£950m of sponsorship, £119m paid by sponsors — the commission found City's owners secretly paid the rest.
THE DESK — NOTES & REMARKS
CITY115 Chapter 3, follow-up to GUILTY, THE SENTENCE and THE VERDICT. YT title had to be shortened post-publish: the order's given title (102 chars) exceeded YouTube's 100-char cap and was silently truncated on upload (cut '.3' to 'Ch'); caught in the verify pass and fixed via videos.update to 'Man City's Disguised Funding Scheme Explained | CITY115 Ch.3' (60 chars), same claims, nothing added. Description/tags/category confirmed untouched by the fix.
THE LOWDOWN — THE FULL HISTORY
THE SCHEME
The Premier League's independent commission found a "Disguised Funding Scheme": sponsorship deals signed far above market value, where the sponsor paid only a fraction and the owners' company, ADUG, paid the rest, booked by the club as commercial revenue. The commission's verdict on each deal: "a sham."
THE COVER-UP
The commission also found an image-rights arrangement and a manager's consultancy payments were shams, that the club "clearly intended to circumvent" the rules, made "concerted efforts to stop and frustrate" the investigation, and that some of its own witnesses gave evidence they knew to be untrue.
NO CAS THIS TIME
In 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned UEFA's ban. This time every financial charge was proven, and there is no CAS to appeal to.
WHAT'S NEXT
City say they are innocent and will appeal by 2 October. The punishment has not been decided.
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THE TERRACES — DISCUSSION
The argument also lives in the YouTube comments ↗.