Manchester City - Commercial Catch-up

Since Sheikh Mansour took over Manchester City in 2009 a lot has changed. The club had a debt of £305m, which was wiped clean. Investment has also gone into the playing squad, which experts now value at around £345m - resulting in winning The Premier League last season in the most dramatic of circumstances. The Manchester side are now 7th in the Deloitte Money League, surrounded by all the big boys and household names.

Manchester City find themselves in a unique position where significant investment has launched them (on the pitch) to the highest level, but the commercial arm is still playing catchup when compared to the top of the top in world football - which is no doubt where this club aim to go.

The Deloitte Money League provides an outline of the revenue streams of major football clubs on a global scale. The revenue is broken down into match-day, broadcasting and commercial, the top 5 for commercial are:

1. Bayern Munich - £171m (naming rights £32m = £139m)
2. Real Madrid - £159m
3. Barcelona - £158m
4. Manchester United - £123m
5. Manchester City - £117m (naming rights £40m = £77m)

To make this a level playing field it should be noted that the only two clubs to sell stadium naming rights are Bayern Munich, Allianz Arena and Manchester City, Etihad Stadium. This puts Bayern back into 'the pack' and leaves Manchester City someway short on where they want to be.

So the question is, why? Well the first thing to point out is the illustrious history of the top 4 clubs, which means a bigger fan base and therefore larger merchandise sales. Bayern Munich have a revenue of almost £50m from merchandise alone. If you look into the Facebook 'Likes' of each clubs fan bases become evident:

1. Barcelona - 41m likes
2. Real Madrid - 37m likes
3. Manchester United - 32m likes
4. Bayern Munich - 6.4m likes
5. Manchester City - 5m likes

So this is the first hurdle for the City commercial department to jump - ultimately a larger following will arise from more success.

Further to this the top 4 clubs are not resting on their laurels, with numerous extensions and new deals recently signed. Most notable Manchester United have a 7 year shirt sponsorship deal with General Motors worth a considerable £357m, Real Madrid have extended their partnership with Adidas until 2020, Barcelona shirt sponsorship is worth £30m per year with Qatar Sports Investments and Bayern Munich have also announced a £30m per year shirt sponsorship with Deutsche Telecom.

At the moment Manchester City breakdown their sponsorship partners into categories; title sponsor, kit supplier, telecoms, betting, beer etc - all reasonably standard categories that you would expect to find at most football clubs. Where other clubs have seen commercial success, and in particular Manchester United is breaking down these categories or even stepping away from the standard. For example under the beer category Manchester United have expanded to a Lager (Singha), a Wine (Casillero del Diablo) and a Spirit (Smirnoff) - all of a sudden one partner becomes three, which of course leads to more revenue. The Reds aren't just stopping with alcohol, they have 14 telecoms partners covering various regions, they have a savoury snack partner, an Indonesian Tyre partner, Chinese soft drinks, Malaysian noodles and a Japanese paint partner (cue something about painting the town red...).

Now it's fair to say that Manchester United are ahead of the curve here, and you can expect a lot of clubs to be changing their strategies to somewhat replicate this model.

So, back to Manchester City, what can they do to reduce the gap between themselves and the top 4? The first thing is to continue winning, which will increase support and therefore merchandise sales. The second thing to look into is expanding categories, at the moment City have 15 partners, United have 33 partners - I think that says it all.

City should also look how they can differentiate themselves from the competition and the one thing that stands out for me is the flexibility they can and should offer, City can alter their approach to fit in with sponsors marketing objectives. Manchester City also have what I think of as an 'excited' fan base, by this I refer to the attitude of the fans that are now experiencing success - this certainly differs from the top 4 who expect success.

It will certainly be interesting to see how/if Manchester City alter there commercial strategy for next season and onwards. If they get things right we could be seeing a top 5 ranking for the 2012/2013 Deloitte Money League.

JL