He is not the outright owner of Arsenal Football Club but the American businessman Enos Stanley Kroenke or silent Stan as we know him best does hold a controlling stake as he is the majority shareholder with almost 63 percent of the shares.
However, that does not entitle the man to use the Gunners as his petty cash box, although most of us would not see an annual payment of £3 million as very petty. According to his page on Wikipedia though, Kroenke probably would as this year Forbes estimated his net worth at 8 billion US dollars, which makes you wonder why he is even trying to take this payment from Arsenal.
The reason cited by the accounts was that Kroenke Sports Enterprises (a grand name for him and his son Josh it seems) had provided ‘strategic and advisory services’ but when challenged about this by the Arsenal fans the board was not willing or able to explain just what he did.
And when you are paying big money to Arsene Wenger to run the football side of things (something the Kroenke’s know sod all about) and the chief executive Ivan Gazidis millions to look after the commercial side of things, it seems odd that we need to spend so much for a bit of advice.
Thankfully now we will not, as the Daily Mail reports that the annual payment will not go to K.S.E. and although they say it has been waived, the fact that a letter from the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust questioning the legality of the deal was recently sent to the Arsenal board is something of a coincidence.
Whatever the reasons behind it, the Arsenal fans have got what we want and Kroenke will just have to use a bit of his own spare cash to buy another ranch.
Bob.
Kroenke’s 63% stake at Arsenal is probably worth 1Billion why is everyone making so much of the tiny 3million? let him have it but spend the 230Million remaining in the bank on buying top players for Arsenal
The 1 billion is the ‘worth’ of the shares in the club and so is not directly our money. The 3 million presumably comes from the operating costs of the business and as such is paid for by ticket revenue, shirt sales etc, ie our money. The 3 million should be spent reducing ticket prices or buying players.
3 Million is a small Dividend on a before spending profit of around 100+ Million a year
lets not get upset over spilling a glass of milk when the cow is in the barn if you get my meaning 🙂
Will you all just get over yourselfs for the love of god this year alone we have spent over 100 million so why worry about 3 million. Point to this he’s a businessman and it’s all about the money. We have a good team this year playing winning football so just get behind your team. Ppl should stop wishing for AW to go because it will open the door for our best players to leave
arsenalkid1970
agreed we have a good team now im enjoying watching our boys play and knowing when we have injury or bring on subs we don’t fall short, i hope we continue to strengthen and keep our top players
This was supposedly the main reason former shareholders would not sell their shares to Usmanov. He is know to take out such a fee at all of his companies. And even stated he would do so if he were to become majority shareholder at AFC. Stan, on the other hand, claimed he had no intention of ever doing so. Until now….
What is really funny is that the club is not seriously paying the banks that helped fund the building of Emirates Stadium,my suggestion is that they should be paying those banks at least 15% of whatever we owe them every two years,then we can say the club is actually doing something for the club,why keep those money in banks as cash reserves? That’s why Man U is way ahead of us financially,if you are less debt free,the more sponsorship deals comes and those banks won’t have any commission to be remitted to them because you are not in their debt books. As for Silent Stan,he isn’t interested in football just the profit that comes from it,When Wenger retires,he would definitely find it hard to get someone that would dance to his tunes.