LONDON: Premier League champions Manchester City FC has released its 2018-19 annual report, declaring a club-record £535.2 million ($692.3m) revenue and a £10.1 million ($13.1m) profit.
It was a season which on the field, culminated in six trophies won across the senior men’s and women’s teams including the securing of an unprecedented sweep of all four men’s domestic titles, and off the field, saw the posting of revenues above the £500m mark for the second successive year.
The club, which this year, entered its second decade under the ownership of UAE’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, reported a profit for the fifth consecutive year and a wage/revenue ratio of 59%.
City’s financial performance was boosted by a huge new kit deal with Puma. Replacing former kit providers Nike, the deal was worth £650 million ($841.2m) over a 10-ear period.
Thanks to the new kit deal, club officials are expecting a further rise to around £560m for 2019-20, which would put them on course for near parity with neighbours Manchester United, who are projecting revenues of between £560m and £580m for the same period.
United’s revenue for 2018-19 was £627.1m, the Premier League’s highest, but will markedly drop as the club are not in this season’s Champions League.
Reflecting on what he describes as an ‘extraordinary’ season, chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak recognises that both sustained hard work and a commitment to rigorous planning have been at the heart of the club’s on and off-field success commenting that “this outcome represents not just a season, but a decade of hard work” and crucially that “the organisation is now at a level of maturity that enables us to plan on multi-year cycles both in terms of our management of squads and more widely across the business. This strategic planning has allowed us to create an environment in which continued on-pitch success is both possible and likely, and financial sustainability is a reality.”
Chief executive officer Ferran Soriano echoes these sentiments, remarking that while winning cannot be guaranteed, “we can all be sure that we will be focused, resilient and consistent in our approach,” continuing that “victories are not accidents; they are the product of careful planning, consistent hard work and the acknowledgement of the need to stay humble and hungry.”
Al Mubarak emphasises the importance of being at the forefront of development, pointing to the club’s continued commitment to invest in both youth football and premium facilities pledging to “continuously improve and innovate, be that on the pitch, commercially, in infrastructure development or in our service to fans and our community.”
