City Football Group

City Football Group Limited (CFG) is a British-based holding company that administers association football clubs. The group is owned by three organisations, of which 81% is majority-owned by Abu Dhabi United Group, 18% by the American firm Silver Lake, and 1% by Chinese firms China Media Capital and CITIC Capital. The Abu Dhabi United Group is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, member of the Abu Dhabi royal family and vice president of the United Arab Emirates.

The group derives its name from Manchester City, its flagship football club, and acts as the club's parent company. CFG also owns stakes in clubs in the United States, Australia, India, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, China, Belgium, France, Italy and Turkey.

Founded in 2013, City Football Group is the realisation of a business vision by former Barcelona Economy Vice President Ferran Soriano. Soriano first conceived of the ideal of a global football entity while at the Catalan club, beginning with the creation of Barca-branded overseas academies. Soriano contacted Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber about creating a Barcelona-branded MLS franchise, and the pair progressed as far as looking into several locations to place the team, but ultimately these plans were curtailed when Soriano and seven other members of Barcelona's board chose to resign in protest of then-President Joan Laporta's leadership.

After a four-year break from football management, Soriano was hired in late 2012 to replace Garry Cook as CEO of Manchester City following the latter's resignation. Soriano revived his ambitions of creating a global football business entity, beginning by resuming dialogues with Garber. Their discussions resulted in the announcement of New York City as MLS' 20th expansion side less than one year later in May 2013. In the process of managing the creation of a second football team City Football Group was created, designed to be the holding company to which both Manchester City and NYCFC belonged. CFG expanded at the start of 2014 when it partnered with Rugby league side Melbourne Storm to acquire a controlling stake in A-League franchise Melbourne Heart for 12 million Australian dollars. The club would subsequently be rebranded to Melbourne City, and their badge changed to a design similar to New York City's badge as part of CFG's early attempts to synergise their investments as a brand, and the club's colours would slowly be changed to sky blue with their red-and-white stripes retained as away colours.

In the weeks following their purchase of Melbourne City, CFG indicated their intentions of investing in women's football by rebranding Manchester City's female affiliate as Manchester City Women's Football Club, and successfully lobbied for the team to be added to the top tier of the FA Women's Super League, promising to invest in women's football on a scale never before seen in England. Later the following year, CFG would grow again with the purchase of a 20% in Japanese side Yokohama F Marinos, the traditional company team of group sponsor Nissan.

In April 2017, after a near three-year pause in its expansion, City Football Group announced the Uruguayan second-tier side Club Atletico Torque, who would later be renamed Montevideo City Torque. Several months later, Torque would be followed in by Spanish second division club Girona, a club with ownership links to incumbent Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.

2019 saw the beginning of an increase in CFG's activity. The purchase of Chinese third division club Shenzhen Peng City (known as Sichuan Jiuniu F.C. at that time) was followed towards the end of the year by a second venture in Asia, when the group bought a controlling stake in Indian Super League franchise Mumbai City. 2020 similarly would see two club purchases in European football, first of Lommel of Belgium and then of Troyes of France, with both moves notably seeing the purchased clubs rescued from financial difficulties and linked to the economic damages wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same year they would also expand their business interests by taking sole control of US-based five-a-side football business Goals Soccer Centers, a business they had previously invested in, following the near-collapse of the company's owners due to an internal scandal.

In March 2022, Dutch second-tier side NAC Breda announced that following an investigation into the best bidders to sell the club's shares, the shareholders of the club had agreed to a sale to CFG. In response, the club's fans held protests both in Breda and also Manchester and Lommel. A month later, a group of shareholders with key voting rights announced that, in light of the backlash, they had elected instead to sell their shares to a local consortium.