LiveTuesday · 13 October 2026Vol. VIII · No. 286
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How much did Man City's rule breaking cost your team?

The potential impact of Manchester City's rule breaking runs deep, including missed Champions League qualification, relegation and Premier League prize money.

How much did Man City's rule breaking cost your team?

Imagine a world where Manchester City had not used "sham contracts" to build a team capable of winning three Premier League titles, one FA Cup and three EFL Cups.

If City were the winners, then there had to be losers.

Not just those teams who finished runners-up or lost cup finals.

The potential impact runs much deeper and includes missed Champions League qualification, relegation and Premier League prize money.

Thirty-five other teams played in the English top flight between 2009 and 2018.

And every one could in some way claim to have been left financially out of pocket.

City, of course, continue to deny any wrongdoing and they have appealed. But as it stands they are guilty of all charges related to inflating their sponsorship income to the tune of £830m, plus another £90m in expenses.

Strip that money out and it changes the whole complexion of the competition.

BBC Sport has crunched the numbers to assess the potential financial impact on the top flight.

How the figures are worked out

When Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City in 2008 they were far removed from the club you see today.

Since finishing fifth in 1991-92, the last season before the formation of the Premier League, City's highest placing had been eighth in 2004-05.

The Abu Dhabi money poured in via what the Premier League's independent commission described as a "disguised funding scheme". It took the club's sponsorship revenues from being on a par with Stoke City in 2008-09 to eventually overtaking those of Manchester United.

City finished fifth in 2009-10. Since then, not once have they finished outside the top four in the Premier League.

Did this money deny other clubs a place in the competition, and other kinds of success?

This article is not trying to set out how much compensation a team might be able to claim.

Nor is it saying any one team would definitely have avoided relegation or reached the Champions League.

It is about chance, the possibility that a very different City team would have taken to the field without the hundreds of millions pumped in by the club's Abu Dhabi owners.

It has not considered potential future earnings from success, including sponsors' bonuses and further prize money.

Nor has it factored in players who may feel they have missed out on salary increases, or triggered payments, for how their club might have performed.

This is purely about domestic impact:

Lost prize money by league placing

Missed potential Champions League earnings

Loss of Premier League status

Impact of cup final defeats

What Manchester's 'super-profit' deal with City owners has paid out so far

Were any current Man City players signed during charges period?

How City gained £1.17bn, and others may have lost £844m

The full impact of City's behaviour on other clubs could be calculated at £844m.

£188.2m in Premier League placing money

£349.7m in relegation costs

£217.8m in missed Champions League prize money

£88.3m related to domestic cup competitions and the Europa League

We calculated these figures by taking published prize money from the relevant seasons.

For Premier League place money, each team that finished below City is considered to have potentially missed a payment for one place.

For relegation, this is the minimum value of being in the Premier League for the next season, minus the received parachute payment.

For the Champions League, we took City's earnings from the following seasons and deducted the impacted teams' Europa League prize money.

But City also earned prize money themselves during this period.

Across the competitions, City were paid £1.17bn:

£812.3m from the Premier League - total income from prize money and broadcast revenues

£363.4m via the Champions League

£900,000 from the FA Cup victory

£300,000 from the three EFL Cup victories

The most impacted: How Spurs could have missed out on £120m

"We have lived through a period of deception," former Tottenham Hotspur boss Mauricio Pochettino said last month.

"No type of punishment will make it possible to repair what was done."

You can see his point. Spurs finished one place outside the Champions League positions in four (although one only was under Pochettino) of the eight seasons in which City qualified for Europe's elite competition.

BBC Sport took City's earnings from the Champions League in the following season, and deducted Tottenham's Europa League prize money.

Over the four seasons Spurs missed out, Manchester City earned £148.2m from the Champions League, with Tottenham taking £29.9m from the Europa League.

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