Arsenal Unveils £4.5m Profit Rise

Premier League club Arsenal has unveiled a profit increase of £4.5m to £24.5m before tax in its financial figures for the six months ending on 30th November 2008.

The club saw match-day turnover rise to £44.4m, up £3.3m, while broadcasting revenue increased by £4.5m to £28.9m.

Despite the positivity surrounding the results, the club however has been hit by the economic downturn with sales of apartments in their Highbury Square development slower than expected. The delay will force Arsenal to extend their bank loan for the building work.

Construction on Highbury Square is close to completion with 186 apartments – valued at a total of £76.7m – now finished, and at the end of November sales had already been agreed worth £58.1m.

Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood said: ‘Clearly there are some significant challenges ahead of us, both on and off the pitch, over the closing months of this financial year and beyond.

‘The UK property market has been particularly affected by the economic downturn and, inevitably, this has had an impact on the group’s own property development activities.’

Arsenal – who funded the move to Emirates Stadium with a 23-year loan at a fixed interest rate – have been eager to assure fans that the performance of the club’s property business would not affect manager Arsene Wenger.

‘The financial arrangements for the group’s property activities are separate and largely operate independently from the financing of the football business,’ Hill-Wood said.

‘This has always been a key aspect to allow us to develop the football team as with, for example, the signing of Andrey Arshavin, irrespective of the difficult conditions in which our property business is having to operate.’