The Russian entrepreneur Mikhail D. Prokhorov owns the Nets basketball team. Red Bull, the Austrian-based energy drink company, owns the Red Bulls soccer team. Now a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi is poised to become the latest foreign owner of a New York-area professional sports franchise.
Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, whose private investment group owns Manchester City in England's Premier League, has entered final negotiations to purchase a franchise of Major League Soccer to be situated in Queens, according to two people with knowledge of the negotiations.
The prospective owners are willing to pay a $100 million expansion fee for the league's 20th team, which could be called New York City F.C. and begin play in 2016, the two people said. That would more than double the expansion fee of $40 million paid by the Montreal team that entered M.L.S. in 2012.
After months of public hearings, applications and discussions, a deal for a privately financed $340 million stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, which would hold 25,000 spectators and could be expanded to 35,000, could be completed in several weeks, according to several people with knowledge of the deal.
The league wants to make the announcement before May 25, when Manchester City is scheduled to play an exhibition at Yankee Stadium against its English rival Chelsea, the two people familiar with the negotiations said.
Neither Don Garber, the commissioner of M.L.S., nor Sheik Mansour could be reached for comment Sunday. Last week, Garber told reporters he hoped to make an announcement about the expansion team in New York in four to six weeks. In addition, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told reporters last week, "Hopefully, we're getting close to announcing a new soccer stadium here in Flushing Meadow Park."
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