You may have heard some of the Manchester City headlines this week and if you’re newer to the Premier League, you might also be wondering what all the fuss is about.

For the last few years, one phrase has followed Manchester City everywhere: the “115 charges.”

It became one of those football stories everyone seemed to know about, even if most people couldn’t actually explain what the charges were.

Well, this week we finally got some answers.

On September 29, the Premier League announced that an independent commission had found Manchester City guilty of all charges relating to serious breaches of its financial rules over a nine-season period between 2009/10 and 2017/18, as well as three of the four alleged breaches relating to the club’s cooperation with the investigation.

But rather than going through more than 100 charges one by one — because I’m not sure either of us has enough coffee for that — I think there is a much easier way to understand what the Premier League says happened.

The commission found that Manchester City arranged what it described as “sham” commercial agreements with a number of sponsors.

According to the findings, some sponsors were only required to pay part of the sponsorship amounts that appeared in City’s accounts, while the remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group, the company that owned Manchester City.

The commission also found other arrangements that allowed City to record lower operating costs than it was actually incurring.

The overall effect, according to the Premier League, was enormous.

The commission found that City artificially increased its revenues and reduced its costs by more than £900 million over the period in question. It concluded that, had the arrangements been recorded accurately, City would have been significantly over both Premier League and UEFA spending limits.

Put that into simpler terms.

Football’s financial rules were designed to limit how much a club could spend based, in part, on the money it legitimately generated.

The commission found that Manchester City made its financial position look stronger than it really was by treating owner-funded money as commercial revenue and by understating certain costs.

That is the heart of this case.

There was also another problem.

The Premier League says City repeatedly failed to cooperate properly during its four-year investigation, with the commission concluding that the club had made concerted efforts to frustrate the process.

This is important.

Manchester City completely rejects the findings.

The club said it was “disappointed and surprised” by the decision and maintains that it is innocent of the Premier League’s accusations.

City says there is a comprehensive body of evidence supporting its position and argues that the commission’s decision contains material errors of law, principle and fact. The club has confirmed that it intends to pursue the appeal routes available to it.

And, despite everything you might have read online this week, Manchester City has not yet been punished.

That comes next.

A separate hearing will determine the sanction. Premier League rules allow the independent commission considerable freedom, including fines, points deductions and other sporting sanctions.

Manchester City has now formally lodged its appeal against the commission’s findings, arguing that the decision contains material errors of law, principle and fact.

So at the time of writing, anyone telling you City will definitely be relegated, stripped of titles or docked a certain number of points is getting ahead of the process.

We simply don’t know yet.

But while I was reading all of this, something else caught my attention.

Because something remarkably similar has just happened about 5,000 miles away.

This is where I think the Manchester City story gets particularly interesting for an American audience.

You might not understand every line of the Premier League’s financial regulations.

But if you follow American sports, you probably understand a salary cap.

And earlier this month the NBA punished the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard for violating its salary-cap circumvention rules.

An independent investigation found that the Clippers had helped create off-court income opportunities for Leonard through four companies that were doing business with the franchise: Aspiration Partners, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics and Lockton Insurance.

The NBA says the Clippers helped facilitate endorsement agreements, offered team business to companies as an inducement to enter agreements with Leonard, paid certain personal expenses for Leonard and his representatives, and failed to report improper requests for additional outside income.

Again, let’s simplify it.

There is nothing wrong with an NBA player earning endorsement money.

Kawhi Leonard can appear in commercials, sign sponsorship deals and earn money away from basketball.

The problem comes when companies connected to the team are used as another way of compensating a player outside the salary-cap system.

And the NBA concluded that this is what happened.

So think about the two cases side by side.

Manchester City operates under financial rules designed to control club spending.

The commission found that commercial arrangements were used to increase the revenue available to City under those rules.

The Clippers operate under a salary-cap system designed to control player compensation.

The NBA found that commercial relationships involving companies doing business with the franchise were used to provide additional compensation to Kawhi Leonard.

They are absolutely not the same case.

Different leagues.

Different rules.

Different financial systems.

But the similarity is difficult to ignore.

In both cases, commercial relationships became central to allegations that financial restrictions had been circumvented.

The Premier League still hasn’t told us what Manchester City’s punishment will be.

The NBA already has.

And it didn’t mess around.

The Clippers were fined $30 million.

They lost five first-round draft picks, one in each year from 2029 through 2033.

Owner Steve Ballmer was suspended from all league and team activities for one year.

President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker was suspended without pay for one year.

President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank received a six-month suspension.

The Clippers were placed under a five-year compliance and monitoring program.

Kawhi Leonard was ordered to pay the league $700,000, while his former business manager Dennis Robertson was banned from conducting business with NBA teams for five years.

The NBA and the players’ union have agreed that those penalties are final and binding.

Think about that for a second.

Five first-round picks.
$30 million.
A billionaire owner suspended for a year.

The NBA has already decided what circumventing its financial system costs.

The Premier League has established what its independent commission says Manchester City did.

Now football is waiting to find out the price.

And this is where I started going down a slightly bigger rabbit hole.

Maybe the real story isn't Manchester City.

And maybe it isn't the Clippers either.

Maybe the story is what has happened to professional sport.

The amount of money now involved is extraordinary.

Premier League clubs generated a record £6.8 billion in revenue during the 2024/25 season.

Commercial revenue alone reached £2.4 billion.

Player wages reached a record £4.4 billion.

And despite all of that revenue, Premier League clubs collectively reported almost £1 billion in pre-tax losses.

The numbers just keep getting bigger.

Bigger TV contracts.

Bigger sponsorships.

Bigger transfer fees.

Bigger wages.

Bigger club valuations.

And it is exactly the same story in American sports.

NBA franchises that were once worth millions are now worth billions. Player contracts have reached amounts that would have seemed almost impossible a generation ago.

None of that necessarily means money has ruined sport.

Actually, money has done a lot of good.

Players are better paid.

Training facilities have improved.

Stadiums have improved.

Fans can watch practically every game from anywhere in the world.

The Premier League attracts some of the best players on the planet, while the NBA has developed into a truly global competition.

But there is another side to it.

When winning becomes worth this much money, the incentive to find every possible competitive advantage becomes enormous.

And eventually leagues have to start drawing lines.

American sport has been trying to deal with this problem for decades.

The NBA has a salary cap.

It has a luxury-tax system.

The draft gives weaker teams access to young talent.

Revenue is shared.

The basic idea is that even if your owner is worth $100 billion, you cannot simply spend whatever you want on players.

Football has traditionally been very different.

If you could generate the money — or had an owner willing to provide it — you could generally spend it.

But as the money in European football exploded, governing bodies became increasingly concerned about clubs spending beyond their means and about wealthy owners creating an enormous competitive advantage.

That gave us Financial Fair Play, the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules and now another generation of financial regulations.

So, strangely enough, the Premier League is now wrestling with a problem American sports have been dealing with for years.

How do you stop money from deciding everything?

And even more importantly:

How do you create financial rules that cannot simply be worked around?

Because once you tell a team it cannot spend more money directly, the incentive becomes finding another legitimate way of generating money.

More sponsorship.

More commercial partnerships.

More hospitality.

More international deals.

More revenue.

Which then creates another question.

How does a regulator decide whether a sponsorship genuinely represents the market value of a football club?

And when an owner and a sponsor have close relationships, how do you determine where genuine sponsorship ends and owner funding begins?

That question sits right at the centre of the Manchester City case.

The Clippers case presents the same basic puzzle from another direction.

If an NBA team has already paid a superstar everything it is allowed to pay him under the salary cap, how does the league distinguish between a completely legitimate endorsement deal and another way of giving that player additional compensation?

Different sport.

Different rules.

Very similar problem.

I don't think it is quite that simple.

I still love watching football.

Millions of people love watching the NBA.

And some of the money flowing into professional sport has helped create an incredible product.

But maybe there is a warning here.

The Premier League has never generated more money.

The NBA has never generated more money.

Club and franchise valuations continue to rise.

Player salaries continue to rise.

Commercial deals continue to rise.

And yet somehow we keep needing more rules to control the money.

Manchester City and the LA Clippers play completely different sports under completely different systems on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

One has financial sustainability rules.

The other has a salary cap.

Yet both have ended up in remarkably similar territory:

Commercial relationships.

Outside money.

And accusations that the financial restrictions designed to protect the competition were being circumvented.

Maybe money hasn't ruined sport.

But as sport gets richer, the rulebooks seem to get thicker.

And perhaps that tells us something.