Arsenal and Emirates have confirmed an extension of their long-running partnership which includes stadium naming rights and shirt and kit sponsorship of the men’s, women’s and academy sides.
The Dubai-based airline’s brand will continue to feature on the front of club kits and training kits until 2028 – a 4-year extension on the current deal – while our home ground continues to be known as Emirates Stadium also until 2028, as part of an agreement signed in 2012.
The Gunners first signed a sponsorship deal with Emirates in 2004 in advance of the move from Highbury and the airline became shirt sponsors two years later when we moved into our new home. The relationship is the longest-running of its kind in the Premier League.
While the club hasn’t gone into the details of the financials, we can assume the deal is a sizable increase on that signed in 2018. The current agreement is thought to net the club £40 million a year.
Speaking about the extension Chief Commercial Officer, Juliet Slot, said: “We are incredibly proud to make history by extending our partnership with Emirates until 2028. The longevity of our special relationship is a sign of our enduring shared values, our ambition to bring our global communities together, and our commitment to building on the numerous achievements that have marked our 17-year journey to date.
“As we take our partnership to a minimum of 22 years together, we’re excited to move forward and we’re focused on celebrating more incredible moments with our supporters around the world.”
Understandably, the decision to extend the deal will come under the microscope. Some will question the wisdom of continuing to partner with an international airline given the damage being wrought by carbon emissions on our climate. Others will point to the dubious human rights record of the United Arab Emirates, who funds the company, and the fact consensual same-sex relations between adults are illegal in the country.
#ad Woven Together 🧵
For 17 years Arsenal and @Emirates have been woven together as one 🪡
With great pride and excitement, we’ve extended the longest running front-of-shirt partnership in the Premier League until 2028 ✈️
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) August 2, 2023
These are all issues that will have been tossed around the club at some point but as was the case with some of our other partnerships, money talks. The club wants long-term financial security and this deal gives them a shot at balancing the books while spending cash trying to compete with clubs being directly funded by nation-states and those who’ve had consistent success on the pitch in the last 5-10 years.
In January, Deloitte estimated Arsenal’s commercial revenue for 2022 to be around €167 million (approximately 38% of the total €434 million). That was some distance behind our ‘Big Six’ rivals Sp*rs (€215m), Chelsea (€209m), Manchester United (€309m), Liverpool (€275m), Manchester City (€373m).
The new adidas deal, an extension until 2030, plus a return to the Champions League, could see the gap close in the next couple of years, but we certainly can’t rest on our laurels.
In the coming days and weeks, we’re expecting the club to confirm several more second-tier commercial deals.
Lots of cash?
Name me one brand that is ethical?
Who doesn’t have a carbon footprint?
It’s not a company’s fault for the laws of a country. Yes it’s the national airline but that company doesn’t make the laws of the land.
Emirates is 100x better than a betting firm!
I can name you brands that are ethical, or at least try to be, but off the top of my head, I can’t name you an ethical brand capable of paying Arsenal circa £300 million over the course of the next few years. It would have been remiss of me to report the deal and not raise some of the issues attached to it. 👍
Agree. Also there are degrees of lack of ethics. some unethical things are far worse than overs. Unfortunately this sponsor sits towards the very unethical end of the spectrum. I still won’t buy a shirt even though I’d love one with their name on it. I understand if people do and love the team. But very glad you brought up their record andrew
Interesting it wasn’t mentioned at all – either by yourself or within the comments – when it was last renewed:
https://arseblog.news/2018/02/arsenal-extend-emirates-sponsorship-deal-to-2028/
I’m not saying you’re wrong to mention it now, merely pointing out how society’s perceptions have changed, but Arsenal’s hand remains entirely tied in terms of renewing an existing shirt sponsor to 2028 (given we already have the stadium deal until 2028 and therefore they could not remove the most fundamental association with the brand).
Agreed. Even some charites were / are corrupt.
Patagonia? But they’re not gonna be sponsoring big football teams any time soon…
Forest Green Rovers are sponsored by Ecotricity for example as well.
But finding an ‘ethical’ company with hundreds of millions to spare is practically impossible. Also would speculate that ethical companies generally spend less on sponsorship/marketing because people buy into them more easily without them needing/wanting that expense.
Having shirts made by Patagonia would be really nice. If only it were possible at this time.
Tierney would be wearing a tank top version of the kit in snowstorms given the insulation they’d likely provide
Ecotricity and FGR are both owned by Dale Vince so not a sponsorship more a promotion or free advert.
yeap that’s true.
our previous chair, Keswick, the family owns a conglomerate that were opium drug smugglers. heh.
no one’s clean these days.
Andrew Allen, can you confirm that this include the training kits? If so, this is a terrible deal for the club and leaves roughly £20m per season of lost revenue on the table.
Yes, it includes training kits. Kinda hard to criticise the revenue when we don’t know what the revenue is!
Not hard to Google the rumoured figures 🙂
But understand you can only report on official numbers.
If the numbers rumoured (£50m per season) are correct, the club clearly haven’t learnt from its past mistakes.
I agree that taking cash from a polluting sponsor from a state with stupid rules isn’t ideal, but it would be hypocritical to go against it. Think about how many flights the Arsenal team will be taking this season. That’s a lot poo coming out of the backside of a lot of planes.
Agree about that side of it, I think the humans rights record of the Emirates is the much less ideal part. Given the airline is a (supposedly) separate entity and Arsenal is just partly sponsored rather than in any way controlled by it I think that makes it about 1.8% as bad as some other football clubs, but still, if there’s one thing about Arsenal football club in its present state I’d like to change, this would be it.
If it wasn’t for Emirates, how our stadium would have been named then? Arsenal stadium?
Wenger Stadium 😎
Wengerdome.
Yes Arsenal Stadium, as it’s known when we play in UEFA competitions.
Its original name is Ashburton Grove
‘Some will question the wisdom of continuing to partner with an international airline given the damage being wrought by carbon emissions on our climate
Perhaps we could get ‘Just Stop Oil’ to sponsor us, as it would be an improvement on blocking emergency. vehicles and gumming up London’d roads ?
Ultimately there are very few front of shirt sponsors who could afford the rate Emirates currently pay who you wouldn’t have some ethical queries about. Look at the history of shirt sponsorship across our premier league rivals over the past 18 years – gambling firms, pay day loan companies, banks responsible for the 2008 crash etc. Arguably airlines are one of the more ethically reasonably brands to use, because there are clearly demonstrable improvements in the last decade and a recognition in the industry it’s survival depends on further investment and innovation leading to a greener product. Let’s also not… Read more »
Spotify?
Yeah for the figures involved you have to need some serious reputation-laundering to be able to justify the cost of a Premier League sponsorship
Here is the problem, as I see it: “The longevity of our special relationship is a sign of our enduring shared values.”
I hope not. That is the point of the sponsorship from Emirates’ point of view–it is a form of sportwashing, of changing the way people view their country through association with a football club they admire, not a way to advertise their airline. It is not as serious, or as damaging, as direct state ownership of a club, but it is sportwashing nonetheless.
Carbon footprint from an airline? Oh my, how else are we gonna travel across continent then? Last time i checked superman was still fictional
Why do you need to travel so much? Last time I used a plane was 2011. Have been abroad using Eurostar and ferry since. It’s fine if you want to travel, but just be aware that planes really do fart out a lot of nastiness.
Stop eating Meat.. Air travel emissions represent only 2% of total global emissions (2020). This is around 0.7 Gt of Carbon dioxide. Recent figures quote livestock releasing a staggering 7 Gigatonnes of emissions in the same period.
It’s more like 13%–15% of total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the UK figures. The airline industry is pretty good at playing down the numbers. People want a nice holiday in the sun, who can blame them. Trains and cars are going electric, but planes are still farting their stinky gas all over the place.
I have to add that Emirates is one of the very best to fly with too.
10/10 – would fly on bloody huge plane again.
Really hard to take the value bullshit… 🤮 Hope they will ditch the Rwanda thing sometime soon at least.
The British with their snobbery again meanwhile they have committed more crimes against humanity over the centuries which some of their former colonies are still contending with.
I suggest Arsenal refuse to play in England for ethical reasons.
Meanwhile, how did Arsenal join the football league?
Tottenham fan in disguise.
Truth hurts
It’s quite rich to question sponsors from other countries about carbon footprint and pollution while playing in the EPL. British Petroleum and Deepwater Horizon comes to mind from recent times. Arsenal needs sponsors to thrive, let’s not apply double standards here.
I am not British and have no illusion whatever about British history, domestic or imperialist. But being sponsored by a “normal” capitalist company that is trying to advertise its product (like o2 or JVC, to take some easy examples) is not the same as sportwashing. The comparison would be if Arsenal were sponsored by Shell Oil at the time of the South Africa boycott. If you insist that “they’re all equally bad” then that is just a way of saying “I can do anything I want.”
That’s good news right?
Worst thing about this deal is the huge logo plastered across the shirts. That is ridiculous, to put it mildly. Other than that, I don’t think all the moral stuff should be the basis of business decisions, at least not until competitors agree to play by the same rules.
Deals with the devil
If you start pointing out sponsors that have issues with regards to the origin country’s political views, or just pointing out carbon emissions as an argument against, it’s a rabbit hole that leads nowhere. I could point out similar issues with just about any sponsor imaginable (the exception being Flamini’s renewable energy company). How about sponsors from car companies? Oil companies? Chinese companies – are we questioning their sociopolitical views too? Ben & Jerry’s ice cream HQ was built on former Indian religious lands. Should we also start pointing out the British colonial empire before every British sponsor? How about… Read more »
That’s just whataboutism. I think it’s ok to be critical of a certain particular aspect of Arsenal or a deal the club makes even if “everyone else does it”. It’s ok to want a better world. Maybe you’d still do the deal in spite of it, I’m not saying they necessarily shouldn’t, but to not even acknowledge these issues and just turn a blind eye would be much worse.
Get that oil money!
Money is money, welcome to capitalism.
Just wish they’d squeezed out more per year on account of CL return,. young/promising team, good football leadership, etc.