The Etihad Stadium, Manchester

Goodbye Eastlands, hello Etihad. Another Record broken and money changing hands back and forth between Abu Dhabi and Manchester and back again as Etihad signed the 10 year deal for naming rights to the stadium:

The 10-year agreement, which means City's ground is renamed the Etihad Stadium, will be worth more than twice the previous record, JP Morgan Chase's $300m (£187m) for the new Madison Square Garden, while simultaneously demonstrating the growing disparity between the top clubs in English football.

And with silverware now in the bag, with the FA Cup, and Champions League football ready for the taking, the future can now begin for Manchester City. But controversy will remain as despite the billions already thrown into the the club to buy players and funf their wages, Manchester City are still in the red. And so this deal will get the full sniffing over by UEFA:

Etihad are owned by the Abu Dhabi government and the airline's association with the City owner, Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, will almost certainly prompt Uefa's Club Financial Control Panel, under the chairmanship of the former Belgian prime minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, to investigate. A Uefa spokesman said: "We are aware of the situation and our experts will make assessments of fair value of any sponsorship deals using benchmarks." Under the terms of financial fair play, clubs have to show they can break even in the medium term if they are to take part in European competitions and, for City, that represents a significant issue given that their last financial figures reported a £121m loss and the next accounts, to be published in September, are expected to be worse. The club have, however, made extensive inquiries of their own, consulting with Uefa in the process, to ensure the Etihad deal fits in with the rules and cannot be construed, in essence, as a different twist to 'mates' rates'.'

The deal couldn't have come at a better time. With Carlos Tevez complaining about the Manchester weather and how it is time to go home, they may need more cash to buy another world class striker to replace him.

Guardian

The Value of the Burj Khalifa

For anyone who thought that buying an apartment in the Burj Khalifa would lead to untold riches, they should have bought next door, because the value of the Burj Khalifa is not in the building itself, but in the area around the Burj. And who better to tell us this, but the designer of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai:

There’s a strategy for developing super-tall buildings because in and of themselves they very rarely make money. So what they’re doing in China and in other locations like Dubai is they will use the tall buildings as a catalyst for developing the land around it and the person who owns the tall buildings and the land around it will make his money off the adjacent land. The tower itself gives the land around it the prestige, a location and an identity.

The "Old Town" or "Down Town" Dubai is more valuable. The view of the Burj is more valuable than the view from the Burj, yet many still go "At the top" to say they are sky high and to ogle at Dubai.


Read the full interview with Adrian Smith

Brusselssprout on Dubai

If you haven't yet caught the issues from the new e-magazine Brusselssprout, you can find the latest one below as well as issue 1 and issue 2. We love issue 3 - it is a visual dictionary of Dubai, covering anything and everything from Dubai. It really is very good. We found issue 1 a little obscure, but as with all art, each to their own. Issue 2 took that art to the next level, but issue 3 is a real winner. We like this Reservoir Dogs style tribute, Emirati style:



According to them:

Brusselssprout is a free curatorial magazine on contemporary thinking and emergent art. Brusselssprout aims to become an open, independent and alternative platform offering content related to the artistic and cultural world. It strives, with the help of the curatorial endeavours of artists and projects that can contribute a different layer to the ever more monopolized artistic scene. Brusselssprout is a luxury for those of us doing it and hopefully for those who consume it. Adapted for the latest electronic devices (Ipad, Kindle, etc), Brusselssprout can be downloaded quarterly in ePub and PDF format from brusselssprout.org.

And from a recent interview with core magazine, we find out why they covered Dubai for their first 3 issues:

We think the criticism that Dubai has received from the West has been at the very least frivolous, without taking time to look. We align ourselves with and share the same views expressed by Rem Koolhaas and some of his collaborators at Al Manakh I & II. The view from within Dubai, on Dubai itself, barely exists and the view from the outside on Dubai is completely frivolous and distant. We looked around and found it impossible to understand how the city itself and everything around it has been excluded (almost) from the calendar of artistic production...Almost all current discussion of art seems to focus on the problem of identity, and in our opinion this has nothing to do with artistic production. Almost everything revolves around geographic, religious and cultural identity. The problem of identity is a consequence of the problem of the homogenization of production. No one can ask themselves who they are and be accepted by the rest. It's the others who ask who you are and if you try to answer—big mistake. Dubai, and by extension the Middle East, seems to be caught up in this dilemma.

It surely is a magnificent achievement and worth 10 minutes of your time this weekend, if you haven't yet seen it. And if you haven't, enjoy! As we said, we think part 3 of the Dubai Manifesto is the best, but would love to hear what you think.

Issue 1:

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Issue 2:

Open publication - Free publishing - More rem koolhaas

And issue 3:

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Brusselssprout