Ferran Soriano, CEO
Premier League Champions again, for the fourth time in five years. Record revenues and record profits. The 2021-22 season left us with a lot to be proud of.
If anything is more difficult than winning, it is winning again. Being able to understand that previous successes mean nothing when a new competition starts takes a rare talent. And to win again takes character, humility and resilience. The Manchester City men’s first team has shown all of this, winning the Premier League title back-to-back twice this decade, and winning the trophy four times in the last five years.
Our young teams delivered outstanding success, too. Our EDS team won the Premier League 2 and our U18 team won both the North and the National league – meaning our top three men’s teams won their leagues for the second year in a row. This is an unprecedented collective achievement and points to the bright future for our Academy graduates.
As ever in football, this season was not without its challenges, and it was painful to exit the Champions League and FA Cup at the semi-final stage. Our women’s team also suffered in the early part of the season, with a significant number of injuries, but they rallied to clinch the Continental Tyres Cup and ended up in third place in the league.
Challenges make us hungrier, more determined to succeed, and give us all a shared sense of purpose. Ultimately, the 2021-22 season was representative of the football standards that we have set ourselves as we continued to deliver on our ownership’s vision and plans.
From a business perspective, this was the first season in which we could begin to put the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, and we did it breaking Club records for both revenues and profits.
Our strong revenue performance was due to multiple factors, but ultimately driven by the “beautiful football” we play and the continuous fan growth that it generates; more fans, more audiences, more people in the stadium, and more partners that want to be commercially associated with Manchester City.
The return of fans made the Etihad Stadium feel like home again. We invested in improving facilities whilst we played behind closed doors, and it was gratifying to see our fans making the most of the experiences on offer.
Over the last five years, we have seen incredible growth in our global fan numbers. In the US, where we held our pre-season tour in summer 2022, it was encouraging to see the incredibly large number of blue shirts at our games and how our international fanbase is enjoying our football.
We also conducted our transfer business optimally, welcoming new players and seeing others go on to new challenges, generating important profits for our Club.
Overall, Manchester City generated record revenues of £613.0 million and record profits of £41.7 million, the latter being more than double the previous Club record.
I also want to highlight that our community programmes continue to deliver outstanding results too, using football to improve people’s lives in Manchester and more than 20 other cities globally. We are so proud of the collective impact created through our local City in the Community initiatives, our global Cityzens Giving campaign – in which we’ve invested £5.5 million to date – and wider causes we have supported, like the MCR Ukraine Welcome Fund.
When City Football Group (CFG) was founded back in 2013, we had the objective to deliver the exciting and attacking style that we call “beautiful football”, and to develop the best footballing talent, globally.
We are truly delighted with our progress so far. Over the last five seasons, we have won the top league in six countries (UK, US, Japan, India, Australia, and Bolivia), achieved promotion for three teams to the top leagues in Spain, France and Uruguay, and won a total of 23 trophies. We have exciting players and talented coaches from many nationalities moving across our teams, sharing a passion for the football we play, and the methodology we have developed. What started as a dream and a commitment, is now a solid reality.
And we are not standing still – we continue to seek new opportunities. In July 2022, we welcomed Italian team Palermo FC into the Group, a big, historical club, for which we have great plans.
The last ten years have been the most successful in Manchester City’s history, and I am certain the next decade will be even better. We have more to achieve, and you can be sure we will do everything we can to ensure that the Club cements its place among the very best in the world.
We will do this by continuing to work extremely hard, by learning from both our successes and our failures and by sharing the same ambition and commitment to success throughout our organisation: from our Owners, Chairman, and Board through Pep Guardiola and Txiki Begiristain; all of our coaching and technical staff; and every player and employee – the people of Manchester City who we thank for so much hard work.
Of course, our motivation is to deliver for the people without whom we cannot succeed – our incredible fans all over the world, the Cityzens that share a common passion for Manchester City.
We know how difficult it is, but our aim will always be to win again… and again.
