Ivan Merc
Thanks for everybody that commented on my Letter to Ivan Gazidis.
And also thanks for all recommendations.
I’d like to make life a bit easier for some of you and also will dare to recommend – don’t try so hard. Just write “FACS” (Find Another Club to Support) in your comment. It is much quicker and doesn’t force you to prove your point of view with arguments.
For all others I’d like to say that in my vision the main problem is in heads of managers/owners.
Arsenal was NOT financially constrained after moving to new stadium.
Arsenal spent a lot (around 92% of Man Utd’s spending for five years), but spent badly. (As you know they refused to explain fans what the £55 million. “other expenses” covered because the law doesn’t require it. And they talk about respecting the fans???)
Arsenal spent like a bush-league provincial. And the way of spending resulted in the trophy drought. (Just imagine we bought in summer two top-quality centre backs instead of current guys and Given or even Schwarzer – the Carling Cup would be in our hands already).
And the current method of spending has caused the loss of revenues.
The Arsenal Supporters Trust said a few days ago that the Trust “has met with all of the new commercial team members recruited by Ivan Gazidis. It is an excellent team already making good progress on this objective.”
But neither AST nor the club has published a breakdown of the commercial revenues. And nobody can see what is called “good progress”.
And also nobody published the breakdown of the proposed Japanese trip. A Google search reveals only the one sentence in the Daily Mirror - “…the club believe the Far Eastern trip could net them an astonishing £15million”.
But it is not enough I’m sorry. The club lies regularly – with match attendances, with investment in a squad, with Highbury Square successes (there is a definite HUGE loss on this project which I’ll prove next time), etc. So I need a club’s study on this point. But while this study is under preparation let’s talk about current situation.
Have a look at these figures, please.
Do you like them? Did you find any progress in commercial revenues?
This season Man Utd got a lucrative deal from Epson and Barcelona got the same from Seiko. Both teams did NOT visit Japan to get Japanese sponsors. They just won their domestic titles.
Real didn’t win last year, but got lucrative deal with Indonesia’s PT Dua Kelinci (this is not the only instance of non-title winners getting a good deal, but an example). They didn’t travel to Indonesia, but they show their capital ambitions all the time and they buy top-players (I don’t like Real’s “business model”, but we are talking about revenues).
Toyota (Honda, Sony, Sega, etc) doesn’t care about football. It cares about client base growth. And if they have a sponsorship choice between Arsenal and Man United they choose Man United with no doubts. Because they’d be able to sell more cars (TV’s, computer games, etc) to Manure fans than to Gooners. As simple as that.
So if you want premium contracts, you have to be a top-club. You must have a quickly growing international fanbase. And to achieve this growth you must have ambitions, titles and top players.
Arsenal today is not a top club. It is well locally supported, provincial-minded club.
Do you realize that each time AW spoke to the press and suggests “The Premier League is more important than Carling Cup” it damages the Arsenal brand? Because the whole world understands that his words already cost nothing as he will lose the Premier League as well.
