January 8 – Manchester City’s holding company City Football Group (CFG) is exploring further club expansion with India, the world’s second most populous nation, looking like the next market for acquisition.
Ferran Soriano, CFG’s CEO, has been in India and attended the Indian Super League (ISL) match between Jamshedpur and Mumbai City. Jamshedpur are owned by the Tata Steel company.
The ISL, according to research by Livemint, is India’s second most watched league and will show a 25% increase in advertising, sponsorship and gate receipts in the 2017/18 season.
The speed at which the Indian football market is developing can be seen by the 41 million viewers who watched the 2016/17 finals – 7.5 times higher than the previous season finals. What hasn’t been so fast to develop is the management and infrastructure behind the teams – despite their high franchise acquisition prices – though steps are moving rapidly in that direction with, for example, Delhi Dynamos technical partnership with the Qatar-based Aspire Academy.
Driving the Indian engagement with the game is a youth audience and the use of social and digital media.
CFG, with Manchester City in particular, has been a noteworthy leader in football’s at times slow embrace of social media opportunity.
At the start of this season CFG completed the acquisition of LaLiga’s Girona who are playing their first season in Spain’s top tier having been promoted.
Girona joined CFG’s stable of clubs that as well as Man City, contains New York City FC from the MLS, Australia’s Melbourne City, Japan’s Yokohama F Marinos and Club Atletico Torque in Uruguay.
CFG, which is 13% owned by Chinese investment companies China Media Capital and CITIC Capital, is also believed to be looking for a club acquisition in China.
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