00:00Pep Guardiola, Manchester City's most successful ever manager who left the club at the end of the last season,
00:05has also put out a statement saying he is always behind the team and that they will get through this.
00:12Well, let's get more on this story.
00:13Dave Power is a sports business journalist and lecturer at the University Campus of Football Business in London.
00:19Dave, thanks for joining us.
00:21Just how consequential could this verdict be for Manchester City and also for the Premier League as a brand?
00:28It's the biggest, most seismic governance decision the Premier League has ever taken.
00:32I think it's probably the biggest we've seen in football.
00:35For Manchester City, the potential repercussions are huge.
00:39The most severe punishment could be relegation.
00:42But as you scale down those heavy points deductions to stop them being competitive in years to come are very
00:49much on the table.
00:50But for the Premier League, it is a case of brand.
00:52And it's not optimal for them to lose kind of a multiple champion in more recent years during the period
00:59where the Premier League enjoyed massive growth globally.
01:03So they'll be very, very concerned.
01:05But they're also concerned that they need to show that they have strong regulatory teeth, given the independent football regulator
01:12breathing down their neck.
01:13What about for other clubs that who perhaps missed out on titles, managers who lost their jobs?
01:19How will they be feeling about this?
01:21And this is one of the key points.
01:23I mean, where does the actual legal kind of ramifications end?
01:26Because clubs who missed out on titles, clubs who were relegated as a result of Manchester City performances, etc.
01:33And also players who would have got title winning bonuses and things like that may have cause to kind of
01:40try and get some element of compensation.
01:42Because Everton, of course, had to pay millions of pounds worth of compensations at Burnley after they upheld a complaint
01:48against the Premier League.
01:49So it's hard to see where it ends, and it's hard to know exactly what the punishment will be.
01:55But it has so many stakeholders and so many potential affected parties that it will take almost years to unpick,
02:01you feel.
02:02What about the wider implications as well?
02:05Could this have any implications on, say, trading links between the UK and the UAE?
02:11Yes.
02:12And I think, you know, we have a prime minister for Great Britain now who is the former mayor of
02:17Greater Manchester.
02:18And anyone who's been to Manchester in more recent times will see that Manchester's local economy has boomed.
02:24There is a lot of real estate development, a lot of shiny skyscrapers.
02:27Much of this arriving after the UAE invested in Manchester City.
02:34It was friendly trade links, and that has continued to be a very friendly relationship with the UAE and Greater
02:40Manchester in the north more generally.
02:41I don't think it's optimal for this to happen for the local area and local trade links.
02:46We saw, you know, back in 2021 when the PIF acquired Newcastle, you know, there wasn't too much pushback from
02:53the British government when they tried to get involved because it had ramifications for potential power plant building up in
02:58the north east.
02:58So these are very serious considerations that have to be taken into account when deciding what kind of punishment is
03:04handed down.
03:04The sponsorship was inflated by over a billion dollars over a decade.
03:09Just how much does that give a team a competitive advantage on the pitch?
03:14It's not just the actual number of how much, you know, was invested over and above what they would have
03:19not, you know, fairly got in terms of commercial sponsorship.
03:22It's everything else that comes with it.
03:24So the success that arrived after the investment or after that kind of overinvestment in the playing squad allowed them
03:30to qualify for the Champions League year after year after year and kind of bake in those really high revenues
03:35for £100 billion plus per year,
03:37which allows them to grow their squad, to improve every single year, to sign better players, to sign Erling Haaland
03:43on a 10-year deal, etc.
03:45So I think, you know, it goes above and beyond just the headline figure.
03:49It's the success which has been achieved due to the money they've had access to by being successful, which is
03:54going to be the key point.
