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The owners of Premier League champions Manchester City are set to acquire a majority stake in Indian Super League (ISL) football team Mumbai City FC, a source with direct knowledge of the development told Reuters on Thursday.
Manchester City are the crown jewel of the City Football Group (CFG), which is majority owned by Abu Dhabi-based Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
– Mark Ogden: How Man City changed football forever
“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.
The deal is set to be announced just a day after CFG agreed to sell a $500million stake to U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake, making it the world’s most valuable football group with a $4.8bn price tag.
CFG did not respond to a request for comment and Mumbai City FC declined to comment on the matter.
CFG, which will outline the details of the deal at a news event in the Indian financial hub of Mumbai on Thursday, already owns stakes in seven football teams in countries ranging from the United States to China.
Mumbai City are seventh in the 10-team ISL. Earlier this year, CFG said it had been looking at India for over two years and that it hoped to complete a deal to buy a club in the world’s second-most populous nation by the end of 2019.