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City's plans to boost stadium earnings

Despite the advantage that comes with lucrative Premier League TV rights, English clubs are not immune from the need to update facilities. Manchester City, ranked by Deloitte as the club with the highest revenue in football, is feeling the pressure to keep up with Europe’s top clubs.

 It is planning to add about 7,000 seats to the Etihad, its home ground, but is also building a hotel, a museum and a new 23,500-capacity music space — the Co-op Live arena — on its campus in east Manchester that will host the likes of Nicki Minaj, Eric Clapton and Barry Manilow when it opens in April.

Roel De Vries, chief operating officer of the group that owns Manchester City, says the club needs to increase stadium revenue “if we want to stay competitive in the world of football and be in the top group when it comes to performance”. “We cannot easily expand the stadium beyond 60,000,” he says. “So then we have to figure out, ‘How can we squeeze a lot more out of the stadium?’”

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