If this is true, this will be amazing. No debt for the club could possibly mean lower ticket prices for the fans.
Well, that last bit is never going to happen.
Personally I'll wait for an official announcement before giving Levy any credit over stadium financing. But if it is confirmed at this level I would be phenomenally impressed.
Also, does the 400 include shirt sponsorship?
If the story is true about it being £400m over 20 years, there's no way that would include shirt sponsorship for the entire duration.
£400m over 20 years is £20m a year. We make close to that per year today in shirt sponsorship alone.
Shirt sponsorship will be included. at the moment we make £12.5m - 15m from shirt sponsorship a season. Remember Madison Square Garden only got $300m from JP Morgan for their sponsorship deal. £20m a season is about right. Liverpool and Man Utd get a lot more because they have a massive fan base around the world that sadly we don't.
If this is true I would like to see a better stadium development personally as the current development is just not worth £400 million
Sorry, but I disagree.
We make £12.5m-£15m in shirt sponsorship today, I don't disagree on that.
What I disagree on is that Levy would sign us up to a 20 year deal, that includes shirt and stadium naming rights, for another £5m-£7.5m a year.
Just doesn't make sense to lock yourself in to such a long term deal that includes shirt sponsorship. It would take away a major source of potential increase in revenue for two decades, just wouldn't make any sense at all for that length of time. Especially if ENIC want to sell us - there's very little scope for any new owners to increase our revenue by locking us in on both counts for so long.
As time has passed, it's been widely recognised that the gooners sold their rights to both too cheaply. I don't think Levy would run the risk of the same accusation by tieing us in to an even longer deal.
And I mean that as a compliment to Levy.
Would the shirt sponsorship and naming rights sponsorship have to be the same length? They might make more of an impact if they do both at the beginning. Maybe a 5 year shirt contract at £20m a year then £15m a year for 20 years on the naming?
Still can't see it being for naming rights alone. They could buy the club for less than that.
Have you every bought anything made by Addidas, or Hugo Boss, or Bayern Medical (world's biggest pharmaceutical company)? - if the answer to any of these is YES then you have supported companies that directly supported or worked for the Nazi's in and after WWII.
How about that nice shiny mobile phone you own - how many oppressed Chinese workers (basically slaves) were involved in producing that for you?
Or those diamonds you buy your special other, even the non blood diamonds are basically all controlled by De Beer's, set-up by Cecil Rhodes, of Rhodesia fame - now Zimbabwe - you may have heard that they're not a fan of white people there - there's a really good reason for this.
Point is that there are hundreds of everyday company's that have very murky backgrounds, so for me this is just another one.
Are you sure you're not confusing Qatar with Bahrein, Qatar is an absolute Monarchy with pretty drachonian rules on migrant employees but I don;t know that it's among the worst in the Arab world and they were the first to give Women the vote.
Still £400million means we build the stadium with no debt, or at least with the debt covered by this sponsorship leaving all other income for the team.
Dream time!!! wow!
I'm not sure they could, given that we have around £100m of player assets in Bale, Modric, and vdV alone.
I think the club may be worth something like that currently, but i can't ENIC accepting that offer, and if we get CL again this season and the NDP is off the ground by summer then i'd say that adds a fair chunk to the value of the club, or at least it's short term future value.
£20m per year for 20 years of shirt and stadium sponsorship is a crap deal IMO.
In fact £20m for 20 years of shirt sponsorship is also pretty crap. Look at how much this has increased in value in the last 5 years, during an almost global economic downturn. In 15 years time i would imagine, if we are in a similar position league wise as we are now, that we will be signing £30-50m a year shirt sponsorship deals.
Again the same thing i thin can be said for Stadium sponsorship, it's only really started to take off here in the last 5-10 years, but i think within 10 years the vast majority of Stadiums in the PL will have sold off their naming rights.
Again £20m a year might seem like a lot now, but it is only twice what Arsenal got 5 years ago, and again in 10-15 years i think £20m a year will be a pretty average amount for naming rights.
In my opinion the fact that the deal is a 20 year deal shows why it is viable for both parties.
I very much doubt that a £20m a year stadium rights sponsorship deal over the next 5 years would be at all attractive to anyone.
According to Forbes we were worth $412m (£261m) in April 2011. This would have gone up slightly over the last year as the money from CL was not included nor the land purchases we have made. But I doubt it would have gone up massively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes'_list_of_the_most_valuable_football_clubs#2011_rankings
You're correct that the values of contracts for shirt sponsors have gone up massively over the last few years, but will they continue to do so? I have no idea but eve if they do I can't see it being at the same rate. I'll leave it for Daniel to decide as he has a better idea than I do.
Still can't see it being for naming rights alone. They could buy the club for less than that.
I don't think that he is suggesting that its an either/ or proposition.But just because you want the brand exposure that sponsoring a PL football club gives you, doesn't mean you want to buy the club. They're two entirely different propositions.