Sibc 11: Sustainability Crucial To Survival

Speaking exclusively at the Nolan Partners Sport Industry Breakfast Club in front of a packed room of industry executives, Arsenal Football Club CEO Ivan Gazidis insisted that Arsene Wenger retained the full backing of the club’s board, and explained that football’s blinkered spending had to stop.

Gazidis said: ‘Football can’t go on acting like it’s in an bubble, so I hope there will be an adjustment to take account of wider economic issues’.

The chief executive told Breakfast Club interviewer Mark Pougatch that Arsenal continued to plan for the future, and believes the clubs recent form is just a blip – the football club has lost three of their opening five league games and lie 17th, one point above the relegation zone.

‘There will always be ups and downs in form. Obviously we’re in a down point at the moment but when we look forward we can look forward with real confidence, and plan for a future that will see Arsenal at the top of the game, not just now, but five, ten, twenty years from now’.

Gazidis stressed that a sensible, sustainable business model was key to maintaining the future of the club, and for football as a whole.

‘I think this message of responsibility and sustainability is important for the broader game. My view is that Arsenal represents the future of the game, and Arsenal is in a space that other clubs are trying to migrate towards’.

‘A number of clubs look at us as a role model for what they want to become. Clubs want to get to a space were they are self-sustainable’.

‘I think all clubs are expressing a view of the future that is responsible and sustainable’.  

‘We know we can’t compete with the spending that is out there, and even if we did, it would just push the spending to another level’.

On his manager Arsene Wenger, Gazidis explained: ‘He is frustrated. He is as focused on delivering success as ever. He is not broken. He did not suddenly become a bad manager or out of touch with the game. It is complete nonsense’.

Arsenal’s current commercial deals come to an end in the next few years, Gazidis said: ‘The point I would make on our commercial side is that we have tremendous partnerships with our primary partners Nike and Emirates, who have been incredibly supportive of the club, and those deals were structured in a way that enabled us to build our stadium’.

Asked whether recent deals with DHL and Etihad by Manchester United and Manchester City respectively, Gazidis did not feel that Arsenal’s current commercial deals had left them a long way behind their rivals.

‘If you look at them in isolation, today you would say we are commercially behind but actually, in a sense, that revenue was put into the stadium, and the stadium is now delivering us revenue’.