Will the new CEO will rip up Arsenal’s commercial deals?
I certainly hope so ! Because the existing deals are rubbish.
I’m assuming most fans read Sunday’s story in The News of the World :
ARSENAL chief executive Ivan Gazidis will consider ripping up £112 million of the club’s sponsorship deals when he arrives at the Emirates next month. Former managing director Keith Edelman signed long-term deals with sponsors Emirates and kit makers Nike when the club was trying to finance its new stadium but other top clubs are getting much more cash.
Good story !
The Emirates have had their name plastered all over the most modern football stadium in Europe’s biggest and richest city for three years and all over a billion TV screens.
That’s got be worth £500 million, not £100 million. So of course Ivan Gazidis should renegotiate the Emirates deal and the Nike deal. They say Nike pay Man United twice as much per shirt as they pay Arsenal !
Last month I mentioned a wrinkle in Gazidis’s contract, a sticking point, one last clause that had to be sorted out before the name of Arsenal’s new chief exec could be announced. Maybe the rip-up was that clause. Maybe that was what Gazidis insisted on. Maybe that is the clause that made it worth him coming. He probably thought : If they won’t let me do that, why bother ?
Peter Hill-Wood, man of honour, said Arsenal would never break a contract. His chairman father wouldn’t, his grandfather wouldn’t, and Peter, the lovely old school Etonian, certainly wouldn’t betray his lineage by doing anything as modern as waking up to the facts of a rapidly-changing world.
When I’ve written about this previously on ANR I’ve said : Grow up ! Get real !
That might have been it : Gazidis wanted be allowed to renegotiate. If he could not renegotiate the deals, he could not generate extra cash, which the club obviously needs. If he couldn’t do that, why move his wife and kids from Connecticut to London to work with one arm tied behind his back?
In USA, he’s highly regarded and the MLS will miss his dynamism. A very able administrator and deal-maker, Gazidis has played a pivotal role creating clubs, coaches, referees and the infrastructure for a league that now has many new stadiums. The MLS has done all that in a continent where other sports are massively supported
Commissioner Don Garber said, “Ivan has provided the soul. And he’s done it in a quiet, confident and visionary fashion. He’s never been a guy that looked for a lot of credit, but he has earned and deserves that respect. For a guy who is the quintessential American sports executive, to have been tabbed by one of the greatest and most respected clubs on the planet? That’s an incredible statement. That couldn’t have happened five or six years ago. I’m so proud of him.”
So that’s where we are just Xmas, just before 2009, just before the new guy comes to fill the Grand Canyon-sized executive vacuum that I’ve been pointing out for all these months and years. So much has needed doing at Arsenal and there’s been nobody to do it. That is very embarrassing, especially for discerning supporters and shareholders, and it’s gone on for far too long. I really hoped Danny would hire someone while I was away on holiday. When we got back from Croatia on July 9, I wasn’t asking what players were coming, as I didn’t expect any until August 31. I was saying : Have they got a CEO yet? When are they going to announce it?
That was half a year ago! That feels like a decade to someone as impatient as your humble columnist.
Ivan Gazidis said that very few jobs in football would have tempted him to stand down as deputy commissioner of MLS. He turned down the Manchester City job, perhaps because he hoped to come to Arsenal.
I hope Gazidis will be a good listener as well as a guy who can make things happen. US execs usually have a can-do mentality and that’s urgently needed at Arsenal right now. Wenger needs help because the strain is showing on him. I really, really hope Gazidis will be hands-on with the supporters, many of whom are so fed up that thousands are not turning up, or renting out their season-tickets to friends.
Also, as I say, I really hope his brief is to rip up, to renegotiate, or to buy companies out of existing deals.
If so, that process will be interesting. What would the Emirates say to a call to re-negotiate their sponsorship? Would they say : Oh, we thought Hill-Wood was a man of his word? Or would they say : If we have to give you a lot more money, why don’t you sell the club to us?
The bottom line on Stan Kroenke is that he joined the Arsenal board his terms. And the bottom line on Ivan Gazidis is that he took the CEO job on his terms. Apparently, US soccer executives reckon that Gazidis did not consult Kroenke before accepting Arsenal’s offer.
A bright, energetic 44-year old corporate lawyer, Gazidis can take a lot of pressure off Arsene Wenger, so the manager might get a grip and create a much more balanced squad that can excite the fans again.
He replaces Keith Edelman, a number-cruncher who pushed through the original loan of £260 million, finished the stadium on time, and did well with the refinancing of the debt. Edelman was an effective project manager whose brief was to keep costs down. He ran Arsenal’s business for eight years.
This is a new era with different challenges. Running the club’s business is an exciting, challenging job for somebody. Let’s hope Gazidis is the right man for the job. Let’s hope he can give Arsenal what they need. Right now, I feel very positive about him.
Sincerely, I wish Ivan luck.