Their lead on Tottenham Hotspur in the league is healthy but Arsenal have now set their sights on reeling in their north London neighbours elsewhere – with an aggression that makes even Mikel Arteta’s touchline manner seem mild.
The fight is for the Gunners – once known as the Bank of England team due to their monetary might – to reclaim financial superiority over Spurs who, in the recent Deloitte Football Money League table, were confirmed as the capital’s richest club.
While Spurs raked in £549.2million in revenue during the 2022-23 season – the eighth most in Europe – Arsenal brought in £463m, leaving them lagging behind in 10th.
But it was the commercial income figures which are most sobering for the Gunners. Arsenal’s £167m was £57m behind Spurs, £41m behind Chelsea and less than half that of Manchester City, the top performing club in Europe.
But Arsenal are making moves to climb that table. They now have a 100-strong commercial team, data and insight analysts and forms of merchandise available that were once unimaginable. Take the ‘Ian Wright pre-match shirt’, just one item from a raft of adidas ranges.
Arsenal are working behind the scenes to improve their commercial assets and sponsorships
The Gunners want to catch local rivals Tottenham and their financially important new stadium
Driving commercial revenue at the club is crucial to improving Mikel Arteta’s Gunners squad
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For Spurs, their beautiful new stadium is the key. When Arsenal built the Emirates, the idea was that it would bring vast matchday revenues and financial ascendancy over their rivals. But its 60,000 capacity has now been eclipsed by the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which is being used far more aggressively to generate extra income.
It’s not just the Spurs matchday experience – which is persuading fans to linger for 40 minutes longer on the concourses than they did on average at White Hart Lane – which brings in £800,000 income on catering sales alone. Tottenham also host NFL matches and concerts by artists such as Beyonce and Guns N’ Roses. This is what Arsenal are up against.
‘Arsenal have, historically, always been far ahead of Spurs but Daniel Levy has been a genius in terms of commercialisation,’ football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells Mail Sport. ‘Arsenal have been overtaken by Spurs, which is a surprise to people given the historic relative success of the two clubs.’
But that fight to regain supremacy is underway. In part, this is about driving more sponsorship deals. Arsenal should be near the top of the tree, given they are one of the best-supported clubs in global sport, with 29m followers on Instagram, 22.2m on X and 6.8m on TikTok. But they have 27 sponsors, compared with Spurs’ 39, Manchester United’s 41 and Manchester City’s 46.
Since the end of last season, Arsenal have secured eight new sponsorship deals. The partners include Chinese tyre manufacturer ZC Rubber, global brand TCL Electronics, British car manufacturers MG and Dubai-based real estate developer Sobha Realty. Mail Sport understands they are collectively worth more than £85m per year.
We revealed last month that the Gunners’ London Colney base has been renamed the Sobha Realty Training Centre in a historic multi-million-pound deal, the first time in its 25-year history that Colney’s naming rights have been sold.
Sobha, who have offices in Dubai, China and India, first came together with Arsenal in 2023, the luxury developer securing naming rights to a hospitality suite at the Emirates. Their branding has been seen across the stadium and Meadow Park, home of the women’s team in Boreham Wood.
Key to this activity are chief executive Vinai Venkatesham – who will leave the club this summer – and chief commercial officer Juliet Slot. They have a data and insight unit and an in-house creative studio. The data unit works with sponsors to understand their targets and marry them with analytics, deeming what will attract attention from the Arsenal audience. Slot, who joined in December 2021 and previously worked for adidas and the London 2012 Olympics, has had a strong influence in renewed deals with Emirates and her former firm.
The adidas kit deal was due to expire this season but in September was extended until 2030, worth a reported £75m-a-year. The Emirates’ front-of-shirt sponsorship has been extended until 2028, the same year the stadium naming rights deal expires, and is worth in excess of £50m-a-year – an increase of more than £10m.
Outgoing chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has been key to Arsenal’s commercial drive
The Arsenal training ground was renamed the Sobha Realty Training Centre in a huge deal
The club’s stadium naming rights deal expires in 2028, and is reportedly worth £50m a year
Driving commercial revenue is crucial to improving the squad. The Premier League’s PSR rules state that a club can make a loss of £105m over a three-year period. UEFA’s rules, coming in next season, allow a club to spend up to 80 per cent of their revenue on wages, transfers and agent fees. That will drop to 70 per cent for the 2025-26 season.
That new landscape was reflected in the recent news that there will be a six per cent price rise in season tickets in the Emirates’ lower tier, and a four per cent increase in the upper tier.
The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust wrote: ‘We are disappointed Arsenal chose to reject our call for a freeze in ticket prices given the club will benefit from playing more home matches next season (due to the Champions League expansion). These proposals mean a supporter buying a season ticket for 2024-25 will pay approximately 10 per cent more than this season.’
This extra money is crucial, however. As Maguire says: ‘Commercial revenue is something that is critical for Arsenal. Over the last five or six years, because they haven’t been in the Champions League, they have been dropping further behind the other big Premier League clubs.
‘They’ve had to go down that route out of necessity. It’s the only way they can grow organically because you can’t increase the size of the stadium.
‘With the new rules coming in from UEFA, every extra million pound you bring in terms of commercial, that’s another £800,000 going to the wage bill. Arsenal are doing the right thing.’
The club have been marketing new merchandise including nine different training shirt designs
When the sides meet, Spurs will parade the sophistication that has put them above Arsenal
Commercially, Arsenal’s focus has shifted to the US from China, where the Chinese Super League did not grow as many expected.
‘American fans are used to being monetised,’ Maguire says. ‘They want a piece of the action and see English football teams on a regular basis on Peacock.’
Peacock provide coverage through the NBC’s $2.7billion (£2.1bn) six-year US rights agreement signed in 2022. December’s Liverpool versus Arsenal fixture was the most-watched Premier League match in US history, pulling in 1.96m viewers.
Arsenal America, the official supporter group in the US, has 85 branches across 33 states. There is a real hunger for the sport in the country and the club are capitalising fast. Although they don’t have an office in the US, their two main routes for commercial revenue are pre-season tours and merchandise. The Gunners toured Washington DC, New Jersey and Los Angeles last year and are heading back to the US this summer. The confirmed stops so far are Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
In terms of merchandise, Arsenal have been marketing new training tops and kits. These include that Wright pre-match shirt and variations of training kits, the number of which regularly changes. At present there are nine training shirt designs to be bought.
Maguire believes Arsenal will reel in Tottenham commercially. ‘I expect the bounce back this season because Chelsea haven’t qualified for Europe, neither have Spurs,’ he says. ‘So for the 2023-24 season, I would expect Arsenal to come back as being top dog in London.
‘But there’s no room for complacency and it’s essential if they want to maintain that position, they’ve got to be qualifying for the Champions League on a more regular basis.’
When the two sides meet at Tottenham next month, the capital’s top-earning club will parade the sophistication which has put Arsenal in the shade. But the message from Islington is loud and clear: We’re coming to get you.