Arsenal hold ticket prices then reveal record matchday revenue

The Arsenal boss Ivan Gazidis has announced that the club are freezing season ticket prices for next season (although Club Members will pay an extra 2%) which will hopefully see the protests we saw last year come down to minimum.

Gazidis makes it sound like he is doing the fans a favour when he said: “We have fantastic support with all our home games selling out week after week, year after year.

“The Arsenal board, as always, works to strike a balance between the expense of coming to games for our supporters and the club’s ever-increasing costs and expenditure as it develops on and off the pitch.”

This as last week, but today the Express has revealed that Arsenal have broken the £100 million mark purely from matchdays for the first time in 2014, and total revenue was over £300 million, which is a massive increase of 23% over the previous year.

The board member cites the rising costs of players as the reasons for the neccesary increase in profit which was helped by the % extra they charged fans this season, but has player costs really increased by over a quarter?

It seems to me that our actual first team squad seems to be getting smaller every year, even though wage costs seem to increase!

This is all a bit over my head, but I was under the impression a few years ago that as the income from TV massively increased every year, then the club could actually afford to REDUCE prices. Is there anyone out there that can explain things to me a little clearer?

Tags Gazidis season tickets

27 Comments

        1. It means that Bielik is white (i’d say rather pale) and Zelalem is black/brown. Anyone has problems with that? I think there are real issues to attend at the club this period of the year.

  1. No we have the biggest first team squad, of our main rivals we were the only club to fill our 25 for the champions league and we omitted 5 of our players.

    We also had the largest epl squad.

    However, I think we should be reducing costs for season tickets and matchday tickets. At the very least we should have a separate cup season ticket.

  2. Keep the faith !! Some Arsenal fans panic !

    Watch Paulista bring Cristiano down and make him cry; game minute 25-26
    “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sphU9p8o14”

  3. Another thing about this post, you reporting it in such a way to make the current board look bad, yet in fact it shows what a fantastic job they are doing. Arsenal have not broken the £100m matchday revenue mark for the first time, in fact it is the first time since 2008/09. The commercial revenue has also reached a fantastic level of £77m.

    I know the fans prefer to slate the board, but the real supporters, those of us who contribute to that matchday revenue, clearly prefer to give credit where credit is due. A couple of years ago the majority were blaming the likes of krone, gazidis, law, etc for the poor performances. However, finally the supporters are realising that these people are doing a decent job. Financially we are improving, we have in the last two seasons signed 2 genuine world class players, whilst also lifting 2 trophies. However, there are still mountains to climb, injuries and tactical nous have been affecting wenger’s ability to sustain a challenge on consistent level. However, his stubbornness to listen to his coaching staff appears to be relaxing. The new years day wojech disaster game aside, the last 9 and half matches (I say half bcos I’m talking about the change since half time at stoke) have seen a better defensive side to the team. I am certain that bould, primorac and banfield have had some input here. The likes of koscielny, coquelin, monreal and ospina have also made a difference, but also wenger has made changes to the attacking side of the game, players like podolski and sanogo have been moved out as they simply offer little to the team in way of work rate when we don’t have the ball. Players like cazorla, alexis, giroud, rosicky and chamberlain have really pushed on because they work so hard when we don’t have the ball.

    Tika taka is not dead at arsenal, but there has definitely been a shift to a more pressing game and I think it will continue for the rest of the season. It’s now up to the likes of Walcott, ozil, flamini, campbell and eventually welbeck wilshire and arteta when they return to show they can play that game, otherwise they will struggle to find a way back in.

    1. Sense all over it. I will just add one thing to your competent post which will put things into perspective : just today Real Madrid announced they have a debt of about 602 mil euro. Just leave this thought to settle and then you can speak about the job AFC is doing financial wise.

      1. Real can afford that though. They will be ok. Everyone here seems to wonder why we aren’t like Chelsea and spending maniacally. Chelsea will absolutely crumble once Roman leaves. They are attempting now to be a brand, and maybe they can jump in a new generation with their success. If Roman left anytime in the next 5 to 10 years without another billionaire who loves losing money on a project to take over………… They are going to have a bad time. Absolutely the same goes for City

        1. I hope for them they able to cope with that because the outstanding immediate debt (to be paid until Dec 31st) is 386 million euro. Roughly the value of our stadium (without the related project costs)

    2. Get out of here with that common sense. The plastics that fill this website will just see 300 million and wonder why Hummels and Vidal haven’t signed up yet

  4. People always complain of high ticket prices but my economics teacher said its all about demand and supply! You see, if at the current price all tickets get sold, it means the market price is infact lower than the equilibrium price. This means that some who want the tickets miss out hence the right economic reaction ought to be increasing supply, which we all know is limited to seat capacity, or raising the prices. Ofcos matters of price discrimination also come into play n not forgetting the elasticity n cross elasticity too of the tickets coz in a case of inelastic demand, then the tickets price can go up but with little or no effect on sales.
    Nway, my suggestion would be the emirates stadia management to look at their product probability frontier curve n find ways of increasing seating capacity without affecting other essential services.
    I hope its clearer now to the one who wrote the article

    1. I completely agree with your thoughts and analysis. I believe Arsenal wish to have larger capacity 65 to 70 thousand, however Islington council blocked the proposal. This apparently was on health and safety grounds. Fans having to leave the stadium in an emergency, also transport from North London, capacity at Arsenal, Highbury and Islington, and Finsbury park stations. Also resident concerns, them bloody rich yuppies who pretend to be socialists. Remember we had that hypocrite Tony Blair living in Islington representing so called poor people, whilst making £20 million pounds himself!!

      1. They can’t increase the capacity until the tube/train stations increase capacity as well. Cost for such an expansion is quoted to some 60 mils pounds.

  5. Deloitte’s annual list – Arsenal at number 8 worlds richest football clubs at 300.5m (243.6). Hey somebody has to pay to keep us in the top ten and I guess the fans suffer for this especially now that we don’t sale our best players anymore.

    Sad situation indeed. Most fans thought after paying off much of the stadiums debt and securing new deals such as the Puma deal the club would finally drop the prices. Its part of the reason the fans at the Emirates are so motionless because only a certain class of people can afford ticket prices like that.

    Wenger should also work on reducing the wage bill. Its no secret some players don’t deserve to wear our colors anymore and are getting paid to do nothing (cough cough Diaby). I know av only mentioned one player but there several others in that squad hence our wage bill been so high.

    1. Probably worth saying that Arsenal were 20th in the same list when Wenger arrived in 1996 and it has been upward ever since. Might go some way to explaining why the board can justify from a business perspective his £8M salary.

  6. Match day revenue is not just ticket sales but everything sold at the stadium on the day including food, alcohol, programmes and merchandise.

  7. Wenger just confirmed we already paid Gabriel Paulista boy out clause which is 15M euro. saying we paid good money for a good player. really can’t wait to see him play.

      1. “The talks are progressing quite well,” he told reporters. “Can we find an agreement or not? I don’t know.”

        Wenger

        1. In other words, the deal is either done and dusted, or we are not in for him at all. Wenger always keeps his cards close to his chest in the transfer window. My gut feeling says we already have him…because what is to stop United or any other rich club from swooping in at the last minute?

  8. Arsenal FC seem to have a sound financial model in place. They’ve paid down a good portion of the stadium debt while remaining competitive. They’ve shown ambition during the last couple transfer windows by buying world class quality. They need to continue down this path. Only way to grow the brand even further is by winning trophies. Greater success on the pitch will only increase revenues off the pitch.

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