Arsenal face Emirates naming rights decision as stadium expansion nears

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With Arsenal accelerating their plans to expand their stadium, discussions with front-of-shirt and stadium naming rights partner Emirates will be taking place in the background.

Arsenal’s deal with Emirates – which is reportedly worth £50m per season – has been one of the biggest success stories in modern sponsorship.

The association with the Middle Eastern airline will reach its two-decade anniversary in the summer, when Arsenal hope to be basking in the glory of a first Premier League title in 22 years.

Recent results have given them confidence that they can end that hoodoo, but it is news relating to the club’s finances that have dominated the media churn heading into the international break.

David Raya is the latest Gunner to receive an improved contract, following similar deals for William Saliba, Magalhaes, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly, with Bukayo Saka and Jurrien Timber up next.

But perhaps even more significantly for the long-term future of the North London club, Arsenal want to increase capacity at the Emirates Stadium to around 70,000.

Football finance has taken on a radically different form since Arsenal moved into their 60,704 stadium in 2006. Back then, the move away from Highbury was meant to make them simultaneously economically stable and competitive at the apex of the Premier League for years to come.

However, Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea changed everything, kickstarting a new era dominated by state-backed wealth, private equity and failing financial fair play rules.

The Emirates is still monumentally lucrative, generating ticketing income of £132m in the latest published financial year, expected to surpass £150m once the 2024-25 accounts are released.

But the presence of competitors willing to spend over and above their own revenues mean that Stan Kroenke has needed to be relentless in his pursuit of more income.

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Arsenal’s deal with Emirates expires in 2028

Arsenal last renewed their deal with Emirates in 2023, inking a new agreement that will see the partnership last until at least 2028.

By that time, the club hopes to have shovels in the ground and cranes in the air as they forge ahead with their stadium expansion project, which is likely to cost in excess of £500m.

To justify that cost and the subsequent debt burden over the next 10-20 years, the Gunners need to squeeze every last possible drop of revenue juice from the stadium.

Both Arsenal and Emirates are likely to want to extend the deal given the excellent relationship they enjoy. However, sentimentality will not drive negotiations. If Arsenal can get a significantly better price with another suitable partner, they will take it.

Documents seen by TBR Football show that the naming rights element of the Arsenal-Emirates deal was worth only in the region of £4m in the previous iteration of the agreement, with the front-of-shirt license by far the more valuable carve-out.

And while the breakdown of the £60m-a-year deal signed in 2023 is not known, it is unlikely to have shifted significantly.

For context, Everton’s naming rights deal with Hill Dickinson is worth £10m annually. At the more elite end of the spectrum, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid have arrangements worth £17m-a-year and £24m-a-year respectively.

Building the Emirates Stadium 2.0, with all the international attention that the expansion would garner, would likely inflate the value of the rights to Arsenal.

So, as well as significantly hiking ticketing revenue at the redeveloped stadium, sponsorship income would boom too.