Arsenal have announced a post-tax loss of £45.5 million for the year ended 31 May 2022.
While a loss of this magnitude is concerning, the results mark a considerable improvement on the £107.3 million loss registered this time last year after the club had been badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Gunners’ lack of European football in 2021/22 has been identified as the “principal contributory factor in terms of the overall result for the year”. In essence, if we’d been in a UEFA competition the broadcast revenue and ticket sales probably would have seen us break even.
Overall, football revenue for the year was £369.1 million; up £41.5 million on 2021. This was down to fans being able to attend 23 domestic games with an average attendance listed as 59,568.
The club also make a point of underlining KSE’s position on squad strengthening after two summers of investment on the player front.
“This investment recognises that the Club has not been where it wanted to be in terms of on-field competitiveness and that, as a minimum, qualification for UEFA competition needed to be regained, as a pre-requisite to re-establishing a self-sufficient financial base. This investment would not have been possible without the support and commitment of the Club’s ownership, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment.”
You can read the club’s full statement, here.
TOPLINE FIGURES
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| Matchday revenue | 98.90 | 96.20 | 78.80 | 3.80 | 79.40 |
| Broadcast revenue | 180.00 | 183.00 | 118.90 | 184.40 | 146.00 |
| Commercial revenue | 106.90 | 110.80 | 142.30 | 136.40 | 141.70 |
| Wages | 209.10 | 205.20 | 234.50 | 244.40 | 212.30 |
| Player sales | 120.00 | 12.12 | 60.10 | 11.80 | 22.20 |
| Player loans | 2.30 | 4.60 | 3.50 | 3.10 | 2.00 |
| Net finance charges | 8.70 | 12.00 | 13.60 | 39.80 | 5.20 |
Matchday revenue
Slightly lower than pre-pandemic levels but presumably that’s down to fewer home matches as a result of being out of Europe and not progressing far in the cups. We’d expect this to grow next year given Europa League football and the 4% season ticket price increase.
Broadcast revenue
Higher than 2020 as a result of increased PL deals domestically and abroad but lower than 2021 when we were in Europe. Also, there were more games in the last financial year because of the way the pandemic delayed the season. Qualify for Europe this year (hopefully the Champions League) and we should see a nice jump on this front this time next year.
Commercial revenue
Hovering around same level as 2020 and slightly higher than last year. The adidas deal has just been renewed (terms unclear but could be more performance based than in the past) and we fully expect Emirates to further commit to the club in the near future. Current deals end in 2024 so unclear whether revised terms would be seen on the books next year.
Wages
Clearly we’ve been making an effort to bring these down. The club specifically mention “a process of restructuring the men’s first-team squad to improve the efficiency of spend.” We have a number of young players on ‘legacy’ deals – Saliba, Martinelli and Saka – all of whom will be expecting big pay rises. There will also be chunky bonuses to be paid if we happen to make the Champions League. Hard to say at this point whether wages will creep up again, but it’s likely.
Player sales
Not an area we’ve excelled in for a while. The club continue to claim it’s down to being “adversely impacted by market conditions”. That’s probably true but we’ve also not helped ourselves in the recent past with the way player contracts have run down. Looking at the current squad, we’re in a much better position on that front so if we do need to sell, hopefully we hold the upper hand in negotiations.
Player loans
Given how many players we’ve sent out on loan in the last year, it’s a remarkably low figure. Perhaps we don’t want long-term development to be hindered by bartering over fees. Never usually that high, as you can see by the last five years.
Net finance charges
Significantly down on last year where KSE paid a big chunk of cash to refinance the outstanding stadium debt repayments and lower than what we’d been paying in the years prior.
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No doubt, @Swissramble will be grabbing his abacus and sharpening his pencil. We look forward to reading his analysis in due course. He’s moving away from Twitter threads so you’ll need to register for his FREE newsletter. Details below.
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— Swiss Ramble (@SwissRamble) November 21, 2022
Away shirt sales and Premier League winners prize money, should have that fixed in 12 months time
Haha, unfortunately clubs actually get very little share of money earned from the actual shirt sales.
I like the attitude! I do think if we go big in January and get a WF and a CM, we may see a slightly quieter summer than some of us might like. However, for the first time in a while, we have some decent, young assets to sell. Tavares, Lokonga, Holding, possibly Tierney and Balogun or Nketiah will all be available and they should command a good fee. Plus Tielemans will hopefully join for free, although it’ll still be expensive as regards wages and signing on fee. But if we drop +£60m in January, I feel like Stan may… Read more »
I agree with all of that, apart from Rob Holding being young
Hey. Did you look at his hairline?! 😀
Haha! Point taken.
At 27 he has 5 good seasons for a CB though.
At least he’s not Sokratis I suppose is my point.
The Invincibles squad had 37 year old Martin Keown as Campbell/Toure’s backup, that puts Holding into perspective.
Wait a cotton picking minute…
Keown is an invincible???
Am I a complete donkey for not knowing that?
It’s always hard to know how other clubs value someone and how they will turn out. Guendouzi just started for France (okay, France B, realistically) in the World Cup. Mavropanos is consistently one of the highest-rated centre halves in the Bundesliga. I watched Joel Campbell against Germany yesterday and he looked a very good player. Who the hell knows.
I think we fucked up with those two.
Both strange situations but we really didn’t extract enough value.
Rumours that West Ham were considering a bid of £20m for Mav in the summer. Guen now worth triple what they paid.
We must get better.
I had no idea Joel Campbell was still a thing.
I would keep KT and develop Balogun. He could potentially save us an absolute fortune in the transfer market.
We don’t want another Andy Cole story.
If we are successful on the pitch, the money and everything else will follow
The old saying of ‘Speculate to Accumulate’ has never been more apt. You have to doff your hat to the Kroenkes here for their investment and Josh in particular for his endeavours alongside Edu and Arteta. I don’t think Arsenal have had it so good in this respect since the days of Danny Fiszman, David Dein and Arsene being at the helm. I cannot wait for Boxing Day and for us to get going again and if we can sign one or two lads such as this super kid Mudryk, then the future and 2023 are looking very rosy indeed.… Read more »
Swiss Ramble will no doubt articulate a lot better than me, but the comparisons against 2020 as being ‘pre-pandemic’ aren’t like for like because that season was curtailed early, and those games played behind closed doors in 2021. That means matchday and broadcasting revenue which would have normally ended up in 2020 was deferred into 2021. So the better comparison would be against 2019. Where if you compare matchday revenues this year of £79.4m, we’re a fair bit down on 2019 of £96.2m and broadcasting we’re at £146m against £183m. Mixture of factors in both including number of home &… Read more »
Hi Kris, yep fair point! As you say, we’ll keep an eye out for Swiss’ take on things.
I’ve updated the post with 2018 and 2019 numbers. Thanks for your input. 👍