Arsenal have published their financial results for the year ended 31 May 2019.
These are the first set of financial results for ‘Arsenal Football Club PLC’ under the private ownership of Stan Kroenke’s KSE and have been made available via Companies House. (Full report here)
The key takeaway is a loss for the year before taxation of £23.5 million compared with last year’s £97.4 million profit. In the main, this is attributable to a downturn in player sales.
Revenue for the year was £367.5 million (2018 – £388.6 million). The club explained that this is down to the window for season ticket renewals being later than usual because we were in the Europa League final. Basically, we couldn’t set the price of this season’s tickets until we knew if we had Champions League football or not.
The impact of the lower appearance fees was partially offset by higher broadcasting revenues and increased commercial revenue which included the Visit Rwanda sleeve partnership as a new category.
Operating profits were also impacted by continued investment in player wages which meant that total staff costs, excluding exceptional costs, grew to £227.3 million (2018 – £218.9 million).
| 2019 | 2018 | |
| £m | £m | |
| Operating profit before exceptional costs and player trading | 53.9 | 84.1 |
| Exceptional costs | -3.2 | -17.2 |
| Amortisation and impairment of player registrations | -90.9 | -91.7 |
| Sale of player registrations / Loan of players | 16.8 | 122.3 |
| Other | -0.1 | -0.1 |
| (Loss)/profit before tax | 23.5 | 97.4 |
A couple of other interesting bits and bobs.
- The average ticket sales over 30 home games was 58,943 against 58,012 in Wenger’s final season. Bear in mind we added an extra half row to Club Level in Emery’s first season so that will likely have played a part.
- On average in 2019, Arsenal employed 707 people each month. This includes playing staff, training staff, administrative staff and ground staff.
- The Adidas kit deal and renewed terms with Emirates didn’t kick in until July, so that financial boost should be reflected in next year’s results.
- Arsenal says they are monitoring the impact of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union and the possible consequences.
They state: “This has seen the value of the sterling weaken against the Euro; on the one hand increasing the cost of player transfers from the EU and, on the other, increasing the sterling value of European competition distributions paid out to clubs by UEFA in Euros. The most significant risk to the company would ‘appear to be a downturn to the UK or wider economy impacting ticket revenues and / or the value of broadcasting and / or sponsorship rights. Any potential impact on the recruitment and / or retention of players is also being monitored closely.”
Under the title ‘Principal Activity and Strategy’ the report says: “The Board’s long term strategy is to continue to develop Arsenal Football Club as a leading club on both the domestic and global stages. The Board are committed to a business model which invests the funds generated by the business back into the Club with the aim of achieving an increased level of on-field success with the ultimate goal of winning trophies and using that on-field success to increase the Club’s engaged worldwide fan base.”
No doubt @SwissRamble will be working his way through the full report. We look forward to his analysis.
Well if you want to keep this kind of business model and be really succesfull you’d have to be much more effective lads..
This isn’t just any economic and cultural annihilation.
This is Kroenke economic and cultural annihilation.
We can complain about the Kroenke’s as much as we like, but they opened their wallet this year and management squandered it. Also, Kroenke’s Ram’s in the NFL made it to the Superbowl. I’m not a fan of the Kroenkes, but don’t really think they were the real problem this year.
Actually I would say that it had more to do with the administration team. Emery asked for a tall DM like Nzonzi. We bought him a energiser bunny (Torriera). He threw out his toys from the prom to make his point which lead to his sacking. Remember the board is never happy to relieve the money it used to be David Dein who used to fight the board and in the end he was thrown off board. Wenger tried his best but there is a limit to everything one can do. His luck ran out with few bad buys (Mustafi… Read more »
They didn’t open their wallet, Raul opened the club’s wallet.
Not considering the possible impact of relegation to the championship as another potential down turn in club revenue then big and little Enos???
Maybe they are counting on the parachute payment…..hahahhacryinginside……
So just being a bit shit had no impact then?
In the words of the song “I don’t think you really understand”
I know this isn’t what people want to hear, but I really don’t think any financial figures, no matter how bad they get, will cause Stan to sell. If you look at how he made his money, it was largely in real estate. Even if football as a sport got banned tomorrow, Stan owns the land the Emirates is on, Hale End and the training ground, which is more than enough to make a profit if he sold them all off. So he can never really lose money owning Arsenal. It just so happens he has a football business thrown… Read more »
Yep. Profits will be reinvested also means we will feel the pinch when we aren’t making any.
Unless I’ve been fed fake news, it was Kroenke’s wife who had the money.
His wife is a Walton heiress. Her family owns Walmart and she is very rich. However, Stan is also a billionaire in his own right. He made his money in real estate as stated by Gooner14.
This is misleading. Stan was very rich by normal standards, but nowhere near the category of wealth needed to buy an NFL team or a club like Arsenal. After his marriage, his real estate developments were, for the most part, connected to, and dependent on, the presence of Walmart superstores.
yup! Why did we have to end up with owners that don’t care/love football or winning?
agree 100%, been saying this for years about Stan: the teams are the means to acquire the land. His Nuggets and Avalanche play in his own arena in Denver, his Rams are getting an outrageously expensive new stadium in Los Angeles area, and even though he doesn’t own the stadium and complex where the Rapids play, KSE is paid to manage the space.
I don’t think the land is worth quite as much as you think it is. Given the location it’s only real alternative use would be housing and a bit of shopping. By the time you’ve written off destroying a football club you have a load of debt tied to you are not making any profit selling the land, or building a few flats on top of a demolished stadium. Basically KSE are our Randy Lerners. They are fucking us up and at some point will sell as damage limitation to their wider business. Unfortunately that will be after we are… Read more »
All that money resulting in a squad that could well be heading for the second tier of English football for the first time in our history. Overpaid “superstars” not pulling their weight depriving able and willing youngsters who would at least give it their all at a fraction of the cost. The time has come to rid ourselves of the “superstats” in our squad and to start building a young team who work for each other and are true Gunners at heart.
Incorrect – the most significant risk to the tv pub is the team continuing to play shit and fans staying away.
*club – my phones gone all papabob
In fairness, we play like a pub team so your phone’s probably right.
These are fake documents forged by Russia, really there’s 2bn in the war chest.
And that war chest is buried 6 feet under the centre circle of the old Highbury pitch.
Wrong, Ukraine wrote those docs.
The only results that matter
Is there some kind of trophy for published accounts?
Only if they’re not fake!
I’m going to support our Publishing Accounts team for a while…:-)
KSE owns the club lock, stock and barrel. If they want to cook the books, only the debtors are going to know about it, and they sure as shit wouldn’t tell us.
A £(25)m loss is pretty significant. Doesn’t this mean under ffp we can’t spend any money unless we sell? There is something about it being a 3 year moving average but we spent a fair whack in the summer
Not great.
City, PSG, ( to some extent, Liverpool), Chelsea, Monaco for a while etc, don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about FFP, frankly, no one does, that’s football politics, selective targets depending on either the stature of a club or who owns it!
I’ve no idea about FFP rules but thankfully that ‘fair whack’ is spread over the next multiple amount of years. Our net transfer spend in the summer was only £22.5m, and we actually reduced our wage bill by net £12m a year. Which makes you wonder if we’re going to offer Aubameyang a contract that’s on par with Ozil’s 350k a week.
It seems clear that Auba will/was always to go to bring in/offset Pepe’s cost?
Anyway, the CL teams are about to field changed teams(CL on Tues/Wed), Chelsea already lost. Hope Liverpool loses ?too now(I dont want them going unbeaten, after all, thats all we have?).
Can we take a moment to appreciate and start paying more attention to Arsenal Women by the way, they’re flying high and I don’t care what level of reach Women’s football has compared to Men’s, AWFC matches are a welcome relief to the drivel we are chocking on from the Men’s team every week.
We should be selecting that XI in our next match- since they actually seem to have some sort of organization and positional awareness.
They would probably lose 10-0 against West Ham. Its pretty silly to compare womens football with mens football. Aubameyang and co in current form is waaaay better than the womens team.
The same is true of the U23’s. Very enjoyable to watch.
£367.5 million came in. “Total staff costs, excluding exceptional costs, grew to £227.3 million.” I wonder what Jimmy Hill would have thought about the players earnings level today?
This just illustrates my opinion that the Arsenal job would be a poison challice to any manager thinking about taking this role. No money. Incompetent players. Toxic fan base. Arsenal are absolutely and utterly screwed.. Kroenke is a cancer to this club – I hate to use that analogy but he is. Sucking the life out of it. Absolutely no ambition. Absent at all times except for his rat faced bastard son lingering around like an old fart. Only ONE decent player who wants to understandably leave as soon as possible. And Freddie Ljungberg who, regardless of whether we win… Read more »
Contract Rebel! Catchy headline. Too soon to start making things toxic blogs?
Oops, wrong page!
Oh well, selling PEA will get us a bit back I suppose. The ensuing lack of goals will see subsequent relegation battles played out to half-filled stadium for every game. Sales of STs will halve pending return from Championship. We can then follow the Leeds model.
Sorry guys, just feeling so down at the moment but wins in next week’s 3 games will sort that.
I would really love if the club could be self-sustainable and competitive. but that only works if we are consistently successful. The only way to get back to a good level is big big investment from our owners. But it’s sad that they don’t want to. Only other solution is another billionaire to take over but that is either a)likely to not happen and b) will likely be another highly suspect individual. The more this continues the more I feel the issues our club have faced over the last decade have been less and less about our manager and more… Read more »
The so called loss is pretty much a distraction point in my opinion. I mean it’s not rocket sciense. One dead wood cleaning within the team and the “loss” is gone. Elneny, Mkhitaryan, Mustafi, Xhaka… They alone can cover the so called loss. When there is a will there is a way may sound a cliche but it’s the truth. If this season is lost then why not throw some players in the flames to prepare them for next season. The example is simple, the four I mentioned can be replaced with Mavropanos, Holding, Smith Rowe, Maitland Niles, Nelson. A… Read more »
What they really should have done was try and get Campos at LOSC instead of Mslintat then Sanlehi.
Mavropanos no. Imagined ability. Maybe in time but the few times he has been on, his position is more suspect than Mustafi.
Smith-Rowe again maybe after a strong loan. If you have not been watching recently, he hasn’t been fantastic this season hence less opportunities in first team. So again, no.
Holding maybe but he gets turned on a dime too easily.
Maitland Niles NO. He’s working his way out of the team. Good natural ability but too slack and lacks concentration.
So frankly, No.
Actually, Mavropanos is young and has a potential to learn if given a chance. Better him to develop then Mustafi and Luiz who regress. Smith-Rowe doesn’t need to be regular starter, he can be a sub, and he is young also and there is a space for improvement. Holding: see Mavropanos. Maitland Niles was better then his last performances which shows how much Emery fucked up his self confidence. I still believe he can do a job. Sometimes I think he is a better option as RB then Chambers. Il all of them there is 50% possibility that they will… Read more »
On pitch were fucked.
It’s relegation time.
I have watched footy for many years and I have never seen open spaces like these bunch of fucks leave for opposition teams to break forward into.
It’s over and financial results won’t protect against the inevitable.
Oh and those Freakin fucks…… Utd…… back in top four soon along with Jose’s shower and challenging next year for the title.
As the song goes “doesn’t it make you feel good, doesn’t it make you feel good?’
I never thought we would end up here……. I’m absolutely sick of watching Our players who just do fuck all.
No tackles and no pride.
I can’t see anything here…… the Hammers are shit but we are the real shit….. enjoy the championship lads
I’m on a roll……..
Isn’t it just dandy….. Jose, a cancer to football, being listened to again.
Does no one at Arsenal get how tragic that is?
These results are a reflection of the gunners underperformance on the
pitch. If this goes on,sponsors may hesitate to endorse the Arsenal
brand.
Arsenal is a premium club which has deteriorated the last ten years.
If the US owner continues the present trajectory,soon Arsenal will
be outside the top Euro 20 clubs
Wenger built the club up on his continued CL qualification and early success which afforded us the ability to attract loans for a self build project.
BUT at current rate, its true, we are going the reverse.
On this trajectory we’ll be outside the top 20 English clubs?
Could have afforded to have kept Iwobi for one more season then instead of risking Pepe and Saka both in first season.
Or spent a bit more up front but significantly lower cost for Ziyech or Fekir.
And/Or then put some money into an actually good and available Cback for now.
…and they can expect revenue to drop further at… who wants to come watch our tepid brand of footy these days and Thursday night lights.
Has Rafa arrived yet? Why not?
Rafa is not a “yes” man who will kowtow to Don Raul & Co.