Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke angers fans by taking £3m out of club

[Power n Glory]

Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke angers fans by taking £3m out of club

Payment matches 3% rise in season ticket prices
• Kroenke has dodged issue of receiving dividends

News of the £3m payment for Stan Kroenke came as Arsenal tickets were capped at £10 against Southampton. Photograph: Michael Zemanek/BPI/Rex
Arsenal’s majority shareholder, Stan Kroenke, has taken a payment of £3m out of the club according to the latest company accounts.
Having never taken dividends from his American sports franchises, which include NBA basketball’s Denver Nuggets and the NFL side St Louis Rams, this is a move that has gone down badly with Arsenal supporters. Coincidentally, the £3m figure tallies with the amount the club raised from a 3% rise on season-ticket prices for this season.
The money has been paid to Kroenke’s company, KSE LLC, for strategic and advisory services which relate to Arsenal’s broadband division, the media department which raises funds by selling a three-hour block of weekly content to the lucrative international market.

Kroenke has been asked repeatedly at the club’s annual meeting whether he would take dividends from Arsenal but has always dodged the issue. He has, though, outlined his admiration for the model the Glazer family have at Manchester United, which was a leveraged buyout that loaded debt on to the club.
In a rare interview in November 2011, Kroenke expanded on how he feels this American system works. “Since they took over they have won and they have increased revenues by a huge amount. If I was a fan of that club, I would go there and go ‘Wow!’ because how could you do it any better?
“We have a whole different philosophy I think in the States, maybe, but I think it’s time for everybody to think a little bit. I think they ought to think about who invests in these clubs. ‘He [Glazer] took money out of the club. So what? [LA Lakers owner] Jerry Buss takes money out of his club. A lot of owners in the US do. No one ever says anything about it.”
News of the £3m payment felt all the more of a touchy subject on a night when Arsenal tickets were capped at £10 for the Capital One Cup tie against Southampton, a gesture of goodwill at a club with notoriously expensive tickets in the Premier League.

No doubt the Kroenke payment will be a subject on the agenda at Arsenal’s AGM on 16 October.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...end-fans-anger

[Niall_Quinn]

Uh oh...

As usual, the timing with these rich guys - unbelievable.

[I am invisible]

Maybe he's being drafted in as a an emergency CB? £60k/week would be about standard for us...

[She Wore A Yellow Ribbon]

Go into a 50 game season with 6 defenders and Stan takes £3m for himself.

You couldn't make this up!

[Penguin]

He's probably brought double that in revenue to the club.

[Power n Glory]

He's probably brought double that in revenue to the club.

True. But why the 3% rise in season ticket prices? It sounds like he's taken the fans money instead of the sponsors. The price hikes have been justified by Wenger by saying we need it to compete with the bigger clubs. Sounds like bullshit to me.

[Fist of Lehmann]

Attempting to make sense of this as a layman.

The article goes on about dividends, but this is a payment for 'strategic and advisory services'. £3m seems like a fuckton of money for consultancy fees but it might be legit. Maybe he's taking a %age cut of the overseas broadband coverage cash, which is 'lucrative' apparently (couldn't find separate internet broadcasting revenues). How he might have earned this cut, who knows?

Or it could be a way of taking dividends without declaring it as such so that Usmanov and the small shareholders don't take a cut, and the supporters groups don't kick up so much of a fuss.

Either way, it's a disgustingly rich man getting disgustingly richer by pissing on everybody and telling them it's rain. Just business in other words.

[Niall_Quinn]

For me the intent is more important than the amount. Not that it was ever likely to be otherwise, but now we know why he's attached to Arsenal. Precedent set, main event to come.

[Kano]

The first set of shares he purchased from ITV included a 50% share of Arsenal Broadband.

Given the respect he seems to give other owners who take money out of the club I think we should expect more to be going out in the future too.

Man U could do it because they have a shitload coming in through success on the pitch and selling every conceivable piece of advertising space across a huge spread of sponsors. Their commercial team is far more aggressive than ours, so we either up our game, sell out more of soul and identity, or prepare for a return to sparser pots of money to spend.

[Globalgunner]

We are a cash cow. Right now he`s only tickling our udders while the milking machine is being warmed up. Wenger is the resident production technician