Erling Halaand part of Man City plans to take on Real Madrid off the pitch
Manchester City beat Real Madrid last season en route to winning the Champions League and will now try and topple their commercial success
Erling Haaland shares a moment with Antonio Rudiger last season.
Manchester City enjoyed an amazing 2023 but were recently knocked off the top of the Deloitte Money League by Real Madrid.
Despite being knocked out of the Champions League by Pep Guardiola’s Treble winners, the Spanish giants used increased sponsorship deals, strong retail performances and sellout crowds at the revamped Bernabeu to increase their revenues by £119m. City achieved a record year on the pitch, although the main thing holding them back from bigger growth is their matchday revenue.
“City’s matchday revenue is €83m [£71m],” said Tim Bridge, lead partner in Deloitte’s Sports Business Group. “But the question is how they can kick over the €100m revenue marker, which is the threshold of clubs with innovative new stadiums. Real Madrid and Barcelona will be way over that figure in the future, and Tottenham are significantly over it now.”
City have already confirmed plans to expand their stadium, but in the meantime there are also areas in which they will target (and already have been targeting) to increase their revenue in addition to chasing the continuation of their on-field success.
Capitalise on the spotlight
City’s success on the pitch last season brought them an incredible amount of interest around the world. The club enjoyed their best year ever for TV viewing figures and were the most watched team in Europe as well as being part of five of the six most viewed Premier League games in the past four seasons and seeing significant growth through their own media and social media channels.
There was also an 88 per cent growth in Cityzens membership and now have over 350 official supporters’ clubs in 76 countries, which is a starting point for how City turn the eyeballs on them into revenue but only that. More promising was the summer tour of Asia, which netted over £15m with sell-out crowds and a huge take-up of merchandise; Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, and Jack Grealish are the biggest brands to market.
“What has happened to other clubs in the past is now happening to Manchester City,” said City CEO Ferran Soriano in June. “We play the best football in the world. People watch us, they fall in love with our football, and they become fans.
“That brings commercial opportunities and more money to invest in better players and better facilities. It’s a virtuous cycle.”
The future of pre-season tours is uncertain given 2025 will see the revamped Club World Cup take place in the United States, which City have qualified for by virtue of winning the Champions League. Next summer represents that last confirmed big chance for the Blues to make a sizable chunk of money from their tour, even if they will get additional revenue from the FIFA competition.
Get more out of what is already there
This sounds obvious, and some of it is. City have already agreed improved sponsorship deals with major partners including OKX, Asahi and Nexen since winning the Treble while season tickets have gone up again despite the club achieving record profits in the most recent financial year.
Until City can expand the stadium though, they need to try to get more out of matchday revenues than a small rise in season ticket prices will bring. Their capacity does limit them, but they have also made less money than other clubs with grounds of a similar size.
“When I’ve historically worked out the average revenue per fan per season, the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool get around £1,600 per season and City are only getting around £1,000,” explained football finance expert Kieran Maguire in November.
“The reason those two clubs do spectacularly well is Liverpool have very few season tickets – 27,000 in a 54,000 capacity – so they sell a huge number of matchday tickets, which you can charge a hell of a lot more for than you can with a season ticket divided by 19. As part of the expansion, City will probably look to deal with that fanbase that they’ve got – both domestically and overseas – who get a chance to go to a few games a season but pay more for their tickets, go to the megastore and spend on merchandise and are more likely to buy the programmes and so on.”
City have already made the interesting decision last year to make the majority of tickets to every home game on sale before the beginning of the season. That is good news for international fans who will probably spend more at and around the game and can for the first time travel with the certainty of a match ticket, and less good news for local supporters who may have less disposable income to be able to buy multiple tickets all at once where before they could more easily match the cost against their finances.
That decision followed the call to remove any need for loyalty points as a priority for securing tickets to see the Champions League semi-final to Real Madrid at home last season. While officially done for safety reasons, it did not go unnoticed that that matchday was City’s biggest for retail sales before the launch of their new home kit after winning the Premier League.
Make money on more days
City’s investment extends to more than football and their partnership with entertainment powerhouse Oak View Group should pay off once indoor arena Co-Op Live opens this year. The Etihad usually hosts a number of concerts throughout the year, but this project will give City the opportunity to make money on days that aren’t matchdays – widening their scope of opportunity from the football season to all through the year.
This will really kick on when plans for the hotel at the stadium come to fruition as well as the entertainment that is planned as part of the North Stand expansion. With the hope that the extra seating can be in place by August 2025 (and watch out for the number of season tickets and hospitality seats there are in it when it does), that should be a major contributor towards City staying competitive at the top of the Money League in the coming years.
“It’s very exciting. We’ve released and unveiled our plans for the development,” chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in June. “Every year there’s always something new. Every year. Because there’s always a need to improve and evolve and grow.
“We don’t stand still. We never stood still. The Etihad, we started somewhere and every couple of years we will do something, whether it’s the Tunnel Club, whether it’s the new stands, whether it’s the seating. And now we’re going to have a wonderful, wonderful development around it that’s going to just enhance the whole area, is going to be great for the fans and it’s going to bring, I think, positive revenue for the club.”
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