LONDON: Manchester City take on Barcelona in Spain tomorrow in the Champions League with their rise to European football prominense confirmed by the latest accounts which show the clubs has nearly doubled its profits and recorded record revenues for 2015-16.

City’s latest annual financial report details a record profit of £20.5m (€23.47m/$26.32m), a figure which represents the second consecutive year of profitability for the club.

In October 2015, City reported its first annual profit since Sheikh Mansour became owner of the club in 2008. City posted a £10.7m profit on the back of record annual turnover of £351.8m covering the 2014-15 financial year – marking a seventh consecutive year of revenue growth.

Revenues increased to a new record of £391.8m in 2015-16 – a season in which City’s only silverware came in the form of the League Cup as the team finished fourth in the Premier League, while reaching the semi-finals of the Uefa Champions League.

Investments

City noted significant off-the-field landmarks in 2015-16 through the investment in a 13pc stake in parent company City Football Group by China Media Capital Holdings (CMC), which valued the group at $3bn (€2.68bn).

An expansion phase for the club’s Etihad Stadium was also completed, taking capacity beyond 55,000.

In the report, City chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak said “the transformation of Manchester City under the ownership of H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan has never been anything other than a long-term project.” He added: “We have set ambitious goals and achieved many of them faster than expected in the last eight years, but we have never underestimated the scale of the undertaking.”

Stating that the 2015-16 season represented a key moment in the club’s evolution, Al-Mubarak said: “Manchester City has now reached a level of sporting and commercial maturity that allows one to feed the other.” He added that this represents “the vision for success and sustainability that we have been working towards since 2008.”

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