Good news potentially for Arsenal fans in the upcoming January transfer window as the Gunners have signed a new £150m deal with Emirates airline, extending its shirt sponsorship to 2019. The naming rights to the Emirates Stadium were also extended to 2028 as part of the deal.
In total, the agreement brings in £30m a season for Arsenal in terms of shirt and stadium sponsorship.
Arsenal are calling this one of the biggest deals in football, eclipsing rivals such as Liverpool in terms of revenue earned.
“The original deal with Emirates was a key facilitator of our move from [previous stadium] Highbury and this next phase of our relationship will be just as critical to keep us at the top of the game in England and Europe,” said Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis.
“The deal is all about football. It is all about giving us the resources in what we believe is a responsible and well managed way, to be able to invest in what we put onto the pitch for our fans.
“We have been able to talk to Emirates about the payment terms and bring some of them forwards, so that we will have additional money in this financial year which will be able to invest in the summer.
“Those decisions on investment are made by our manager, and he has done an outstanding job of managing the resources of the club over time, and we expect that to continue, but he will have more resources available.”
So while the new deal will bring in about an additional £20m in revenue to Arsenal each year, it still seems less than I expected.
Breaking it down, the kit deal is for six seasons. At a minimum that should be with £20m a year to Arsenal. Times six years, that equals £120m. So that means the naming rights for the stadium are worth maybe £2m a year?
Gazidis called it one of the biggest deals on football and that is not true. Barcelona’s shirt sponsorship deal with Qatar Foundation is worth 30m euros (£24m) a year. Keep in mind that Arsenal’s deal is shirt sponsorship AND naming rights.
Earlier this year, Manchester United signed a new shirt sponsorship deal with Chevrolet that is worth at least £45m a season until 2021.
Three years ago Liverpool signed an £80m, four-year shirt sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered.
Last year, Manchester City signed a 10-year deal reportedly worth £400m with Etihad for the airline’s name to go on both the club’s shirt and the stadium.
Compared to the United, City and Liverpool deals, the Arsenal deal looks lower than it should have been.
