In a deal that values the owners of English soccer champions Manchester City at $4.8 billion, private equity firm Silver Lake has agreed to make a $500 million equity investment into the Premier League club.
Silver Lake will have a stake of a little more than 10% of Abu Dhabi-controlled City Football Group (CFG) which owns Manchester City, said the companies on Wednesday.
This confirms an earlier report from the Financial Times.
With soccer attracting more fans from lucrative markets such as Asia, the Middle East and the United States, Europe’s top soccer clubs have drawn in big money from some of the world’s richest oligarchs in the last decade. The clubs’ property portfolios are seen as lucrative assets.
Manchester City’s biggest domestic rival, Manchester United, is owned by the American Glazer family; French soccer champions Paris Saint Germain are owned by Qatar Sports Investments.
“Silver Lake is a global leader in technology investing, and we are delighted by both the validation that their investment in CFG represents, and the opportunities for further growth that their partnership brings,” said City Football Group chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in a statement.
According to the City Football Group, none of its existing shareholders were selling equity stakes as part of the Silver Lake deal. It went on to add, the Abu Dhabi United Group would remain as the majority shareholder in CFG with a stake of around 77%.
Incidentally, earlier this month, Man City’s reported in its annual report that it had drawn in record of $687 million (535.2 million pounds) in revenues making 2018-19 its fifth consecutive year of profitability.
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