How have Manchester City Achieved their Meteoric Rise as a Global Football Brand?
For the majority of Manchester City’s 141-year existence, they have operated as a relatively insignificant and small-scale club living under the vast shadow casted by their local rivals, Manchester United. Since Manchester City’s 2008 takeover by Abu Dhabi United Group however – a spectacularly wealthy private equity company owned by Abu Dhabi Royal Family member, Sheikh Mansour – the club has revolutionised into a global superpower, both in terms of footballing prowess and in terms of brand size. There seems to be an irresistible tendency for much of the footballing sphere, including a great deal of sports media and journalism, to attribute Manchester City’s immense transformation purely in terms of the vast financial firepower provided by Sheikh Mansour. Whilst there is an undeniable (and sizeable) element of truth to this, there are further driving forces that have and will continue to underpin Manchester City’s meteoric rise as a global brand, and these are often left unmentioned. I make it my task to cast some additional light here; I will offer up a handful of mechanisms and strategies that have been so crucial to Manchester City in their efforts to simulate great brand growth.
Growth via On-the-Pitch Success
It is only proper to acknowledge that the most obvious way for any football club to raise its profile is by being successful on the pitch. And to be successful on the pitch is largely a matter of a club’s level of financial investment into the academy, the training facilities, the stadium, signing new players, and so on. After Manchester City’s first taste of success following their take-over, notably their 2010-2011 FA Cup and 2011-2012 Premier League Title winnings, their fanbase exploded as millions of new supporters from across the globe became attracted to the club.
What’s interesting here is that this initial success is often followed by a sort of multiplier effect: with a wider global presence and reach now secured, Man City (or any club for that matter) becomes a thoroughly more attractive sponsorship venture for businesses; their brand has the potential to be championed by a football club with a large, multinational following. Assuming new sponsors and thereby formed – as was the case in 2011 when City secured a boosted sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways valued at an estimated £400m – the club can then expect to be recipients of further financial backing. This then translates into additional investment into facility and training improvements, player transfers, widened wage budgets etc., all of which promote the attainment of further on-the-pitch success, thus fulfilling a cycle depicted by the simple diagram on the left.
It should not be forgotten that this brand-amplifying process can only take hold with a vast initial investment. As in the case of Manchester City, their initial on-the-pitch success was attainable only because of jaw-dropping sums of investments placed into signing new players and constructing state-of-the-art training facilities.
Growth via the Operation of a Complex Business Model
Beyond this investment-driven brand magnification, Manchester City have, to reiterate, a series of highly effective and strategic off-the-pitch marketing mechanisms which hold a good deal of responsibility for their sustained brand growth. One such mechanism is actually embedded in the very business model operated by Manchester City’s owner group, City Football Club (CFG).
The CFG was founded in 2014 by the Abu Dhabi United Group with the intention of establishing a global network of so-called ‘City’ teams, including Manchester City of course, with each based in a different continent around the globe and each directed at reaching an identified growth market. To this end, CFG now own or co-own nine football teams spanning from Mumbai to New York in what is fast becoming a footballing empire. The striking brand continuity between the CFG teams is no coincidence and can be found in abundance. For instance, many of the nine CFG teams share the notorious sky-blue home kit; the spherical, blue-dominated club badge; the ‘City’ moniker held within their club titles (Manchester City FC; New York City FC; Melbourne City FC; Mumbai City FC).
This homogeneity transcends mere appearance and can be seen, or at least is supposed to be seen, in the philosophy and style of play employed by all. Namely, the ambition of each CFG team is to endorse a commitment to playing attractive, free-flowing and attacking football, and to focus on the development of youth talent within the academy with the view of gradually bringing them into the first-team fold. Brand continuity and unification of this sort is unique to CFG and, importantly, functions to promote the improvement and growth of each City team. It does this in two broad ways.
The first can be explained in similar terms to that of the previous point; the marketing capacity and scale of promotion potential that is afforded by CFG’s business model is unlike any other football institution and makes CFG a highly valuable and attractive place to corporations seeking investment and sponsorship opportunities. Heightened global reach, as was discussed previously, can be understood to correlate with increased investment attractiveness – this is one of the core motives underlying the decision of Silver Lake (an American private equity firm) to purchase a £389.4 million stake (10%) in CFG in 2019, with such investment feeding back into a cycle of continued expansion and growth.
CFG’s complex business model also serves to make CFG highly valuable and attractive to world class footballers. With strongholds in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Japan, India, Spain, Uruguay, China, and Belgium, CFG possess an ability to promote their players in a way that not even Real Madrid or Manchester United can. This distinctive feature can be used as leverage in luring high-profile footballing talent to the club.
The second way that CFG’s business structure lends to success (and ultimately brand growth) is by facilitating a flow of resources and information between the City teams. It is suggested that the administrative structure of CFG is such that each City team is governed by two senior figures: a Director of Football, who oversees the footballing-facing operations, and a Club President, who controls the business and finance side of things. Both figures report to chief executives based in Manchester where they discuss, share information, and offer support to one another in challenges faced by their respective teams (Independent, 2017). So if David Lee (New York City FC’s Director of Football), for example, arrives in CFG’s Manchester-based headquarters and shares concerns that his team are facing difficulty in managing opposition counter-attack tactics, Txiki Begiristain (Manchester City’s Director of Football) could offer up his expertise and devise some solutions for Lee to implement.
Whilst this type of resource-exchange remains speculative, what can be said with almost certainty is that there exists an ease of player movement between the City clubs - there have been an estimated 25 internal transfers between the CFG teams over the last decade. To flesh this out, consider a Manchester City academy player who is deemed not yet good enough to play for Man City, but too is regarded a promising future talent. There is a good chance that he’ll be sent on loan to a sister club for a season (if indeed they have the capacity for him), such as New York City (or vice versa). Examples of this are in seen in but not limited to the cases of Yangel Herrera; Jack Harrison; Shay Facey; Angelino; Aaron Mooy.
Such arrangements are mutually beneficial: the academy player might be a great success in a less demanding league, thus helping the club achieve its season objectives. This in turn reciprocates value back to the loaning-club as they receive a better and more experienced player following his spell away, thereby increasing his value both as a footballer and as a financial asset. A similar process may also occur with managerial and coaching resources, as exemplified by Patrick Vieira’s 2016 move from Man City (where he was acting as head of the elite development and under 21s squads) to New York City (where he become head coach of the first team).
Growth via the Convergence of Football, Digital Technology & Entertainment
Returning our attention back to Manchester City and away from CFG now. A final and highly effective mechanism used by the club to inspire brand growth and a flourishing international following is the innovative convergence of digital technology, media, and entertainment.
Prior to the emergence of digital technology and social media platforms, football clubs were largely restricted with regards to those mediums available to them for connecting and engaging with their audience. In very simple terms, they could either attempt to manufacture this connection using the traditional marketing methods or alternatively, and more intuitively, they could try to establish it organically through what they do: that is, by connecting with fans on match days by putting on a spectacle and creating a unique and exciting 90-minute experience.
The expanding digital landscape has distorted this dynamic by enabling football clubs to appeal to their current supporters, and to wider prospective global fans, in a variety of new ways. Manchester City, who have been described as a media company as much as they are a football team, have made firm strategic efforts to take advantage of this by means of content creation.
One particularly good example here is Manchester City’s eight-part Amazon Prime documentary series, ‘All or Nothing: Manchester City’. The series showcased Manchester City’s record-breaking ‘17-18 season using exclusive behind-the-scenes footage. The popularity of All or Nothing: Manchester City was immense and, at the time of its initial release, almost every social media platform was scattered with mini-clips, quotes, discussions & debates, and memes that had been taken from or were concerned with the series.
Beyond the entertainment value afforded by what is a superbly well-made piece of television, the documentary is instrumentally valuable to Manchester City because it helps construct a deeper connection between them and the viewer. The provision of unfiltered access to the behind-the-scenes in a truly open and transparent way has the effect of bringing football fans closer to the club, thereby building connections and feelings of association between them. Speaking on the success of the series, Nuria Tarre, CFG’s chief marketing officer, suggests it had an unexpectedly large appeal to the wider football audience beyond Manchester City fans, and such could be observed, for instance, by those supporters from rival clubs who took to social media to vocalise their wish that ‘my club had done the same thing’.
Other ways Manchester City have sought engagement is through their social media accounts. Whether it be on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tiktok, or YouTube, Manchester City churn out an incredible amount of content every single day. Manchester City’s official Instagram page recently posted an animated video of key first team players singing ‘Wellerman’ by Longest Johns – a song that had gone viral on Tiktok in mid-January as a ‘sea-shanty’ sing-along – which drew in over half a million views and 131,000+ likes.
YouTube is a particularly fruitful platform for Manchester City’s content creation endeavours. The ‘Man City’ YouTube account is a content-rich hub featuring home-made and sponsored videos/video-series based on a wide range of topics and categories. Examples include the ‘goal of the month’ feature (sponsored by car manufacturer Nissan), player Questions and Answers (sponsored by dating app Tinder), the ‘Tunnel Cam’ feature (showing more behind-the-scenes content on match-days, sponsored by telecom company Etisalat), and an innovative digital fan-experience series that gives supporters access to City games, celebration events, and changing room team-talks using 360° cinematic virtual reality technology (sponsored by tech-company Jaunt).
Manchester City have also taken an appreciation of the power of social influencer marketing. They’ve previously teamed-up with high-profile celebrities and influencers in the creation of content, typically 10-15 minute long videos. Examples of this include videos made in collaboration with Lionel Messi, Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, and Youtubers KSI, W2S, Miniminter, and Calfreezy. Producing content alongside these types of individuals is hugely valuable as a marketing device in virtue of their tremendous social platforms and followings; by creating content and being associated with them, you engage with their audience in a fun and entertaining way, and therefore you begin to build a relationship and connection with them.
One of the most recent extensions of Manchester City’s search for global expansion can be seen in their attempts to secure a stronghold in China, where the football industry is growing dramatically. Building on market research findings that China is home to the largest eSports market globally (Chinese eSports players account for 25% of global eSports players), Manchester City became the first Premier League football team to launch an official Man City eSports team in China in 2019 in an attempt to capture the loyalty of these foreign fans. The underlying thought here is that by building a physical presence in China – namely within the massive gaming community – they can attract Chinese sports and eSports fans either directly to Manchester City Football Club, or indirectly through fandom of the Manchester City Esports Team.
Unlike customer loyalty for (most of) commercial business, emotional attachment is vital in the attainment of supporter loyalty for sports and football teams. And this deeper sense of personal investment in a football team is typically only generated through physical engagement, such as by experiencing and seeing the games in person. Since Chinese football fans are generally unable to access this physical engagement due to their geographical distance, Manchester City have also designed a number of strategies to establish some kind of emotional engagement with them. Manchester City’s frequent undertaking of player tours, pre-season friendly fixtures, trophy parades, and meet and greets in China are examples of this.
Summary
Manchester City are at the forefront of redefining what it means to be a modern football business. ‘Success’ is no longer a sole matter of mastering the actual game of football and achieving silver-ware, but rather has become a multi-dimensional affair concerned with maximising brand exposure and cultivating a diverse global fan-base. Manchester City’s dazzling rise as a brand was set in motion by Mansour’s millions in 2008, but was and continues to be fuelled by masterful off-the-pitch marketing strategies and processes.
The unique, innovative and complex business model installed across City Football Group’s empire has a powerful role in driving the success and growth of each of its franchise clubs. The nature of this role can be characterised as both helping promote the attractiveness of City teams to potential investors/sponsors and world-class footballing talent, and facilitating the exchange of knowledge and resources between the network of City teams.
The integration of football and entertainment with emerging digital technology has been fundamental to Manchester City is their quest to amplify global brand exposure and secure the attention and loyalty of football supporters beyond their existing local ones. Such instances include – but do not exhaust Manchester City’s complete catalogue of efforts – the experimental All of Nothing: Manchester City documentary, the social media and partnership-based content creation, the social influencer marketing, and the recent attempts to penetrate the Chinese football audience via the medium of Esports.
Assuming Manchester City’s brand continues to grow with such vigour for the next decade or so, one might expect to see the football-slash-global-entertainment business reach the top of football’s (and dare I say sport’s) valuation charts.
Theo Walsh Assistant Researcher & Recent Graduate of the University of Liverpool in Philosophy & Business Studies
theo17walsh@gmail.com | 07584433587 | @theowa1sh