Arseblog News – the Arsenal news site
Ivan Gazidis believes Premier League clubs are increasingly looking towards Arsenal’s self-sustaining financial model as UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules begin to influence spending patterns.
Banging the drum for a policy which has long been the norm at the Emirates, the Gunners CEO stressed that football must learn the lessons from those businesses which have suffered during the global economic downturn.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5Live, Gazidis picked up where he left off in his statement on the club’s recent financial results.
“Arsenal were operating this way a long time before football looked at it and decided it would be a good path for football to move into.
“I think people believe money can be spent without consequence and if we learnt anything from the financial crisis the world has had over the last few years it has to be unsustainable spending and unsustainable environments don’t last forever.
“I think football is in a fantastic position to address this because we are in a position where I am very optimistic for the future of football. The revenues the game generates, particularly the Premier League’s position, is fantastic. This is a very successful UK industry and it deserves a lot of credit for that.
“This is a great time for us, when things are going well, to address issues of unsustainability while we can because as we’ve learned addressing them from a position of weakness is never a satisfactory way to do it.
“The Premier League owners are coming together: I think there is a developing consensus around the fact we need some form of tighter financial regulations to make sure as we look forward that the interest of the Premier League, its clubs and the fans are well protected.
“(And) we are running our league on a sound financial business model and taking advantage of what this league has to become the world’s leading sports league.”
While it’s great to hear that a unanimity in the way Premier League clubs operate is edging closer, it doesn’t hide the fact that while Arsenal have acted like the conservative squirrel hoarding for winter, several other clubs have gorged themselves stupid during the summer and still found themselves with a surplus of nuts worthy of a Snickers factory.
Fingers crossed the nuts of our rivals will eventually be crushed into smithereens while ours remain plentiful and full of goodness. Or something.
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Eh? Where did you get that from?!
Your name should have clued me in…….don’t know why i set myself up to expect more from you.
That’s easily explained, im Dumb, you’re dumber!!! lol
*has. English!
Sorry wrong correction I made there. My english teacher won’t be proud.
Despite the very public accounts showing that we aren’t….. Good grief
If there’s a snow ball chance in hell that the fair play rules get implemented to the letter without them sugar daddy clubs finding a way around it then i’d say Arsenal – would be sitting comfortably, no adjustments needed, just keep doing what we’re doing right now and it’s game on. Meanwhile at shitteh, sheikh Mansour is browning his whites.
well, hate to break it to you, there is no chance of a snowball in hell. This people will always find a way to circumvent the rules. The only thing that can stop them is for them to go the way of Rangers et al.
“This people will always find a way to circumvent the rules”……so all this has already happened before?. Almost like you’re against the whole idea mate. Better fifa try and implement it or should they just sit on their arses and watch football spiral out of control?. I’ll go with the first one. Better half perfect than nothing at all!
sorry but according to the swiss ramble ere not actually that well off on a buisne point of view a example as buyan munich made 161mill last year in commercial streams e made…46mill roughly and thats not at all a one off club beating us there utd do it chelsea do the spanish duo and so on yes we have a buttload of cash, 154mill but as most of our profits are big name sales like cesc nasri rvp song and such im afraid we may well need it unless we get a sizeable increase in commercial
buy more arsenal stuff fellas!!!
Eh?…….hehe.
What? Chelsea don’t generate more revenue than we do, do they? I was always under the impression that they were just richer in the first place.
Look, Bayern Munich are the biggest club in Germany, and easily one of the biggest in Europe, so this isn’t exactly mind-blowing stuff. Besides, I believe – from frequently perusing this most esteemed blog – that we have been stuck with a long-term sponsorship contract for a while now, which stemmed from our building the new Stadium. Once we see it out, we are in a great position to go out and find a new sponsor, who will gives us millions more than we earn now. So we will be back in the big leagues soon.
That’s not quite what swiss ramble said. It’s more a case of we’re doing well and will be doing very well when we get our arse in gear with the commercial sponsorship deals. Especially the shirt/kit and stadium naming.
It also says that the big spanish 2 will always be very big (by far the biggest in spain and their history means they have a big following world wide) but the gap will be much closer when the spanish league sorts out a combined TV deal rather than the present individual deals.
Will big companies still be willing or able to afford the big sponsorship deals that we all seem to be expecting to sign in a year or two? There is a recession on, after all.
I hope like fuck that Sky and ESPN et al are in robust health. If we don’t have TV companies bidding silly money against eachother for the rights to the Premier League each time the contract needs to be renewed then we are going to see a rather large bubble burst that will shoot down three quarters of the PL clubs, and cause the sugar daddies to walk away from at least a couple more. Football in England could look totally different 5 or 10 years from now. I hope that our financial prudence would see us through such a meltdown, but even if it does, it could leave us as big fish in a suddenly very small pond.
.. like a broken record. Same questions, same answers..
Someone really ought to ask different questions.
Didn’t you say something about reading what is written and not reading what you think is written in this mornings blog Andrew> Thought so.
Try again Dumb & Dumber.
Him and Arsene should interview each other
I doubt Arsene speaks bullshit.
Wenger and Ivan talks; awesome revenues
Played
I would like to ask him how he has merited almost 1m pay rise. I would genuinely like to know what he has done to earn such a bonus.
Probably not a lot, perhaps he’s using Walcott’s agent! As a rough rule of thumb, CEO pay equates to about 1% of turnover, so Gazidis remuneration is about the right level by the market. It beggars belief what he’ll earn when Arsenal win something. Let’s not forget Wenger takes home around 3x more. It does however, make a bit of a mockery about the, “Not paying dividends” line, when in fact the executive team, including Kronke, are more than compensated with loads of lovely cash.
Kronkes return on investment by salary is tiny. If your saving returned so little you’d move it elsewhere in a heartbeat.
Every time I see that face of his, I just want to punch him in the mouth. I can’t stand the guy, with his double speak and nonchalant attitude towards the club.
I wouldn’t go that far lol, but he definitely needs a kick up the arse given our lacklustre commercial performance.
The commercial performance that increased over the year and will do again, especially when we can negotiate better sponsorship?
Everything is relative – even with said increase, we trail behind pretty much every big fish in the European pond.
We weren’t even trying to compete commercially with them until recently. When you start a race 100 yards behind the field with your feet tied together it takes a while to catch up.
I can understand fans wanting instant success on the pitch, but how fucking daft do you have to be to think moving a company from being a local business to a global one can be done overnight?
What do you need to grow market share? A high profile in the marketplace.
What gets you a high profile in the football marketplace? Being winners
What makes you winners in football? Money to buy the best players
Where does the money come from? Customers
Why do the customers come to your team? They see you are winners
How do you get to be winners, again?
Barcelona and Real Madrid took a short cut to commercial success by having friendly banks.
Man City, Chelsea, PSG, Zent St Petersburg etc etc etc took a short cut by finding a sugar daddy
German football clubs were reorganised to ensure they all stay financially strong, and Bayern Munich then realised that they could win by using their fame to generate funds.
Manchester United also realised they could make a lot of money using their famous name.
Liverpool failed to build on their name dismally (considering their popularity that is a bloody disgrace). Blackburn failed. Leeds failed. Nottingham Forest failed. Spurs are trying, but it’s not much of a name to start with.
Arsenal were rather slow off the mark but we are still ahead of the pack and are more stable than most clubs ahead of us.
Five years from now the top Western European clubs could well be Arsenal, United and Bayern Munich, with strength in depth in Germany, but not really anywhere else. The Italiand and Spanish economies will go the way of the Greeks and their teams will suffer for lack of support from their bank buddies. The Middle Eastern bilionaires will fail to to adequately replace their oil money with new income and will start to tighten the purse strings. No doubt Eastern Europe will boast the teams to beat, and preseason trips to Asia and Africa will be vital to Arsenal’s continued wellbeing.
These are my predictions for football in Europe over the next five to ten years.
He could be one of the Millibands. A lost brother or something
I think he’s simpsons long lost brother. Bald and i’m sure he’s got two or three hairs hanging about in that head of his.
I just hope UEFA will have the balls to punish some big team for falling foul of ffp. If not .UEFA will be seen as a barking dog with no bite. Btw some crooked and enterprising lawyers are waiting for chance to make millions by fighting for a big team in the docks.
To this I say UEFA must say its decisions are not to be challenged and make the penalty very painful by ejecting such a team from its competitions especially the money spinning cl.On then will its authority be respected.
Uefa is just a big corp. They just care for the money and I am sure that if rules will be implemented for real, than very soon we will have some kinda of football NBA league and that will mean the end of the Game as we know it. At least there won’t be serious international football anymore and I dnt know how good that is cos World Cup is still bigger and more important then and league in the world.
UEFA must make entry to their competitions only available to clubs that can prove their financial wellbeing and honesty. There may be international laws guaranteeing working conditions, etc etc, but the admittance to a competition run by UEFA should be by invitation only, just like when I invite friends to my home. If you aren’t invited then you can’t come in, and the law cannot make me change my mind.
There should be no LEGAL requirement for UEFA to accept any team into it’s competitions, and so there should be no way to use any law to fight their decision as to whether a team is allowed in or not.
You cannot claim that refusal to let a club compete in a UEFA competition is restriction of trade for the workers (i.e. players) in the excluded team because it is the team that has a contract with the players and it is the team’s responsibility to ensure that they are fit to be allowed to play in a UEFA competition. Additionally, as entry to their competitions is by invitation then it should be perfectly possible to exclude a team on the basis of a moral decision (which is essentially how all English teams were banned from European competition for five years in the early 1990s. No law can challenge the moral decisions of an organisation choosing who it will or will not invite to play in it’s competitions.
As such it should entirely be up to UEFA whether they think a team should be allowed to play, and by their declaration of support for FFP they should certainly be able to exclude a club they believe has tried to get around their guidelines by dubious means (Hello City) purely as a moral decision. This should not be able to be challenged legally because ultimately there is no law governing which teams UEFA must invite to play in it’s competitions. No team has a legal right to compete in a UEFA competition. They only have an expectation that they will be considered for inclusion if they follow the guidelines laid down by UEFA for clubs wishing to be considered.
…and if football doesn’t work like this then the world is fucked and I want it to stop so that I can get off.
That is all nice and rosy but, you can just name yourself the supreme ruler of all that you survey. IF u make a decision on a club they have a right to challenge your judgement.
See my post above. I don’t believe inclusion in any UEFA competition is a legal right, and therefore exclusion cannot be legally challenged. A club might be able to make a plea to be allowed in if excluded, but not a legal challenge. That is my understanding of how it “should” work. If I’m wrong, well fuck me, we’ve been robbed of a perfectly good SPORT and given a shitty and corrupt business run by cunts in it’s place.
“In Arsene we trust” yeah we trusted the titanic and look how that turned out !
Like what you did with the ICE BERG and titanic reference, clever …. Shame about the comparison though, seems a bit dire for the day be TGIF
Do you ever get sick of spewing that crap?
This would work….IF….. Arsene Wenger had ever been declared unsinkable.
And there was me thinking we were just about to spunk £45mil on Falcao…. Does mean that the newspapers have reported something which might not be true? How strange.
He’s on over £2m a year.
Therefore, he is taking the piss.
Away with him, he’s an expensive sock-puppet to keep Kronke happy by talking to the press. We already have Hill Wood’s bat-phone to the Daily Star for that, thanks very much.
Kroenke: “what?, what? I couldn’t hear you over the slam dunk lebron james just made”.
Fucking twat probably enjoying himself in the state, his hands far up gazidis arse that he’s got him moving his mouth like his puppet. Winning is all I care for, arsene knows….shut up Gazidis!
Two above, go away.
Fact is Arsenal are a very successful business and for the past few seasons a pretty successful football team. It looks as though finally we are on an upwards curve football team wise after the plateau of recent times (but 3/4th in prem + regular knock out cl isn’t too shabby). Let’s see what we achieve by way of new sponsorship and if we end up re-investing to make the squad even stronger then re-analyse where The Arsenal sit versus the likes of Man U, Chelsea, Man City.
Personally very happy we haven’t sold our soul to a sugar daddy, it will feel all the sweeter when we do manage to win some silverware – hopefully this season with some hardwork and a bit of good old lady luck.
Sorry meant go away Denice Bergkamp not SHUGGIETODD but someone snuck in between! Do one Denice you schlag.
I know that you’re a sensitive bunch on here, but I was puzzled as to what I’d said wrong! Anyways I agree with your comments on not having a sugar daddy. Poldi, Santi, Jenks and many others are proof that you don’t have to spend tens of millions to get quality.
I think (and I’m often wrong), that it’s partly our constant presence in the Champions League which helps to attract these players (and AW’s eagle-eye). LIverpool, Spurs and several other clubs regularly spend more because they haven’t got that lure and need to.
Hasn’t done them much good though has it!
@anton. As a CEO he has done exactly what the board has asked of him, he has made profits that’s why he gets his bonus.
It’s not about winning things at arsenal anymore. That’s why we consistently sell players and will continue to do so as its the only way we can generate a profit for the time being.
Fair play will come in, some clubs will get around it and arsenal will follow it by the book.
I have no objection to making a profit but let’s see in January when we may need another striker to kick on in the league or cl, maybe theo will be off. Lets see if we spend some of this fabled 35 million. Or we just sit with what we have in the hope that injuries will not hurt us as thy have done in previous years.
I am not a pessimist but I think we are already late. We need players now!
bigger issue is when ffp comes in, whos gunna be able to pay 30 40 mill for our pplayer to balance our profit/loss? given were almost completely ales based for making money
Good point. Maybe we’ll sell players to Arabs and Asians directly to their leagues
Or maybe our commercial team will have finally sorted out the big deals which should make more per year than the big sales have done.
Call me sentimental, but every time football gets referred to as an ‘industry’ or equivalent, a little bit of me dies. Let’s hope that FFP gives us some sort of competetive financial advantage if not the Franco-Manc crushing effect we hope it will.
A usual, the South African who knows nothing about the culture of English football is talking bollocks.
For a start, Financial Fair Play simply won’t work. Man City, Chelsea, PSG and the others are already making plans to circumvent Platini’s laudable but unworkable scheme. Any clever accountant can run rings around it. Deep down Gazidis knows the truth, but as he’s being paid two million quid a year to spout this bullshit, he’ll just keep telling gullible fans what they want to hear.
It’s strange, isn’t it, that Gazidis won’t explain just why the club prefers to sit on huge amounts of money rather than spend it on the two or three quality players who would take us from fourth to possibly first. But, you see, profits come first, not trophies – and finishing fourth is all we need to turn a decent profit. He won’t tell you that.
It’s so depressing that the club I love has come to this.
I agree but please explain why on this forum most of the fans are very happy with how we started our season and it looks like they dnt care much about the fact that Arsenal is playing without 3 main players from the last season (at least who where involved in the most of our goals last season) ?
“Arsenal is playing without 3 main players from last season”……..now I don’t know about that but I do know we could still play well without the services of a deleluded fan!
“Any clever accountant can run rings around it”.
It’s all carefully worded by one of the cleverest accountants (deloitte) and should be very difficult to circumvent.
Not necessarily impossible but certainly not easy.
I’m wholly behind our self sustaining model but I just don’t trust Gazidis at all; he talks politically correct while pocketing the (2nd?)biggest package of any CEO in an EPL with the likes of the Manc duo, Chelski and Liverpool. While we are talking wage ceilings for players, and are selling some of our best talent to enforce the same, what justifies the CEO paying himself huge bonuses (mainly) from the sale of players? It’s akin to cannibalism, methinks. It’s just wrong.
People seem to be forgetting what is going to be happening with Arsenal in the next couple of years dispite of our poor deals and our commercial revenue and we should be cheering because in a couple of yours when the likes of Manu are struggling with debt with will be laughing…..don’t believe me?
2013/14 shirts and naming rights renewal that has got to be at least another 30-50m a season to our coffers.
2013/14 premier league new deal occurs (3bn one with sky and BT) and apparently that gives each club a 30-40m a year extra a season
then you add into this the profits we still could be generating through player sales killing off wages for rubbish players whose contracts will be ending and Wenger is admittedly buying higher quality players now and our squad is looking pretty decent now just need a few more players and we will be REALLY strong.
So in a couple of years Arsenal will be pulling in AT LEAST another 70m a season on top of what we are already bringing in and all of our debts are easily payable and word is that commercial revenue is gonna hike up a lot more soon too with extra matches being played in new places like Africa and Asia and think of the more money we will be getting from new fan bases and we will be getting more money out of shirt sales (arsenal currently tied to a deal that only pays them pennies for each shirt sold when in reality they should be getting at least 25% of shirt sales) so when you add this all in i think in the next few years Arsenal will be making at least £350m a season and will be record HUGE profits which means the wage structure will likely be better and we will be able to go for higher calibre players when the likes of Manu will still be struggling with debt.
This season we are looking competitive imagine what an exta 70m a season and better players could do.
Future very bright just gotta be a little more patient the worst is over now!!
Maverick I hope your right, but all the things you listed there are exactly the reasons stan invested in the club. He knows big money is coming into our club and will be taking a lot if not most of the new income. Why else has he bought us? He clearly is not a fan, and we only really keep our head above water because of players sales. What stan has in store for the club will only become obvious when these new deals come to fruition and I doubt as you say that we are all of a sudden going to be flush with money to spend.
He’s here to make money and that money is coming from those deals you have mentioned.
They are not allowed to take money out of the club and there is signed documentation saying so, the only way they can take out money is by selling shares so it makes sense that in order to make share prices rise they need to be successful on and off the pitch!! Arsenal don’t pay dividends and it is usmanov that wants to do this which is why the board dont want him on the board but people feel like he is our saviour…..but in reality he is asking the club to do the exact opposite the fans want but he likes to put the boot in and tries to undermine them to suit his agenda. Any money taken out of the club is in the annual account and it is illegal for the club to take out money and not declare it as a PLC so Arsenal are transparent so it kind of gets a bit annoying when everyone keeps on harping on about the board is stealing money when it is the board that insisted on no money being able to be moved on and insisted that Stan signs stuff to ensure he doesnt load the club with debt……for him to go agains’t that would put him in deep crap. I think (As Gazidis says) they genuinely want Arsenal to be in the top 5 clubs in the world…………even if you are a greedy business man it is common sense to slowly make a club one of the most powerful because then instead of a quick flash in the pan you can have something that is extremely valuable and holds it value for a lifetime!
Thank God that we have somebody over 20 on this forum.
I hope you are right but I agree Voldermort in not trusting Stan or Usmanov… or Gazidis at all.
Lapidarij, who do you trust? Who have you decided should be the man that makes all the decisions for us and our team?
Ok mate lets see. I’m no accountant so will take what you say as gospel. But somewhere some how along the line stan will take more money from this club than he has ever put in.
He has absolutely no interest in our club as a fan, he don’t attend games, he has no history of football.
It’s profit pure and simple, and some day down the line it will come apparant. Wether that takes a change in rules or whatever but he will take money from this club.
He’ll make his money when/if he sells his shares in the club, thats why he will do his absoluute best to make the club successful and raise its stock…
Financial success and success on the pitch are two different things. Financially, the club is in a great position – that’s why its share price has substantially risen over the last three years. The fact that the club has huge reserves of money that it won’t spend has massively added to its share price.
Kroenke simply doesn’t care about success on the pitch. We are making fantastic money without winning anything.
Your logic doesn’t wash.
“Financial success and success on the pitch are two different things”.
Fatgooner, despite being in a good financial position business wise, it would be much better if we had more sucess on the pitch.
Just look at the jump in revenue for the chavs winning the CL.
It make sense for Stan to really want us to be sucessful.
He is not prepared to speculate in order to accumulate. Chelsea won the Champions’ League because they threw enough money at it. The logic at Arsenal appears to be that somehow you can win major trophies while selling your best players. You can’t.
Fatgooner, when is Stan going to start raking in the massive profits from all of the sales we have made since he took over ?
If he were up to dirty tricks as you suggest then would he not have taken the cash from all of the sales we have made BEFORE any of that money got spent on buying replacement players?
Or would you like to change your declaration to “Well, he does want us to be a little bit successful, but….”
You are trying to force a square peg into a round hole to prove your hate of everybody involved in the ownership and running of ‘your’ club is justified.
You are effectively suggesting that Stan was smart enough to identify Arsenal as a good club to own, for the purpose of taking away all it’s money, but too stupid to be able to make a connection between on-field success and financial value (Well, actually you seem to be denying that such a connection exists, yourself, so how can I possibly believe the rest of what you say?).
I am struggling to understand why Stan, considering your theory about his intentions, hasn’t already started taking Arsenal’s money away for himself.
Great job so far. Selling our best players year on year. Raising prices to the dearest in world football in a recession. Season ticket waiting at its lowest for 20 years. No trophies. it’s only the magic of wenger that keeps the club in the position it’s in. If by that you mean his absolute best then fucking hell lets hope he don’t take his eye off the ball then eh.
You’re dead right, thats exactly why Wenger is paid so well, because without him we would be fucked !!!!!!!!
Profits,check.
Players sold,check.
Winning Mentality,what’s that?
Trophies,some day..some day..
don’t wanna be a sourpuss,but we are the real kings of london. i hope these guys realise this.
Lets hope arsene stays and signs a deal then.
Because the other clowns at the club do not have a fucking clue what it’s like to be a football person.
A football club is more than about just profits and had we invested in the right areas a year or two back when we were so close then the club would be making even more profits.
As it is now we take one step forward two steps back.
We now have the best midfield in the league, a defence to compete with most, the only thing missing is a player we sold to our rivals and is still scoring for fun. That’s no dig at giroud, he will come good but he ain’t no rvp. Imagine rvp getting the service that santi, podolski and jack could give him. We would be pissing this league. But again we sell and again we are are close and again we will fall short because of the short sighted ness of the board.
if RVP stayed we would prob would not have gone out and signed podolski or cazorla.. his fee was what paid for them.. they were replacements despite what Wenger will have you believe
Am I the only one that laughs out loud when the words ” giroud ” and ” come good ” are placed in the same sentence?
Yes, you are. The other people who think the same about Giroud as you laugh quietly so that people won’t think they are fuckwits.
smooth operator is Gazidis… teams are always going to find a way to circumvent these ffp rules tho. Take City’s stadium deal for example.. It’s just a fact of life we are going to have to deal with.. Keep getting managers like Wenger who bring in the Cazorlas, Artetas, Mertesackers, Podolskis etc. of the world on shoestring budgets
Arsene Wenger saw RVP at the mall and refused to greet him, the Dutch cunt almost cried watch video at, I can’t stop laughing http://profitsee.org/ref.php?page=act/ref&invcod=32135