Aabar Investments

It's like, okay, Etihad and Etisalat and all the... right?

Was it Aabar back in the day? Do you remember 2009, '10?

Yes, it's obviously coming from a, again, linked...

The thing that depresses me about this whole thing is that it's taken this long, and it's taken a leak.

Um, the disguised funding stuff is obviously the big deal, the really big deal.

Did Manchester City inflate their income artificially by, um, funneling, paying a large amount of the sponsorship money that was You know, should have been paid by Etihad, Etisalat, Aabar, Visit Abu Dhabi, et cetera.

And effectively, the commission said, yes, the, you know, an entity other than the actual sponsors paid that money to City to the tune of 900 million pounds of, uh, effectively that City cooked their books to the tune of 900 million pounds over the nine years that this applied to.

So that's 100 million pounds a year of crooked money City had at their disposal to, to, on average, to buy and p- pay players.

Did City's, uh, declared commercial revenue suddenly drop from the 232 million reported in 17/18, of which 145.73 million, um, were sponsorship fees and just 11 million was actually paid by Abu Dhabi companies themselves? No, it then went on to increase between, by between 8.5% and 13.9% in four of the next five seasons, ultimately reaching 341 million pounds of commercial revenue by 22/23, which was a record for an English club.

And, and as so many of us have said, as even, you know, Arsène Wenger and, and J- and J.W. Henry said when this all started, the idea that Manchester City, um, with a small, uh, a relatively small English support base, never mind, um, a relatively small global support base, could get to a position of having, uh, such significant commercial revenues and ultimately having the biggest commercial revenues in English football just makes no logical sense.

No, and, and a majority of those commercial revenues since 2010, 2011 have come from Abu Dhabi-based companies, principally Etihad, but also Etisalat, Aabar, um, all sorts of stuff.

I mean, even, even supposedly independent sponsors like, I think it's Nexon, isn't it, who were their sh- sleeve sponsor for a while.