Mesut Ozil’s agent has revealed that the player’s popularity on social media played a fundamental role in sealing the German a bumper pay increase when he penned a contract extension at Arsenal.
After protracted negotiations, the midfielder committed his long-term future to the Gunners in February with a deal that is understood to pocket him around £350,000 per week; more than double his previous terms. While the figure may have blown a hole in the club’s wage structure, Dr. Erkut Sogut firmly believes his client’s commercial viability and global brand meant he earned the increase.
The figures appear to back him up. With 23.5 million and 18.4 million followers on Twitter and Instagram respectively, Ozil has a reach on social media that far outweighs his club.
Reflecting on the way negotiations played out, Sogut told the Evening Standard: “We had some really big offers from Asia, there were some crazy offers. But for Mesut, money was by no means the biggest factor.
“Money is definitely one important thing to consider, but people must remember that footballing ability is just one aspect of a contract negotiation. The commercial impact of a footballer is crucial nowadays.
“Mesut has the biggest social media following of any player in the Premier League and I just read that his shirt numbers (sales) were the largest at the club.
“At the end of the day, this is all information that has to be taken into consideration. So, the commercial side is very big with a player like Mesut, who has played in different countries and was the No10 of the national team, where he won the World Cup.
He added: “His market is worldwide. The club makes money out of these players as well, but it came down to what was in his heart.
“We were free to sign with other clubs and in the end Mesut loves the club. I put everything to him and he just said, ‘This is my home, I want to be here’.”
Obviously, Ozil’s huge contract has put even greater pressure on him to deliver the goods consistently for Arsenal. While there’s no doubting his talent and match-winning ability, it’s fair to say the jury remains out on whether the terms of his huge deal are truly providing value for money for the club.
Then the wages is not a problem, this is why you sign these kind of players. The difference with Alexis is huge… it’s just market economy not rocket science
Özil signed in 2013. If he left in January, after almost five years, would his stay at Arsenal be considered a succesful one? Trophywise, not at all. That is however also true for the likes of Fabregas, RvP, Nasri etc. However, what would your verdict re Özil be?
Trophy wise: 3 fa cups gives him more than Fabregas, Rvp and Nasri combined at the emirates.. Not sure what your point is. Performance wise however, maybe not as successful.
i wasn’t really making a point, i was asking a question. my only point was, that trophy wise, his stay has not been a success. 3 fa cups is fine, but surely not satisfying. you’re right in that rvp, nasri and cesc have been even less succesful trophywise, so my comparison was pehaps not great. but as you say – and i agree – performance wise, he wasn’t as successful.
i’m surprised most people on here agree with you, because usually most people here just don’t accept he’s haven’t had a great time at Arsenal so far
In his time at the arsenal he has been playing with players like Walcott Welbeck ramsey ox Xhaka etc. All decent mid table players.
Trophy’s aren’t everything, I’ve enjoyed having mesut at the club, he’s delivered some moments of brilliance that I won’t forget.
He is a good player who doesn’t have much match-winning ability. He sinks with the team. Arsenal should have given him a bonus on shirt sales not a big weekly salary. Hope his followers are actually buying their shirts from official sources.
There are maybe two players on earth in top level football that don’t ‘sink with the team’ and single-handedly change the fortune of their team when it is off the boil, and they’re both on the fade and have always played for teams that outclass the competition on their worst days. Add to that Ozil’s not a primary goal-scorer, and that’s just a misdirected complaint. No team near the top of any top league table relies on a single player to win matches. Not a single one.
Sometimes he syncs with the team
and he shows up for the odd match! Zing 🙂
But seriously, how do these guys even spend the money they make? 18 million pounds a year plus endorsements to kick a ball…
His agent gets a bit of that, maybe some Aldi shopping, the odd bargain on eBay and rest he spends on baseball caps and ear rings. 18m gone in a flash, probably.
He gives a lot of money to charity too.
A bit on women, a bit on drinking, and the rest he just wastes.
This is the Best joke I’ve told recently.
Good Georgie Best line?
Özil does not drink….as in alcohol.
And the woman he is always seen with is his fiance. He does not womanise or go out with different woman every other week.
And he spends lots of the money on house and German cars!!!
He payed hospital bills for disadvantaged kidsin Brazil with his pay from the national team during the tournament, he still pays billsfor disadvantaged kids around the world every year. But I guess good news about Ozil or any news that doesn’t paint him as a diva (Arseblog seems to feel like he is in the way he speaks about him), is not worth reporting.
was just joking, Devo! I know he does some nice things, but nobody deserves that kind of money to play a sport. We’re the suckers paying for it with our insane TV subscriptions, Internet streaming subscriptions, expensive shirts, ticket prices, etc.
You forget that they pay taxes that gulps a lot of their earnings.
They aren’t alone on that front!
I’m a fan of Ozil but he’s not worth anywhere near 350k per week.
Lol. They explain why in the article.
Shirt sales mean fuck all to me and I don’t believe they actually equate to so much commercially either. But if you to believe his agent that’s ok.
From a footballing point I don’t think he was worth smashing our wage structure for.
Shirt sales only result in a tiny amount of money going to the club, but the adidas deal would have been far less without Ozil. There are a few sites that explain the vast majority of money from shirt sales go to the manufacturer and we (as a club) really only earn from the main shirt deal with Adidas and the sales from the club shops/site. However the fact that he’s a globally recognised player helps with every single sponsorship deal that the club has.
As pointed out in the article, 350k is not just paying for his footballing ability; he’s a marketing asset to Arsenal as a business. With millions of social media followers, he increases the value Arsenal can negotiate with on sponsorship deals, and how many of those millions of social media followers are purchasing Arsenal shirts with Ozil on the back and other merchandises, coffee cups with Ozils handsome face, and ticketing sales from tourists who may be in London for a few days and from many options (7 out of 20 London teams in the Premier League), decide to watch… Read more »
What you say is absolutely on point. Where is sportsmanship, team spirit , human values, performances in all that? The market economy in football revolts me. It’s all about individualism. Makes me sad.
Stop watching then
So as I have always maintained and for which have been heavily down voted multiple times here, ozil is more valuable as marketing tool than as a footballer.
Even though the tone is sinister he is right.
Only you should have positively phrased it.
Mesut ozil’s marketing potential is even greater than his already great footballing ability.
Tell the truth Francesc ?
If only we could extract the same type of value-out of him on the pitch… Emery would be out on the touch line with his pipe and slippers.
How Ozil has the captains armband I’ll never know, I think he’ll be moved on at the earliest opportunity, I just don’t see Emery putting up with this type on inconsistency for long
Tell the truth Rich.. ?
Arsenal were desperate to keep him due to not wanting to lose Ozil and Sanchez at the same time. Plus Ozils contract didn’t have long to go.
Arsenal stuffed themselves.
unless Arsenal could sell him for a fee the coming summer. then it is worth it.
Do you think the Asia offers will stop because he has a contract? Gervinho earns more than ozil does when he played in china…
His assists record, chances created and general play suggests he deserves it. Can’t argue with the stats, he has done what he was signed for and then some. There are no other players who play his role better in the Premier League and his global fame is not for any off the pitch matters. He is a footballer’s footballer, and that’s who follows him on social media. He is no Ronaldo or Beckham in how he has gained his fanbase. A lot of criticism of him is also subjective. It’s always how it feels like he hasn’t done enough, rather… Read more »
An interesting approach to this article Bloggs, no mention of the million a week contract that he turned down, and a subtle edge of negativity about it. Mesut chose to stay at Arsenal, and the fact that he sells so many shirts is proof that so many of us love him. He’s an Arsenal man, he’s better than Zidane, we’ve got Mesut Ozil and that makes a lot of us very happy.
He really isn’t better than Zidane though, as much as I love the song. On his day the guy is world class, an amazing footballer. But what differentiates true Arsenal greats for me is consistency. How many times did Bergkamp, Henry, Pires, Fabregas, Adams etc. have 4 or 5 poor to average games in a row? Ozil does this all the time, then he has one incredible match, like the Leicester one. If he could have flipped that, even to a fifty/fifty kind of ratio, what an unbelievable asset he’d have been over the years. Will he become more consistent… Read more »
Put any one of them into this team and they wouldn’t be nearly as consistent as they were. Football is a team sport and no one player can win alone. The Invincibles played some boring football along the way and lots of draws, not everything was like the highlights reels. Mesuts highlights match or exceed anything they did.
The Limp Bar, if you were actually watching at the time then you’d know that all the players you mentioned had hot and cold patches.
A Influencer on pitch is what we need not a Twitter influencer. Especially after a quick goggle search you can buy yourself 10,000 followers, for as little as $80.
Professional footballers don’t need to buy followers, they can get them organically. It’s absolutely pointless for them to do so anyway. I doubt buying followers is at the top of the Ozil PR list.
Did those 23million followers buy any Arsenal jerseys? If not, they are as useful to us as Stan’s tightly shut wallets.
I have bought at least 10, including kits for my kids.
I even saved up my pocket money so I could pay for a money order and pay for the Junior Gunners membership back in the late 80s.
I contribute more to Arsenal FC than these idiots, I believe.
23million…so what? Im actually partially paying for his wages man.
Well if only 1 out of every 100 of the 23 million followers buy an Ozil jersey every year that is 230,000 people. At 125 dollars each that is 28.75 million per year — no idea how much Arsenal would get of that though.
He stated Ozil had the highest shirt sales…
Every single deal we have (Including the Adidas deal) would have been for much less money if Ozil (or another star name) wasn’t playing for us.
Of course it makes sense for a player to get an agent to take care of the business stuff while kicking a ball + an agent can be far more demanding in negotiation BUT for the game they are a plague. Young men can be manipulated so easy, not saying it is like that in Özils case, but the % they “earn” when a football player change clubs is ridiculous. People like Raiola should not starring the headline when it comes to transfers. When we were in negotiations with Alexis and Mesut, everybody knew and the most liked comment on… Read more »
Of course he sells the most shirts… his name is only four letters!!
Yeah but remember you have to pay extra for the umlaut!
Plus you have to take into account that it’s not just Ozil who decides how much he gets paid, but also his agent – he’s just Sogut.
ba dum tss
Mesut, make everyone fucking happy, and for once in your Arsenal life, make a sliding tackle or get your face bloody from an overhead challenge. JaGunnersJa!
Hahahahaha. I hope Mesut is reading this.
not sure, but jenko is telling him. 😉
He made his first headed goal with us, didn’t he? So no reason why he can’t do this as well 🙂
It seems we are moving ever closer to American values. In the US a lot of a player’s value is measured against his commercial potential not his sporting ability.
Well deserved Ozil ?
Haters you all hide & slag him off on his performance, why don’t you all tell the truth…
Truth = Why should he be the highest earner of our supported English Club and now the club captain… He is a foreigner… He is a Muslim…. Can’t handle that could you haters !!!
So it’s other you like Ozil as a footballer at arsenal or you hate Muslims? 1+1=2
My take is that he is a bit to petulant and quiet to be a good captain. His game is surely not tailored for a “leading by example” captaincy neither. Case in point was Sunday, when he grounded the ball and received a red card. As someone else pointed out, he needed to have a direct conversation with the ref, and try to win points with him about the time wasting, not disrespect him. The other insinuations you make may be true for some folks, but for all the time I have spent reading comments on this site, I not… Read more »
*My error. He might have seen red, but received a yellow card.
Its his temperament.
He lets his head down too easily when things don’t go right.
Which is difficult for the team when they are struggling and looking for answers.
I’m not sure how much you can fix this at such a late age. Although he is getting slightly better with Emery and showing a bit more fight.
most retarded thing ive read today despite reading one of trumps speeches bout calfifornia forestfires.
You read Trump’s speeches? Why? Even Trump himself just chucks them in the bin and makes shit up instead.
sometimes, when i have the nerves to.
A (part)wise woman, named Ute Bock, was once asked why she reads the “KronenZeitung”(its a newspaper, like the Sun i guess, most read in Austria and without any credibility) and she replied: “I have to know why the people are so dumb!”
But you can do it also before a workout, it triggers so much that u wanna punch something but instead use this energy to shape your body. But thats just a theorie because i never workout.
We have very few players at the moment that excite the imagination. When we use to have the likes of Bergkamp and Henry, Pires, Viera even emerging Fabregas and RVP, we have steadily lost top billing players to the encroachment of oil rich clubs and over the years the need to balance books until more recently of course. Hence probably important to retain one of Alexis or Ozil. Ozil himself isn’t particularly top end billing anymore but given our squad, he is still a big draw and feature for more neutral fans. Until we can again develop and manufacture (or… Read more »
aw chucks, thanks for staying on a 350,000 quid a week contract… what a stellar guy.
come on…
i dont hate Ozil by any means but this is an agent protecting his asset. that’s it.
If you have to ask if he is value for money then the answer is obvious!
Sounds like a perfect Stan’s player
I love mesut, just struggle to understand why he doesn’t play week after week like he did against leicester, when he was sensational
That’s the reason we (as a club) can take a risk on players like Asano. Their national support covers a decent portion of the costs marketing-wise and if they actually make the grade then their marketing potential goes global…