Arsenal’s billionaire owner Stan Kroenke has been discussing his best business practises at a conference in the United States, and talking about Arsenal and his other sports teams he admits that it is more important for the club to turn a profit than to spend all their earnings on buying the best players. “For me, being an individual owner, I have to have some sort of reality involved.” Silent Stan said.
“If you want to win championships then you would never get involved. I think the best owners in sports are the guys that sort of watch both sides a bit. If you don’t have a good business then you can’t really afford to go out and get the best players unless you just want to rely on other sources of income.”
He suggests that the Arsenal model is going to be better for the fans in the long run, rather than the being the plaything of a sugar daddy. “Over there [in the UK] it was sort of like ‘well, we’ve got guys from the Middle East, the oil price is over $100, they can spend anything they want’.
“But the problem I saw with all of that; those people can lose interest. It doesn’t mean that they will, but I sort of threw that out there: ‘What happens when the Middle Eastern family, this thing’s costing a lot of money and they decide to go home?’ I said what really happens in those situations is the fans get hurt because the players get picked up and paid if they’re good, the front office gets other jobs.”
He also admitted that Arsene Wenger’s interest in using various statistics to buy players that are very efficient, but are available at reasonable prices, as identified by the “Moneyball” system, was another thing that attracted him to invest in Arsenal. I was always interested in Moneyball,” Kroenke continued. “Billy Beane, one of his heroes happened to be our manager at Arsenal, Arsene Wenger. Arsene has an undergraduate degree in economics and has always had that analytical thing going on.
“When we acquired a controlling interest in Arsenal in 2011, after that we started pushing pretty hard because it seemed to me that there were some people who were a bit more advanced in that area and so we were fortunate in that we acquired StatDNA. They gave us a big lift in the soccer business.”
Another big chance he has implemented since his arrival at the Emirates is he concentration of promoting the club around the world. Before Kroenke, Wenger used to take his teams onlow key preseason tours to places like Austria or Belgium to prepare the squad for the new season peacefully, but now they are jetting all over the world to promote the Arsenal brand. “What did I learn specifically [from England]? You learn very quickly what that brand means,” said Kroenke.
“We have a gentleman who comes to Arsenal games, he flies his helicopter from South Africa, Cape Town to London quite often [to watch Arsenal]. It’s just an example of what a brand can mean, and what we can do in sports.
“We’re all working on that and that’s the big opportunity. Michael Jordan showed it – you can get paid a whole lot more if you can extend your brand. Manchester United showed it. They established benchmarks that people had thought heretofore unattainable, but their brand extension made people want to pay for it.”
Kroenke also revealed that this summer Arsenal would be setting up camp in Southern California, which I am sure will generate a small pot of gold towards Kroenkes business model, and will help sell lot’s of club merchandise to the country that absolutely love a good brand….
What this speech from Kroenke tells me is..
Arsenal will continue to buy talented kids for the academy
Wenger will never buy more than ONE big money transfer per year, and then only if it is a bargain
If Wenger keeps us in the Top Four he will never be sacked
But the one big thing that struck me about Stan’s words about promoting Arsenal as a brand, and wishing to emulate Michael Jordan and Manchester United, is that those two BRANDS only became such a success is because they won lots of trophies! Arsenal will never become as big as them by coming in the Top Four every year. Success breeds success Stan and if you don’t learn that you will find that Arsenal’s brand will decrease instead of grow the way you want it to….
—————–A LITTLE BONUS!——————
If anyone fancies a bit of Schadenfreude..
Here are the highlights of Lukaku destroying Chelsea and Diego Costa getting a red card….
Bye Bye Chelsea…..
It also sounds like he said that Arsenal will be in the driving seat when the rich Arabs pull out. We may be waiting a very long time in that case!
great to hear from silent stan. at least he knows what a trophy is. but things still dont make sense: jordan and MU are huge brands precisely because they won. i dont have a problem w the other side of what kroenke said : moneyball. i guess thats how wenger found elneny. but it does not seem what wenger is doing in summer is consistent with the goals kroenke is talking about here.
MU used to win. Now they have to face the same uphill battle, just like us. Kroenke arrival was after the invincibles, after 3 titles and two doubles with Wenger only and at a bargain price I may add.
I don’t really understand all he said,infact, I fail to see where he said Wenger is not under pressure to win trophies
Silent Stan should have added while he’s making money his job is safe. That should give a warm glow when your renewing you overpriced season ticket.
My advice to Slent Stan,stay silent.
dont blame him. Blame those of us paying overpriced tickets to watch muppets guided by a loser on the sideline. blame those of us buying Arsenal’s merchandise in order to pay 140k a week to a useless Walcot and 8 millions to a specialist in failure. We know how to moan yet we go back to watch the games and do nothing! if we boycott the games we hit them where it hurts, then silent stan has to either invest or p**s off