Soccer Football – FIFA World Cup 2026 – Panel with FIFA’s Wenger, Ellis, & Collina – Audi Field, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, U.S. – December 4, 2025 Don Garber, Commissioner of Major League Soccer, talks during the panel REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber said that it is unlikely that his league will look into NYCFC’s majority owners, City Football Group, who have been found guilty on 114 charges of breaching Premier League financial regulations with English giants Manchester City.
“We’re not in the business of looking at what our team owners do in other leagues,” Garber said on Tuesday during an appearance at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York. “Frankly, I don’t think any league would view what other owners do when they have multiple investments throughout other sports.”
City Football Group, a holding company run by Abu Dhabi royal family member Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was found by an independent commission late last month to have committed serious financial breaches between 2009 and 2018 in which Manchester City artificially inflated its revenue and reduced its costs by nearly $1.2 billion thanks to “sham” contracts.
In doing so, the eight-time Premier League winners were able to get around the league’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules, which basically put a cap on how much money a club could lose over a rolling three-year period.
While Manchester City is appealing the verdict, the club is facing significant punishment, which could be as severe as a points deduction that would guarantee relegation to the second tier of English Football.
Mansour’s purchase of Manchester City in 2008 took what was Manchester’s second-rate club behind Manchester United and made it a European powerhouse. Five years later, he and Ferran Soriano founded City Football Group with the mission of adding on teams around the world. Later in 2013, CFG joined forces with the New York Yankees to launch NYCFC as an MLS expansion team. The group owns 80% of the team, while the Yankees and businessman Marcelo Claure own 10% each.
This next year is a pivotal one for NYCFC, which will be opening Etihad Park, a new 25,000-seat soccer-specific stadium in July, next to Citi Field in Queens.
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