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Good morning sports fans. Monday night beers eh? With hindsight, a choice poorer than a 5 year Denilson contract. I spent last night hanging out with the members of the AST and I have many things to report back to you…
Firstly, if you want the detail behind the members survey, you can find it all on the AST website.
I’ll run you through some of the highlights…
The amount of people who returned the survey was 382. Not bad out of 850 members. The split of people who returned it was quite varied as well, you had 213 Gold members, 73 shareholders, 82 red members, 11 overseas, 14 away scheme… even 3 junior gunners took time out which is very sweet.
On the self-sustaining model, 51% backed keeping the status quo with 38% looking for further investment by the major shareholders.
96% of Arsenal fans backed keeping Fanshare going, not surprising really, we all like having a say, that’d be diluted massively if we didn’t have Fanshare.
The AST have more shares than the board combined.
Interestingly, 70% of Arsenal fans surveyed believed Red&White should be invited to the board. That’s up a whopping 30% on last year when the same question was asked. The realisation that Stan Kroenke is the poorer end of the Billionaire spectrum is finally coming home to roost. Usmanov could buy our club with a cheque, Stan has had to beg, borrow and steal to push this deal through.
I think part of the above is also based on the disappointment of KSE keeping so damn quiet. He’s not made statement of intent since taking over and I think that worries people. 80% think they should be more transparent.
On the footballing side, 37% of fans are highly unsatisfied with what they’re being served up. Only 11% felt that way last year, that is a massive increase. Only 22% are satisfied these days.
69% of fans think Wenger’s footballing philosophy takes too much precedent over trophies. 69% would like David Dein back to bring in some checks and balances.
78% of fans disagreed with the season ticket price hike. Fair play, that’s to be expected. 96% think their club is in danger of pricing them out of going, which is a very sorry state of affairs.
Safe standing areas anyone?
47% still felt they were getting good value for money though!
51% do not feel they have a strong sense of belonging to the club. That disconnect from the fanbase is definitely something many people spoke to me about last night, episodes like Nasri and Cesc only go to further enhance that feeling.
Now onto some off survey stuff…
We’re now into the elite league of spenders. We shouldn’t be knocking around with the Everton’s and Villa’s, but we are bottom of the elite. We’re top 8 in Europe for spending power.
Ways we could have given ourselves more spending power last year would have been to have finished 2nd which would have given us £2million more. If we’d won our group and landed a quarter-final slot in the Champions League that would have been an extra £4-5million.
Our commercial revenue sits at £220million.
£90-100mill match day
£85mill TV
£45mill Commercial (£30 Commercial, £15mill Retail)
We have the 4th highest wage bill in the country. Traditionally that reflects your league position. If we finish above that position this year, we’ve outperformed financial expectations.
Saying we’ve got £100million cash in the bank is a fallacy. After all our expenses are taken out, we’re left at near enough break even. United earn a massive £50million more than us in commercial revenue, which is why there is such a massive shortfall.
Outgoings per years…
£110million wages
£20million loan
£50million other costs (electricity, hotels, merchandise, stadium costs)
The gap between the £170mill and the £220mill revenue isn’t liquid cash. So we’re roughly breaking even.
Stadium Loan Debt breakdown…
Total build Cost £440million
£220million Loan
£10milion from Supporters
£80million from ITV (10% stake in the club)
£90million from the Emirates
£55million from Nike (7 years with a 3 year contractual extension they took up) (The AST reckon the Nike deal at the time was a good one, others in the room disagreed)
Our current commercial revenue is £17.5 million a season. If we negotiated now, we’d be able to get and extra £32.5million a year.
Usmanov would and could come in a buy the club outright and pay off all the debt giving us a platform to compete. The AST say financial penalties make this a bad use of cash.
The AST were suggesting that in the 3 years we have to wait to renegotiate those commercials, it might be worth us speculating to accumulate. Nike aren’t going to want to do a massive deal with a team that isn’t competing at the highest level. Also, if we drop out of the Champions League, that would cost us a massive £25million a year.
Stan isn’t leveraging any debt against the club, but he’s also not investing a single penny of his money into the playing side.
On the salary side of things. We’re so high because we have such a massive squad and we pay the kids way more than they get elsewhere. Aaron Ramsey joined us in part because he was offered £500k more a year to join us over United. Sure, that looks like money well spent, but it wouldn’t if it were Denilson or the countless other failed youth products we have coming off the conveyor belt.
I actually asked what our wage bill would be if you pound for pound matched our squad with United’s. Apparently the AST know this wastage figure but they wouldn’t share it with me. It would be worth knowing wouldn’t it? If we didn’t work in this idealistic salary world that saw everyone kind of earning similar money, what would our wage bill be? £30million cheaper? That’d be a nice amount of money to free up…
Arsenal are at barely 20% of their commercial potential…
Manchester City doing that massive deal with Ethihad is causing concern because it effectively means FFP is dead. Are UEFA going to ask the questions they should be about that deal? Will they be kicked out of Europe? If they don’t, our self sustaining business model just becomes a best practice guide for business books. Not a competitive advantage. That would be a real shame.
Despite reports you may have read, 6,000 people haven’t given up their season tickets. What has actually happened is 2000 have sacked in their tickets and the normal 1 in 4 who take them up when offered has grown. People as high up as 13,000 on the list have managed to land themselves pairs of tickets this year. What the figures don’t take into account is the amount of loans and shares going on this year. My relatives found out the hard way what giving up your season ticket does when they packed it in after Zaragoza 95… people won’t make that mistake again so would rather sub out their seats until they see some investment.
Shows you that people are voting with their wallets… if the club won’t invest, why should the fans? What would that figure look like if we missed out on Champions League next year? We haven’t put a season ticket on general sales since we signed Bergkamp… lets hope it never gets to that!
£40million of Queensland money will work its way back into the club at some point… all profit
Nik B’s shirt number that was 52 represented the amount of pounds in thousands he earned a week last year. A pretty vulgar choice of number now I know that. Good riddance to him I say. I hope he has to share a bunk with Jan Koller in Germany. I know he’s retired, but Nik B deserves it.
The two players every AST member singled out for departure if they mentioned names in the survey were Denilson… and Abou Diaby. Seems there is a lot of disdain for the Frenchman. That was a surprise to me!
Nasri & Cesc
There was a lot of debate around these two scoundrels. Basically, if we keep Nasri, that has an on cost of £25million. Yep, that’s our transfer proceeds account for next year blown. I understand that Wenger is trying to make a stand, but for me, he should be doing that with a player he can keep and sell on next year. Making a point that ultimately will cost the fans money is ludicrous. If you think about it… a 6.5% season ticket price rise raised about £5million this year. Does anyone fancy footing a 26% increase in ticket prices next year?
Not me.
We did get a bit of debate going about Cesc. I’m still unsure why people think we have to let him go for £35million. Outside of sentiment, there is no reason. If Barca don’t value him like Madrid did Ronaldo, that’s not our problem. Have him when you do value him, like after a massive injury to Xavi.
