ISL 2019-20: Manchester City owners set to buy stakes in Mumbai City FC - Reports
The City Football Group, which owns the current Premier League champions Manchester City, are set to add an eighth club under their umbrella. Mumbai City FC, semi-finalists in the previous season of ISL, will follow the footsteps of Atletico Torque, Melbourne City FC, New York City FC, Yokohoma F Marinos, Girona, Sichuan Jiuniu apart from Manchester City FC, where the City Football Group have either partial or complete stakes in ownership.
Earlier in May, the Manchester City owners struck a deal with an agency linked to Mumbai City FC CEO, Indranil Das Blah. Rumours started to do rounds that Manchester City FC would eventually buy a stake in ISL with Mumbai City FC since then.
Although the ISL club owners brushed aside the rumours as mere speculation then, a Reuters report states that the deal is likely to be made official soon.
“The investment will showcase the interest of the world in Indian football,” said the source, who asked not to be named as the talks were private.
However, this is not the first time that a foreign club has bought shares in an Indian club. Atletico Madrid has a stake in Jamshedpur FC currently and invested in ISL's Kolkata franchise for the first three seasons.
Italian club Fiorentina had a 15% stake in the now-defunct FC Pune City for the first two seasons of ISL before selling them. Dutch club Feyenoord also invested in Delhi Dynamos but the deal only lasted one year.
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The reports of City Football Group's investment in Mumbai City FC comes just a day after a US private equity firm Silver Lake invested $500 million in them, totalling their valuation at $4.8 billion and making them the world's most valuable soccer group.