Manchester City hope 'China’s Rupert Murdoch’ Li Ruigang helps them cash in on country's sporting revolution
Club's game-changing deal with mainland investors will have the rest of the Premier League worried
I thought City were ahead of their Premier League rivals, but had no idea by how far – this is a game changer for City’s owners, and probably the Premier League in general.
Manchester United had previously been named in Chinese media reports about a similar sort of minority stakeholder deal. A literal case of Chinese Whispers, with someone mixing up his Manchester clubs? Perhaps – but United and other giants will now be scurrying not to be left behind in the great China sporting gold rush.
With CMC’s Li Ruigang, the Shanghai media mogul, joining City Football Group’s board as part of the deal, they are ideally placed to capitalise on the mainland sports market which President Xi Jinping and the State Council are backing to expand 15-fold to 5 trillion yuan in the next 10 years.
Peter Schloss, one of the pioneers of satellite TV in Asia with STAR TV and now managing partner and chairman of CastleHill Partners, a Beijing-based specialist merchant bank focusing on the sports and media industries in China and globally, gave some insight into what Li will bring to City.