According to data published by Forbes magazine this year, the N.F.L.’s Dallas Cowboys were the most valuable sports enterprise, at $5 billion, with the Yankees second at $4.6 billion and the Spanish soccer team Real Madrid third at $4.24 billion.

This month, Manchester City announced record revenues of 535 million pounds, about $689 million, a figure bettered in English soccer only by its more established city rival Manchester United. City’s domestic success has led to it to become a regular in the Champions League, a continental championship that confers not only global attention but also millions of dollars in annual revenue. That money could, in the short term at least, be at risk should financial regulators at European soccer’s governing body decide to banish the club from the competition for at least a year as punishment for rules designed to ensure financial fairness in the sport.

The situation does not seem to have put off Silver Lake from making what can be considered as the third-largest investment to buy an equity stake in English soccer. Egon Durban, a managing partner at Silver Lake, suggested the move was spurred by expectations of continued growth in the sports content market.

Manchester City, which as recently as 1999 was playing in the third tier in England, is now firmly established among a group of world soccer’s elite teams. It is the fifth-highest revenue-generating team in soccer, according to the latest edition of an annual soccer finance report by the accountancy firm Deloitte.

City Football Group is 77 percent owned by Abu Dhabi United Group, an investment vehicle owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates. A Chinese consortium led by the media and entertainment conglomerate CMC is a minority investor.