Man City's £900m 'sham' finances, explained, run eleven times The Athletic's usual start
Kate Mason gathered a finance writer, a reporter in Copenhagen, a former England goalkeeper and the club's beat correspondent for a 42-minute walk through the verdict.
The Athletic FC PodcastStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 291,905 views a day, 11 times a normal first day on this channel (26,247).
Explaining Man City's £900m 'sham' finances
"Explaining Man City's £900m 'sham' finances" is the latest full episode of The Athletic FC Podcast, and it gathered more than 210,000 views in its first 13 hours. That is about eleven times the usual first day for the channel.
The last few days have built toward this episode. First came the charges, then David Ornstein's clips on why City maintain their innocence. Now the independent regulatory commission's verdict is in. It found that the club artificially inflated revenues and reduced costs through what it called "sham payments."
Kate Mason hosts, and the chapters follow the case step by step: the Premier League's statement, the word "sham" itself, City's reply, comments from chief executive Ferran Soriano, how the verdict was reached and which punishments are open to the league. Matt Slater joins from the European Football Clubs general assembly in Copenhagen. Former England goalkeeper Rob Green takes the dressing-room question of how all this touches the players. The Athletic's finance writer Chris Weatherspoon explains what the payments were and how far the owner funding went. Sam Lee, the outlet's City correspondent, sets out the club's position: it still says it is innocent and plans to "pursue the appeal avenues open" to it.
The comments mostly look past the verdict. Many viewers ask whether anyone will examine the club's dealings after 2018. Several take issue with how Sam Lee described City's earlier case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The shorter cuts posted the same day, a timeline and Ornstein on relegation clauses, drew far smaller crowds. The full hour is where people went.
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- Channel
- The Athletic FC Podcast
- Subscribers
- 317,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 638,713 (on a normal day: 292,251)
- Video published
- September 30, 2026
- Video views so far
- 210,469 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 291,905
The numbers
One long episode more than doubled the channel's usual daily views, which is rare for a show that posts every weekday.
💡 Test your knowledge
Before becoming Manchester City's chief executive, Ferran Soriano was an executive at which club?
Soriano was a vice-president and executive at FC Barcelona in the 2000s before joining Manchester City in 2012.
