Arsenal are expected to publish their yearly accounts today and (other than the 200m cash reserves) they are expected to show another £3m payment to Kroenke Sports and Entertainment (KSE), the company that owns Kroenke’s sporting interests, purportedly for ‘advisory services’, the same terms used for the £3m payment to the same company last year.
Some people may say this is just Kroenke’s way of getting around not taking a dividend off the club, but others may say that he is surely entitled to take a little bonus for his services every year. At last years annual general meeting the club chairman Sir Chips Keswick defended the extraordinary payment to KSE, by saying: “This fee was proposed by myself and Lord Harris [another director] for the wide range of services provided,”
“KSE is one of the most respected and successful sports organisations in the United States, operating in the most sophisticated sports business market in the world.
“They have an extensive and long experience in modern sports management. It is of the utmost importance that, as a club, we use it to our best advantage to ensure we keep progressing. There was no competitive tender for these services as they are directly available to us. We are entirely satisfied the fee was appropriate.”
So Mr Chips and Lord Harris proposed it did they? I don’t suppose they were under instructions from their boss by any chance?