a "fair value" test.
City have been trying to increase their revenue to meet Uefa's new criteria but Etihad's close links with the club's owners will almost certainly mean Uefa seek to ascertain that the airline has not paid an inflated price.
The new rules apply from next season, although Uefa will not begin assessing club accounts until the 2013-14 season. At that stage the licensing unit will assess club accounts from the previous two seasons, requiring clubs to break even subject to an "acceptable deviation" of €45m (£40m) over that period. City's last financial figures showed a loss of £121m and that figure could be even higher when the next statement is published in October.
Etihad already pay £2.3m a year as the club's shirt sponsor and, if everything is approved with the naming rights, the deal should go a long way to smoothing the club's thinking in terms of the new financial rules.
To the frustration of the manager Roberto Mancini, City's owners have placed new spending constraints on him this summer, acutely aware that if they ignore FFP they could actually be removed from the Champions League. While Manchester United have already spent £50m this summer, so far City have only signed Gaël Clichy from Arsenal for £7m and the Montenegro defender Stefan Savic for a similar amount.
The governing body have said they will use benchmarking exercises and specialists in the field to determine whether sponsorship and naming-rights deals are above their true market value. If it is deemed that they are, the excess must be deducted from break-even calculations.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jul/07/manchester-city-naming-rights
INDEPENDENT/Ian Herbert
City seal £15m ground deal to stem huge losses
Manchester City will today make a big stride towards their goal of driving down losses to fall within Uefa's financial fair play rules by announcing a stadium naming rights deal with Etihad Airways believed to be worth between £10m and £15m a year.
The sponsorship deal, to be announced at a news conference at Eastlands this morning, will inevitably raise eyebrows: City are owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Etihad Airways is the Gulf state's government-owned airline. Uefa will want to be certain that this is not simply a way of circumventing their new regulations.
It will certainly help City to compete in the Champions League, a competition in which they will make their bow this season. Mansour has spent over £500m since he took over the club in September 2008 and Roberto Mancini, the club's manager, is reportedly keen to add to the squad this summer.
Uefa have warned in the past that they will respond to any attempt to get around their fair play rules. The European governing body's head of club licensing, Andrea Traverso – the man tasked by president Michel Platini with introducing the system – said last year: "Should the clubs put in place specific structures that allow them, in ways we didn't think about, to easily go around some of the principles, we could amend these rules to catch up with these situations. You can call them loopholes but you can call them as well an evolution of the market which could not be taken into consideration at the time the rules were drafted."
Uefa will expect to see City's books to establish the level of naming rights and sponsorship deals and how they are being accounted for. City's accounts for the year ended 31 May 2010 show they lost £121.3m, 31 per cent more than a year earlier.
City's results from last year revealed that revenue from sponsors and partners had grown by 400 percent to £32.4m, because of agreements with Abu Dhabi-based companies. These included the telecommunication company Etisalat, Aabar Investments PJSC, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Etihad. The club's current Etihad shirt deal, meanwhile, is worth £2.3m.
City's attempts to drive down their losses to Uefa's permissible figure of £40m over the next three seasons is behind the current desperate attempts to offload players bought on hugely inflated wages to help the club progress to the Champions League. Wayne Bridge, Emmanuel Adebayor and Craig Bellamy will not travel with the team to Los Angeles today, on the first leg of the club's pre-season tour of the United States. Offloading them will be difficult if they want wages in line with those paid at City. Bellamy will not contemplate a cut.
www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/city-seal-16315m-ground-deal-to-stem-huge-losses-2308709.html
Manchester City to test financial fair play with naming rights deal
• Etihad Airways to buy naming rights for Eastlands
• City stand to earn more than £100m from deal
* Daniel Taylor and Owen Gibson
Manchester City are close to announcing a record sponsorship deal to allow Etihad Airways, the airline owned by the Abu Dhabi government, to take naming rights for the stadium in an agreement that will be a significant boost to the club's attempts to fall in line with Uefa's financial fair-play rules (FFP).
The deal will be confirmed at a news conference at Eastlands on Friday, with the club potentially in line to bank well in excess of £100m over the course of a long‑term arrangement.
The details have not been disclosed but City's new position within the game, backed by the enormous wealth and ambition of the Abu Dhabi United Group and their involvement in the Champions League for the first time, means they could bank an estimated £10-£15m a year from the airline and possibly even more.
The naming rights could provide an early test, however, for Uefa's FFP panel, which requires any sponsorship deal with a party related to the club's owners to pass a "fair value" test.
City have been trying to increase their revenue to meet Uefa's new criteria but Etihad's close links with the club's owners will almost certainly mean Uefa seek to ascertain that the airline has not paid an inflated price.
The new rules apply from next season, although Uefa will not begin assessing club accounts until the 2013-14 season. At that stage the licensing unit will assess club accounts from the previous two seasons, requiring clubs to break even subject to an "acceptable deviation" of €45m (£40m) over that period. City's last financial figures showed a loss of £121m and that figure could be even higher when the next statement is published in October.
Etihad already pay £2.3m a year as the club's shirt sponsor and, if everything is approved with the naming rights, the deal should go a long way to smoothing the club's thinking in terms of the new financial rules.
To the frustration of the manager Roberto Mancini, City's owners have placed new spending constraints on him this summer, acutely aware that if they ignore FFP they could actually be removed from the Champions League. While Manchester United have already spent £50m this summer, so far City have only signed Gaël Clichy from Arsenal for £7m and the Montenegro defender Stefan Savic for a similar amount.
The governing body have said they will use benchmarking exercises and specialists in the field to determine whether sponsorship and naming-rights deals are above their true market value. If it is deemed that they are, the excess must be deducted from break-even calculations.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jul/07/manchester-city-naming-rights
INDEPENDENT/Ian Herbert
City seal £15m ground deal to stem huge losses
Manchester City will today make a big stride towards their goal of driving down losses to fall within Uefa's financial fair play rules by announcing a stadium naming rights deal with Etihad Airways believed to be worth between £10m and £15m a year.
The sponsorship deal, to be announced at a news conference at Eastlands this morning, will inevitably raise eyebrows: City are owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Etihad Airways is the Gulf state's government-owned airline. Uefa will want to be certain that this is not simply a way of circumventing their new regulations.
It will certainly help City to compete in the Champions League, a competition in which they will make their bow this season. Mansour has spent over £500m since he took over the club in September 2008 and Roberto Mancini, the club's manager, is reportedly keen to add to the squad this summer.
Uefa have warned in the past that they will respond to any attempt to get around their fair play rules. The European governing body's head of club licensing, Andrea Traverso – the man tasked by president Michel Platini with introducing the system – said last year: "Should the clubs put in place specific structures that allow them, in ways we didn't think about, to easily go around some of the principles, we could amend these rules to catch up with these situations. You can call them loopholes but you can call them as well an evolution of the market which could not be taken into consideration at the time the rules were drafted."
Uefa will expect to see City's books to establish the level of naming rights and sponsorship deals and how they are being accounted for. City's accounts for the year ended 31 May 2010 show they lost £121.3m, 31 per cent more than a year earlier.
City's results from last year revealed that revenue from sponsors and partners had grown by 400 percent to £32.4m, because of agreements with Abu Dhabi-based companies. These included the telecommunication company Etisalat, Aabar Investments PJSC, the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Etihad. The club's current Etihad shirt deal, meanwhile, is worth £2.3m.
City's attempts to drive down their losses to Uefa's permissible figure of £40m over the next three seasons is behind the current desperate attempts to offload players bought on hugely inflated wages to help the club progress to the Champions League. Wayne Bridge, Emmanuel Adebayor and Craig Bellamy will not travel with the team to Los Angeles today, on the first leg of the club's pre-season tour of the United States. Offloading them will be difficult if they want wages in line with those paid at City. Bellamy will not contemplate a cut.
www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/city-seal-16315m-ground-deal-to-stem-huge-losses-2308709.html
