15 Nov 2025 15:47:00
New sponsor Oracle to be announced. One year deal, and for significantly less than what chelsea were expecting.
This entire debacle has been embarrassing. Egbalis first words once the takeover happened was 'this club was not terribly well managed on the football side, sporting side or promotional side'.
Many on here having been saying for a couple years now (lol) that it was somehow a good thing that we hadn't got a new sponsor, as we'd be making way more money by holding firm and waiting. Just want to see if those posters can eat there words as I said many times the beginning of this new regime will be a case study in failure on how to takeover a club. I don't suppose they will though.
anyway, not all bad, but glad this debacle is finally coming to an end.
15 Nov 2025 19:43:12
Welcome back. Always good to have different views on this site.
15 Nov 2025 22:38:35
I don’t always have the best things to say about the current ownership, but, in this case, a big issue with the club not getting what they viewed as good / expected value from sponsorship has been the ongoing investigation - with companies reluctant to go big until that’s resolved. I’m sure the current regime would have hoped that it would have been resolved by now, but they can’t wait forever.
That investigation is down to problems with / mistakes by the previous ownership, which the current lot could have brushed under the carpet. In the long term they did the right thing, highlighting it at the earliest opportunity.
Is this whole debacle embarrassing? Yes, it absolutely is. Is it the current ownerships fault? No, the blame sits with RA and his ownership.
16 Nov 2025 03:32:50
J, we have all had reason to be critical of the current owners.
Like all fans to a certain extent we are guessing about our respective club’s commercial negotiations.
If it is true that potential sponsors have been reluctant to enter into a long term sponsorship deal because of a potential club sanction then I guess your assertion holds water.
The fact that our current owners self reported the issue and have co-operated fully with the relevant regulatory bodies made me personally believed we would receive a fine and maybe a one window transfer ban at the most. I suppose there is little upside to a sponsor making a longer than one year deal without knowing the outcome of the investigation.
I seem to remember we recently got a very substantial long term shirt sleeve sponsorship deal and I guess last season we did have a sponsor for about our last fifteen games.
16 Nov 2025 06:47:54
I think it’ll be the club deciding on the deal till the end of the season, rather than a long-term one right now.
Just as an example, the sponsorship companies are saying, we’ll give you £40m per season, because of the outstanding charges, otherwise we’d give you £60m. You wouldn’t want to sign a 4-6 year deal, knowing those charges should be resolved with the first of those years. Get the £40m this season, pay the fine during that period, then get a better long-term deal after that.
Additionally, get top four this season and we’re repositioning ourselves as regulars in the UCL, rather than being back in as a one off. That won’t hurt either.
16 Nov 2025 08:05:05
J, you are using the same mathematical logic that I was using for last season.
I except your point about any potential punishment effecting negotiations. This was an issue that I had personally dismissed because I believed any sanction would be relatively minor.
16 Nov 2025 08:47:56
Charges, it's not stopping Man city obtaining sponsorships, this is red herring, let's stop making excuses for our incompetent ownership and commercial dept.
16 Nov 2025 09:36:43
Who owns Man City and who is their sponsor?
16 Nov 2025 10:25:08
J we have multi billionaire owners who are brilliant business people yet they have no clue on moving us forward whether it's to do with sponsorships ir the so called Bridge development.
16 Nov 2025 10:38:54
J, very good point.
Bill, we understandably don’t know the facts, so we are all left guessing but to accuse the owners of “incompetence” on this issue seems harsh to me.
When I look back upon my time as a supporter I have always found a topic that I could criticise all our past owners for. Some of that criticism is and was probably unfair but my guess is all supporters of virtually every club are the same. Can I just add, I did have some criticisms of RA as well.
16 Nov 2025 11:23:44
Bill, The SB development or move to another location will probably cost about £2bn, I would rather they got it right than wrong and on that I’m sure we can agree. I have been critical of our owners for poor communication either directly or via the FAB and this is an area, in my opinion, where they have over promised and under delivered.
They were due to make an internal report public before the start of the season. There may well be good reasons why this hasn’t happened but a very short press release would have updated all the fans.
16 Nov 2025 11:38:44
Tom
That is the ussue, we don't know what's hoing on because us fans get told absolutely nothing.
Thats one thing about this ownership, they live in their ivory tower, doing nothing, saying nothing.
They just seem to like owners of a large nursery company.
16 Nov 2025 14:05:22
Bill, I assume our owners are worse than some and better than others when it comes to fan communication.
I personally would bring back CTV and the old monthly Q&A that used to a good opportunity for us fans to ask questions.
16 Nov 2025 16:41:56
I think some of you are over optimistic about the potential sanctions. There are two seperate investigations one by the FA and the other by the PL. We would be lucky to get away with a financial sanction; there is a real possibility of a points deduction.
16 Nov 2025 16:56:01
I agree Tom but this crowd would never let it happen, like the Glaziers, they are in it for the money and prestige, they could not care less about the fan base, they have made that quite clear with their total lack of communication.
16 Nov 2025 17:34:32
Bill, I’ve lost count of the amount of times I have said we are a business. I have also said many times there is very little wrong with our club being run as a business. I see no comparison, so far, between our owners and the Utd owners.
Over the years we have had many different owners. The Mears family didn’t say anything and the Bates - Harding partnership ended up being a war of words against each other. I can’t remember Roman saying much directly to anyone but his Chairman Bruce Buck was iften good for a self promoting quote.
My point is silence from owners seems like a common theme at our club and probably the vast majority of other clubs.
17 Nov 2025 09:27:35
Tom
As you are probably aware I agree with you about being run as a business albeit a badly run business losing huge amounts of money due yo no FOS for goodness knows how long now and having no plans for extra revenue with a larger stadium, all the owners can do is keep putting ticket prices up to help mediate the problem if losing money.
17 Nov 2025 12:28:51
Bill, I would only be guessing again but just maybe the threat of a club sanction has been the major problem in stopping us getting a FOS sponsor.
I’m not a fan of the “blame” society we live in and without knowing the facts on this particular issue maybe we should defer our judgement.
The SB development was always going to take ages but I will continue to be critical but only about poor communication.
I can’t say I’m an expert on our gross revenues over the last five years and I’m not sure how they compare to our peers. Obviously a larger ground with extra capacity would be good but does that come with huge debt? I assume these are the sort of issues our previous owner and present owner have to consider as well as the potential loss in revenue if we move to a temporary home. I think I will just leave it to them (not going to happen in my lifetime) it gives me a headache!