Artwork for podcast Play the Game Podcast
Manchester City: The money behind the success – with Nick Harris
30th September 2026 • Play the Game Podcast • Play the Game
00:00:00 00:15:37

Share Episode

Shownotes

For years, questions about Manchester City’s finances followed the club from one trophy celebration to the next.

An independent commission has now found serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules across nine seasons, involving overstated income and understated costs totalling more than £900 million.

In this episode, we revisit some of investigative journalist Nick Harris’s work. Drawing on documents and years of reporting, Harris examines the money behind City’s sponsorship agreements and describes his efforts to get answers from the club.

Host Stanis Elsborg places Harris’s reporting in the context of the commission’s findings, published on 29 September 2026.

Manchester City rejects the commission’s findings and says it will appeal. At the time of recording, sanctions had not been decided.

Host and narrator: Stanis Elsborg, head of Play the Game

This episode is produced by Play the Game.

Music: I Walk With Ghosts by Scott Buckley and Cold Case by Riverside

Video

More from YouTube

More Episodes
Manchester City: The money behind the success – with Nick Harris
00:15:37
Interview: Sven Daniel Wolfe on sporting mega-events and the hard edge of soft power
01:09:59
Visit Rwanda: From Arsenal to Aston Villa and the sports politics of Paul Kagame’s Rwanda
00:30:51
FIFA’s latest crisis shows why sport needs independent oversight
00:09:30
Lindsey Kennedy: Scams, slavery and surface-to-air missiles – Online sports betting in Southeast Asia
00:10:33
Stanis Elsborg on Infantino’s FIFA: Ten years of power, politics, and so-called ethics
00:45:49
Interview: Karim Zidan on how sport became part of Donald Trump’s MAGA machine
01:11:17
Across Mexico, World Cup 2026 projects are putting communities and ecosystems under pressure
00:26:45
Jules Boykoff: Sportswashing, the FIFA 2026 World Cup, and the 2028 Olympic Games
00:13:33
FIFAs betting expansion raises integrity fears ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup
00:17:53
Qatar 2022 whistleblower: Abdullah Ibhais on prison, pressure, and media control
00:41:23
Welcome to the Play the Game Podcast
00:02:37