Man City’s 115-Charge Saga Takes a Major Turn

Manchester City’s long-running financial dispute with the Premier League has entered a new and potentially decisive phase after an independent commission found the club guilty of serious breaches of the league’s financial regulations.

The case, which began with a Premier League investigation in 2018 and formally became a disciplinary case in 2023, concerns Manchester City’s financial reporting, sponsorship arrangements, player and managerial payments, and its cooperation with the league’s investigation.

On September 29, 2026, the Premier League officially announced that an independent commission had found Manchester City guilty of the charges relating to serious financial-rule breaches covering nine seasons, from 2009/10 to 2017/18.

The commission also upheld most of the charges concerning City’s cooperation with the Premier League’s investigation.

The Premier League said the commission found that City had used what it described as “sham” commercial agreements involving a number of sponsors.

According to the commission’s findings published by the league, some of the sponsorship arrangements did not reflect the actual financial agreements between the parties.

The league says the arrangements were part of a wider scheme in which Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), the company that owned City, funded portions of sponsorship payments that were recorded as commercial revenue.

The commission concluded that these arrangements artificially increased the club’s reported revenues and reduced its reported costs by more than £900 million during the period under examination.

That is important because financial regulations are designed, among other things, to prevent clubs from spending beyond the limits permitted by their genuine football and commercial income.

The commission said that if the arrangements had been accurately reflected in City’s accounts, the club would have exceeded both Premier League and UEFA spending limits by a substantial amount.

One of the most important issues in the case concerns the difference between genuine sponsorship income and money ultimately coming from the club’s owner.

In simple terms, the Premier League’s case was that some money which appeared in City’s accounts as commercial sponsorship revenue was, in reality, funded by the club’s owner.

That distinction matters because an owner can inject money into a football club, but financial regulations place limits on how clubs can use owner funding and how much they can spend relative to their legitimate revenue.

The commission concluded that the arrangements allowed City to present a stronger financial position than it would have had if the underlying funding had been recorded differently.

It also found other arrangements involving club expenses and player image rights that were funded by ADUG and concluded that these contributed to the wider financial misrepresentation identified in the case.

However, the £900 million-plus figure does not mean Manchester City simply received £900 million in illegal payments.

Rather, it refers to the commission’s conclusion that the schemes in question artificially inflated the club’s reported revenues and reduced its reported costs by more than £900 million over the relevant period.

The distinction is important because this is fundamentally a case about how money was represented and reported, as well as whether the underlying transactions complied with Premier League and UEFA financial rules.