Arsenal’s revenues triple after new stadium

The move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium has tripled the revenues for the English football club, Arsenal.This was disclosed by Charles Allen, Head of Marketing at Arsenal, during his ‘Business Talk’ at the 6th Dubai International Sports Conference titled “Football Companies ... Current and Future Trends”.The two-day international conference, held under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and chairman of the Dubai Sports Council, concluded at Festival City, Dubai, on Thursday.“The commercial revenue is very important for the success of the club,” said Allen. “Sports has not changed much but the pursuit of success has changed phenomenally. The success on the pitch plays an important role in generating revenues and the trick is to stick to this formula,” he said.The increase of salaries to the Manchester City players has not only attracted star players to the club but also has brought success and is likely to culminate in securing titles for the club, Allen added.Allen said that the move to the new Emirates Stadium from the Highbury Stadium has not only generated more revenues but also increased the number of fans to their existing 130 millions fans worldwide.Arsenal reportedly had an increase of 73 per cent in profits, touching £61 million last year. “Now we have a new move called Arsenalisation to generate more revenues to the club,” Allen quipped.The Highbury stadium could accommodate only 35,000 fans but the Emirates Stadium can house 60,000 fans the participants were told.Allen said they have made several changes at the Emirates Stadium to attract fans and in turn increase the revenues for the club. “We wanted make our fans feel at home so we decided to get them first out of their home, turn them away from pubs, from fast food joints and from luxury dining. So we have a Diamond Club with 180 members, a refurbished bar, a box which gives them the feeling of feeling at home. We want fans to linger longer at the Emirates. On Wednesday Barcelona president Sandro Rosell said they are targeting the Chinese market to generate revenues for the Spanish club. Rosell told the participants that they are aiming to get one euro from one Chinese fan.Recalling Rosell’s strategy, Allen said they were targeting 50 pence from one Arsenal fan. We are using the facebook, twitter, the internet to increase fans and now we have 200,000 Facebook fans.“We also invite fans to send their banners to the stadium when they are unable to attend the matches. During a pre-match announcement, we had 4,000 banners request within 24 hours. All these help us generate more revenues to the club,” Allen informed.