Manchester City could be ordered to hand the Premier League almost £50m in compensation for legal costs, after the club was found guilty of virtually all of the charges brought against it over rule breaches spanning 2009 to 2018.
The Premier League announced on Tuesday that an independent commission had determined City artificially inflated their income by £900m across a nine-year period, concluding that the club arranged “sham” contracts in order to boost revenues and comply with spending rules. In a 40-page document, the panel set out its reasons for finding City guilty of all charges relating to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules, as well as “the majority of charges in relation to its failure to cooperate with the league’s investigation”.
The cost of the proceedings has been substantial on both sides. Legal experts predict the two parties have between them run up a bill of more than £100m. City’s case was handled by Lord Pannick KC, one of the country’s leading lawyers who has advised the former prime minister Boris Johnson, while the Premier League’s team was spearheaded by Adam Smith KC, a sports lawyer who has represented the league, the Football Association and Uefa in a series of cases.
The Premier League’s own costs are expected to be upwards of £70m, and lawyers have told the Guardian that a winning party can typically expect to recoup around 70% of its legal costs from the losing side. On that basis, the league could be awarded almost £50m — for a case that has already run for eight years and is still not concluded. No compensation figure will be fixed until the commission rules on it once the process is complete, and the panel will also have to determine whether the Premier League’s legal spending was proportionate to the matter at hand.
There is recent precedent for such a challenge. After Everton were found guilty of profit and sustainability rule breaches in 2024, the league pushed for £4.9m in costs but was awarded £1.7m, after the club’s lawyers successfully argued the legal costs were too high. Everton’s representatives claimed the cost per document disclosed was 19 times higher for the Premier League than for the club, and that the cost per witness statement was five times more.
City continue to maintain their innocence. The club said in a statement that “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists” and signalled its intention to appeal, describing the ruling as an “opinion” containing “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”. The club’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, also sent a three-minute video to City employees in which he characterised the outcome as a “Premier League conspiracy theory”. The Premier League declined to comment, while Manchester City did not respond to a request for comment.