Man City playing the long game

Man City's owners are engaged in a desperate bid to get a worldwide following before it's too late.

I am not sure I really know the reasons behind the pumping of vast amounts of money into what was, in reality, an underperforming and overlooked team who's heyday was in the seventies. That's right Manchester City. But I can have a good guess.

The commercial landscape of football is changing and as with a lot of industries there becomes a point where the top dogs get into a position where they are able to change the rules to protect their position. I think that football is about to go the same way. The other thing that is happening is the new FIFA rules that will force clubs to become "profitable" is limited ways, i.e. you can't just run them at a massive loss a la Chelsea. That will be a real limiting factor in a couple of years time.

Currently the money that floods into football comes from three main activites, gate receipts, merchandising/commercial operations and TV rights.

Gate receipts are mostly fixed, and certainly to a large extent capped. The big clubs in England tend to max out at 75,000 or so and are kept pretty full (although not as full as they might like every game)We don't seem to go in for the mega stadiums that some of our european competitors do, and maybe because there are other avenues open.

Merchandising and other commercial activities can bring in massive amounts too. This is mostly on the back of kit sales and sponsorship. As the game goes more and more global, this can be grown, and we see this with the Far East tours that clubs undertake and the signing of certain players, Park-Ji Sung being a good example - he is a great player, but I would be surprised if his background wasn't a factor too. And one of the things that supports merchandising sales is the third leg, TV.

TV rights are where the big bucks are. The huge amounts paid by the pay TV channels are the driving force behind the floods of money in the game. At present the game rights are sold collectively, by the Premier League, and the money is distributed fairly amongst the clubs. This works well for the TV companies - and for the majority of the clubs, who all benefit from the popularity of the largest clubs. You can't get Man Utd without getting Wigan. And these collective rights are sold worldwide too.

At some point maybe sooner maybe later these rights are going to be sold on a per club basis, probably starting with the overseas rights first. If you are Arsenal, Chelsea or Man Utd you have a vested interest in doing so because you have a big enough overseas fan base to make your rights valuable, if you are Swansea you probably don't. And until recently, if you were Man City you didn't.

My view is that pumping money into Man City is an exercise in getting global as fast as you can, regardless of cost, before the FIFA rules come in. The prize, is eating at the top table for the foreseeable future. And in that scenario the money being spent by Man City looks cheap.