Manchester City launches new team in New York; ties up with the Yankees
Manchester City of the English Premier League and baseball giants the New York Yankees are getting together to start a new Major League Soccer team in New York.
Show game at Yankee stadium this week
The side will be jointly owned by City and the Yankees, with City owning 75 per cent.
To be known as the New York City Football Club, it will be the 20th Major League Soccer franchise in the US and the second in New York, along with the New York Red Bulls.
It expects to begin competing in 2015, "assuming it can find a stadium to play in," said the New York Times.
In fact The New York City Football Club may play its inaugural season at Yankee Stadium.
After that, the team hopes to play in a new stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that the owners of Manchester City would build.
The announcement on Tuesday by Major League Soccer confirmed speculation that Manchester City would spend about $100 million to buy the expansion franchise.
The English team, which is owned by an investment group led by a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, will be the latest foreign owner of a franchise in the New York metropolitan area. The Yankees is one of the wealthiest and best known teams in American sports.
Manchester City will be the majority owner of the new club, while the Yankees will own about a quarter of the team, said the NYT. The two parties already had an existing relationship in hospitality.
To mark the deal Manchester City will play a friendly against Chelsea on Saturday at Yankee Stadium.
“New York is a legendary sports town, as well as a thriving global city with a rapidly expanding soccer fan base,” said Ferran Soriano, chief executive of Manchester City.
“We are thrilled to contribute to the energy and growth of New York City soccer. In the Yankees, we have found the absolute best partner for developing a world-class sports organisation and a winning team that will carry the New York City Football Club name with pride.”
Manchester City had not initially contemplated inviting the Yankees to buy a share of the team. But in recent weeks the English owners decided to become partners in the deal so they could make the most of the Yankees’ political connections and experience building stadiums in New York City.
The project is backed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg but has alarmed parks and community activists, who object to heavily used parkland being given to a for-profit foreign-owned team essentially free.
“We hope this new deal once and for all puts to rest any further attempts to seize even more public parkland in Flushing Meadows Park,” said Geoffrey Croft, president of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates. “The Yankees were given enough.”