How Manchester City's financial reckoning could reshape the UAE's sporting ambitions

The 2008 takeover of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE vice‑president and deputy prime minister, turned the English club into a Premier League and European powerhouse, backed by huge Abu Dhabi investment in players, coaching, and infrastructure.

That sporting success is now, however, overshadowed by the Premier League’s biggest financial scandal, with the future of investments from the UAE in European sport, and more besides, uncertain.

In February 2023, the league charged City with 115 alleged breaches of its rules between the 2009‑10 and 2017‑18 seasons.

By late September 2026, an independent commission had found City guilty on all but one of those charges, with the full findings, sanctions, and, almost certainly, an appeal still to come, as the club continues to deny the allegations.

Early success for Manchester City

Sport, and especially the most global of games, football, has long attracted the rich and/or famous, and the ruling Abu Dhabi family were no different.

“Many Gulf elites pick and choose their investments based on personal interests - and Sheikh Mansour was and is a football fan,” Natalie Koch, Professor at Syracuse University, told The New Arab.

City, with only two league championships in its previous 133 years of existence, won the first of eight Premier League titles in 2013, and the owners continued to invest heavily. Feted coach Pep Guardiola took charge of the team in 2016, and there was a litany of star players with City shirts seen around the world.

“The relationship has been a success inasmuch as the transformation of Manchester City from a middling club in the northwest of England into a global powerhouse and serial champion has been associated with Abu Dhabi and its leadership,” Kristian Ulrichsen, Fellow for the Middle East, Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, told The New Arab.

That leadership includes City chairman and influential government official Khaldoon Al Mubarak.

“Khaldoon al-Mubarak stated in 2009 that ‘how we are handling this project is telling a lot to the world about who we are’, and the identification of the UAE with transformative change and untold success has been a key element of the storyline,” added Ulrichsen. 

It inspired others in the region. In 2011, Qatar Sports Investments, which was founded six years earlier by Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, then son and heir to the Qatari throne, took control of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).

After significant investment, dominance in France eventually translated into European success in winning the UEFA Champions League in 2025 and again in 2026.

In 2021, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund took control of Newcastle United. The club’s success has been relatively limited compared to City and PSG, as Premier League financial regulations introduced in 2013 have restricted how much loss Newcastle can absorb, curbing the sort of open-ended spending seen at some rival clubs.

Retreat from global sports

There had been signs that the flow of investment was already slowing down. Abu Dhabi formed the City Football Group in 2013, a global network of franchise clubs. With Manchester at the centre, it expanded to include 12 teams from the United States, Australia, India, Japan, Brazil, China and elsewhere.

No new club has been added since 2023, however, and in 2025 the group exited from India and, in 2026, from Japan. In April, Saudi Arabia’s PIF pulled the plug on LIV Golf after investing $5 billion since 2022.

“Political leaders in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are starting to look more closely at their balance sheets, they are also noticing that many of these splashy investments are not nearly as lucrative as they had thought or as their proponents had promised,” Koch told The New Arab.

She added that this has come at a time of economic slowdown, heightened by the ongoing US-Iran war which has hit the region hard.

“Gulf state leaders are under tremendous pressure financially and politically at home…the war is threatening domestic approval in these states. People at home in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are increasingly feeling that their own interests need to be prioritised more in this difficult time.”

It all suggests that the era of major Gulf actors getting involved in European sport and especially football in such dramatic and significant ways may be a thing of the past.

“The salad days are over, at least for the time being,” Simon Chadwick, professor of Afro-Eurasian Sport at the Emlyon Business School in Paris, told The New Arab.

“The financial returns from owning a club are questionable. The external political and regulatory terrain is complex. The tangible impacts upon football at home are minimal. And trophy assets overseas confer greater prestige on the recipient than on Gulf nations, who often find themselves accused of sportswashing or challenged by stakeholders concerned about their influence on football.”

Manchester City illustrates those risks. The club has faced unprecedented allegations of rule-breaking, bringing renewed scrutiny to the UAE officials who have been involved with it for years. The case could have implications far beyond football.

“The UAE government will likely view the verdict in the Manchester City case as a verdict on them and may take it very personally,” said Ulrichsen.

This could be especially problematic for the United Kingdom, whose biggest trading partner in the Middle East is the UAE, with bilateral trade over $33 billion in 2025. 

UAE investment in the UK has reached around $40 billion, and severe punishment of Manchester City and its officials could negatively impact that hugely important relationship even if the investigation into the club is independent.

“It may be difficult for the British government to persuade counterparts in the UAE to separate the workings of the Premier League and the independent commission from state-to-state relations, particularly since they lack the power to intervene in any way," said Ulrichsen.

Public opinion

The coverage of the situation in the UAE has, so far, been muted compared to the reaction in Doha and Riyadh. 

“Given that the leaders in Qatar and Saudi Arabia have both had increasingly turbulent relations between the UAE in the past few years, [City’s case is viewed] with a fair bit of Schadenfreude,” said Koch.

“But they will probably also pick up and sympathise with that story that this is part of a more general Western bias against the Gulf.”

She expects that this will also be the line from Abu Dhabi. “Right or wrong, the Emiratis are sure to perceive this verdict as part of that bigger Orientalist story about the Gulf not deserving to have their deserved status in international politics and industries like global sport.”

In football terms, though, this is a game full of action and drama, but it is still not yet over.

John Duerden has covered Asian sport for over 20 years for The Guardian, Associated Press, ESPN, BBC, New York Times, as well as various Asian media. He is also the author of four books

Follow him on X: @JohnnyDuerden

Edited by Charlie Hoyle