Ed Warner: Are Manchester City on course to follow the Harlem Globetrotters?

Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Manchester City play. I’m not in the camp of neutrals that finds Pep Guardiola’s team too clinical to raise the pulse. Conversely, I’ve only twice been able to bring myself to want Manchester United to win a match. 

Curious then that I was urging them on in their FA Cup final triumph over Manchester City last month (the other was in 1999). Almost an out of body experience. And it came before the extraordinary revelation that City are suing the Premier League. Respect, gone for good.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan is so eye-wateringly wealthy that it would be easy to accuse Manchester City’s owner of having more money than sense. The hagiographic sheikhsnetworths website states Mansour’s wealth to be $40bn generating annual income of $3bn. It describes this as “a testament to his vast influence and investment savvy.” His birthright may just have helped, I feel.

Think too of the financial might of the Abu Dhabi emirate that the Sheikh has to fall back on whenever his personal chips are down. A clear advantage over Sir Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United, not a member of a ruling family and estimated by the Sunday Times to have assets of a mere £24bn. 

How much sense could any one individual ever have to weigh against so many dollars? Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that City’s legal action against the Premier League – being heard in private this week and next – has objectives that must have some degree of logic, however warped. 

The club are challenging rules on Associated Party Transactions. These require independent valuations to ensure that commercial deals are not artificially inflated in order to ease compliance with financial fair play regulations. 

Unsurprisingly, City enjoy relationships with a string of Middle Eastern partners. Most visibly they play at the Etihad Stadium and have shirts plastered with Etihad Airlines, the official carrier of the UAE, headquartered in Abu Dhabi.

The success of the Premier League is founded in large part on the jeopardy of the competition, especially when compared with the major European leagues. Its financial rules are designed to nurture this precious uncertainty, as well as to protect its members from over-reaching themselves. 

The deal is sealed by the league’s collective sale of TV rights around the globe, and the requirement for 14 of its 20 clubs to agree to all major decisions. If successful, City’s legal action would blow this structure apart, and could come with punitive damages on top. 

“Well, you serve me and I’ll serve you
Swing your partners, all get screwed
Bring your lawyer and I’ll bring mine
Get together and we could have a bad time
We’re going to play the sue me, sue you blues” George Harrison (1973)

Let’s imagine for a moment you are in the City owner’s strategy room. Money is no object; it is simply the means to an end. There need be no limit to your imagination in determining that end goal. 

Crushing domination of the English game? Tick. Usurping Real Madrid as perennial favourites to win the Champions League? Tick. Club World Cup winners every time? Tick. 

And to achieve these objectives? Destroy the Premier League’s financial regulations. Then move on to Uefa’s and do the same. 

This clears the way to gather up the world’s best players, City becoming their agents’ first choice every time. Be a Galactico? Only if City don’t want you. Saudi Arabia? Only for late-career pension pot builders.

Now create a strategy to monetise this footballing constellation, because of course you have more sense than money. First, break away from the Premier League’s collective TV deal. The world will want to watch City’s matches, whoever the opponents. Simply to drool at their skills. Think the Harlem Globetrotters on grass. 

So, you’d want to be able to sell the rights to your matches yourself, country by country and directly to fans worldwide. Maybe $1 a game, 50-100m viewers each time. Could be billions of dollars a season, from which you cut in your opponents to a small minority share in acknowledgement of their presence on the pitch.

You could base the club anywhere in the world, but you happen to be in Manchester. Moving offshore probably would see you booted out of the Premier League – although strange things might just happen – so best you make sure you have the world’s greatest stadium there. 

Forget Sir Jim’s lobbying for public support to build a new Old Trafford; Sheikh Mansour would surely want a 100,000-seater venue of his own, with retractable roof and all the other trimmings. The only lobbying required would be to secure planning permission. Builders’ invoices wouldn’t be a problem.

Would City fill such a stadium? Maybe not with locals, especially those emotionally anchored in the traditions of English football. But so long as its airport has the runway capacity, Manchester could expect a fortnightly bulge in its tourist revenues as the world comes to marvel at City’s footballing hegemony. 

Ticket prices? Take a look at the American sport model. For example, you could watch the New York Yankees next weekend for between $40 and $1,000.

Such a strategy is not without its risks, of course. City could find themselves ousted from the Premier League and without any access to European football. Destined to travel the world in search of opponents. Maybe a remote member of Major League Soccer in the US or even the Saudi Pro League (local politics permitting). 

A question then for Sheikh Mansour’s strategists: do Manchester City need the Premier League more than the Premier League needs Manchester City? After all, the Globetrotters are now just a tired entertainment brand. Tickets freely available at all venues for their never-ending international tour. 

Build it and they will come

Whatever happens in the remainder of the current T20 Men’s World Cup, Sunday’s game between India and Pakistan at the temporary venue in New York will have justified the entire enterprise for the ICC and IOC ahead of cricket’s debut at the LA28 Olympics. 

I still remember vividly the feverish atmosphere at The Oval back in 2017 when Pakistan blew their arch rivals away to win the ICC Champions Trophy. No surprise then that this weekend’s match was played out before a packed, raucous crowd.

It’s impossible to construct an entire strategy to grow cricket in America on a single match between two nations who rarely play each other – and only then in international tournaments – but expect Major League Cricket to seize on this one-off occasion as encouragement that there is passion for cricket in the US to be nurtured. 

Pity the ECB in the battle between The Hundred and MLC to secure marquee cricketers every summer.

As an aside, the ICC can be forgiven for ensuring India and Pakistan play each other whenever its tournaments come around.

But can you imagine the uproar if Fifa rigged its World Cup draws to ensure that England were always grouped with Germany, or Argentina with Brazil, simply to maximise broadcast and sponsorship revenues?

Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com