Morning, let’s do a quick Saturday round-up.
The big news yesterday was off the pitch stuff, with a big shake-up at executive level. Out goes Tim Lewis, after five years, and he has left his role as executive vice-chair, and left the club entirely. Richard Garlick has been promoted from Managing Director to Chief Executive Officer, while three KSE employees have been appointed as non-executive directors – Dave Steiner, Kelly Blaha and Otto Maly. Ben Winston, a long-time Arsenal season ticket holder and TV/film producer, has also joined the board as a non-executive director.
The Arsenal statement says, “This group will combine with our long-serving Director, Lord Harris of Peckham, to bring diverse experience and knowledge from across finance, sport, retail, property development, media and entertainment to support the club moving forward.”
Finance – well we need that, and good luck to that dude when he sits down and looks at the balance sheet after this summer’s spending spree.
“Guys … wtf?!”
Sport – that’s obvious.
Retail – you’ve gotta be good at that stuff these days. Not least because there’s a new range of merchandise every few weeks. But retail is also about marketing and getting the Arsenal brand out there as much as possible.
Media and entertainment – this one is very interesting to me. I do wonder what the medium/long-term future holds for TV rights and subscriptions etc. We’ve already seen some players like massive tax-dogders Amazon dip their toes into the Premier League rights waters. They have other things to worry about, like making sure their workers aren’t allowed toilet breaks and stuff, but I suspect that they – and other big streaming services – will be making plans to challenge the likes of Sky and TNT Sports in the years ahead.
Adding more expertise and knowledge in this area seems like a smart thing to do. Who knows, we might even get to a point where clubs themselves control some of their own broadcasting rights, and with that they’ll need to think bigger than their current offerings in terms of presentation and production.
Property development – Also very interesting as rumours about an expansion to the Arsenal Stadium continue to circulate. This would be an enormous challenge, for obvious reasons, and while the Emirates is a fine ground, you have to acknowledge that if it were being built now, it would be significantly different. There have been advances in stadium construction and technology which would make for a bigger, better experience – as KSE’s SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles demonstrates.
I’ve been there twice, and it’s remarkable. Like something from the future, but quite how any of that can be applied to North London remains to be seen. Can we go down, like at SoFi, or would we have to go up? Are there issues with Islington Council with either of those plans? What do we do if we get the go-ahead to make it bigger, as the rumours suggest? A year or more at Wembley? Losing home advantage is a big decision in the short-term even if you are planning for the long-term.
One thing that does make me curious is that I was told by a very well connected source that plans were afoot to make the Emirates more connected when it comes to mobile phone/data signal. Service during games is very, very patchy – at best – unless you’re connected to one of the WiFi networks which aren’t public. It’s a pretty big job to improve that infrastructure, but it was underway, and now it’s gone very quiet. Perhaps there’s no point doing that now if you’re going to have to undo it to some extent if you then undertake an expansion project. It could be me putting two and two together and getting five, but let’s see.
Anyway, some interesting appointments, and the board is taking on what seems to me anyway like a more Josh Kroenke influenced shape. Stan is the main man at KSE, of course, but Josh has become a lot more involved at Arsenal in recent years, and that is what people wanted from the ownership for a long time: visibility and presence. This looks like his board, a new iteration of Arsenal executives, and let’s hope they’re all very good at it.
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We can leave football stuff till tomorrow as we preview Man City, but I did want to highlight the fact that Arsenal fans going to the game tomorrow can access a specialised suicide prevention drop-in service for the first time.
The confidential service will be open at The Arsenal Hub two hours before kick-off, during the match and two hours after full-time. No appointment is needed, and the drop-in hub will give supporters the opportunity to speak to an NHS mental health specialist nurse at every Premier League match this season.
According to research conducted by Samaritans, there were 5,565 suicides registered in England in 2023, with men being three times more likely to die by suicide. Our local borough of Islington has the second-highest rate of diagnosed depression and severe mental illness in London.
It’s a difficult thing to talk about on a Saturday morning, but I’d wager all of us – to some extent or another – have experienced the impact of suicide in our lives. If a service like this can help people, and if anyone reading this becomes aware of something that might be of use, then it’s worth highlighting. This service will be available at every home game between now and the end of the season and hopefully the fact we can talk more openly about this, and mental health in general, will benefit people in the long-run.
More here.
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Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. There’s plenty of Premier League football today, before we play tomorrow. If you want something new to listen to, we have a Man City preview podcast over on Patreon right now, and I’ll be back with more here tomorrow.
Have a great Saturday folks, look after yourselves.
