champion professor

310 Chapter 322
If Arsenal want not to become a four-maniac, they must need financial support.

Now they are building a new stadium, the purpose is to absorb this growing fan market.The market has never been saturated, Arsenal just need to expand.

Arsenal's current home stadium is Highbury, which can only accommodate 8000 fans.

Although this is the main venue that Arsenal has used for nearly 100 years, it has experienced many events such as World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. It has accompanied generations of fans and carried nearly a century of memories.

But after all, it has fallen behind the times and is no longer suitable for Arsenal.

If it is a small team, maybe their fans can't fill the stadium that can hold nearly 4 people.

But Arsenal is Arsenal after all, and their tickets are hard to come by. The attendance rate has remained above 98% all year round, ranking first in England.

Of course, this has something to do with the gradual release of Arsenal's style of play from being dull and conservative in recent years, and their excellent results all the time.

No one wants to watch a game that loses a lot, and few like a game that is dull and boring.

Before Graham's era, Arsenal's style of play was similarly dull.But even so, Highbury's attendance rate can still be ranked among the top in League One, even though they were not only ugly at that time, but also had poor results.

This is the benefit of having a huge number of local diehard fans.It's also the difference between a club in a big city and a small town.

Why has Nottingham Forest's performance dropped sharply in recent years?Even if they have won the European championship, even if they have created an undefeated history.

The main reason is money.

Money plays an increasingly important role in competitive sports. Without money, there is no transfer fee to buy players, and it is impossible to increase salaries to retain players.

If there are no good players, even advanced tactics 100 or 1000 years later will be useless without excellent players to execute them.

As for Nottingham Forest, they are located in Nottingham City and have a sparse population. Even if there are more fans, their market is too small to meet the needs of the team.

This kind of small team will encounter the same tragedy, that is, maybe in just a few years, they can rely on their uniqueness to obtain good rankings and occasional championships.

However, they are always short-lived and difficult to maintain.

Up to now, these small ball clubs have to shout long live if they can hit the Premier League, let alone those championships.

Whether it is the Premier League champion, the FA Cup champion or the League Cup champion that people like Shao Bo don't pay much attention to, they have all been monopolized by the Premier League giants.

It is extremely difficult for a small team to succeed.

Arsenal is different. North London now accounts for one-third of the population of Greater London.The area where Arsenal is located is the most prosperous Illingston area.

The large population and the local fans have money, which is why Arsenal's ticket price ranks first in England, but their attendance rate has never decreased.

This is also thanks to the ancestors who relocated Arsenal from the south bank of the Thames to North London. Otherwise, the relatively poor South London would not be able to support a Premier League giant.

Teams such as West Ham United and Millwall are examples. The areas they live in are not rich, so the clubs usually cut down on food and clothing, and naturally they will not have any good results.

Just like when Arsenal bought the so-called "David Seaman who only appeared in England in 50 years", they spent 150 million pounds, breaking the goalkeeper's transfer record.

If they don't have enough money to support, how can they make such a transfer decision?
However, Highbury, which cannot be expanded on a large scale, cannot meet the needs of the team.

After all, even if Arsenal build a football stadium with 10 people, they still have enough fans to come to watch the game.

A stadium with less than [-] yuan is really not enough.

However, such a superstar construction project, whose cost has risen from $[-] million to $[-] billion, has had a huge impact on the team.

With the efforts of Shao Bo, he alone helped the club to bear the debt of nearly [-] million US dollars.But if he wants to pay more money, Shao Bo, whose assets are already locked up, can't do anything.

Shao Bo invested a lot of money in both Yahoo and Google, and the extra funds he got from Yahoo had already been invested in Google to help them go public ahead of schedule.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for Shao Bo to spend so much money in one go. In addition to assuming a debt of [-] million pounds, he also bought more than half of the team's shares.

It's just that according to the laws of the United States, the money he invested in Google cannot be directly exchanged for cash.Of course, this is also a rule set up by the government to maintain a relatively stable and harmonious investment environment.

Shao Bo didn't want to divest himself from Google, after all, relying on this company, he can enjoy a lot of food and drink.

However, because his assets are locked up, even for the team, Shao Bo can't spend more money.What is even more depressing is that Shao Bo also missed more investment opportunities.

Just like Apple just announced its refinancing this summer, Shao Bo could have taken the opportunity to get involved, but unfortunately now he only has a few million euros of liquidity left in his hands, and there is no way to make any big moves.

If Arsenal want to get more funds to invest in the construction of the new stadium, they can only rely on the team's own commercial development and operation capabilities.

Shao Bo has always maintained a skeptical attitude towards Arsenal's commercial operation capabilities.

What is questioned is nothing but their ability.

Arsenal's commercial development capabilities are relatively poor, which is compared with Manchester United.As one of the football clubs with the strongest commercial development capabilities in Europe, Manchester United has a lot to learn from Arsenal in their brand promotion, sponsorship choices, etc.

Although Manchester United are Arsenal's competitors, Shao Bo has never been embarrassed to learn from them.As long as you learn the advantages of Manchester United and get rid of them, that's enough.

Vodafone, one of Manchester United's main sponsors, is one such example.

It also cooperates with telecommunications companies, but Arsenal receives 300 million to 500 million less sponsorship fees than Manchester United every year from here alone.

Although Arsenal retain more commercial rights themselves, their cooperation with the MMO2 telecom company is also more in-depth.

But the commercial power retained by Arsenal did not bring enough benefits to the club.

This made Shao Bo very upset.

Manchester United has several main sponsors with an annual sponsorship amount of several million, and more than a dozen secondary sponsors that can provide an annual income of one or two million.

Relying on these alone, they can dominate Europe in terms of business development and business income. Except for Real Madrid, almost no team can compete.

As for Real Madrid, they rely more on the benefits that come with the superstar policy. Their real business development capabilities are still not as good as Manchester United.

Otherwise, Florentino, who has always been known as the best at commercial development, would not publicly praise Manchester United's commercial development capabilities.

Of course, Arsenal's business development department is not without some impressive results.

Their cooperation with Nokia last year was very commendable. After this year, Nokia's market share in China has continued to expand, and it has become the mobile phone brand with the largest market share early.

And Arsenal also used this shareholder style to let more Chinese people know and understand Arsenal.

Of course, this cooperation is more based on the popularity of Arsenal in China. Shao Bo and Sun Jihai's special relationship with China has little to do with the ability of the business development staff.

No matter what kind of sponsorship, the most fundamental thing is the strength of the team. If the club has not achieved remarkable results, those companies will not be interested in sponsoring the club.

Of course, diehard fans don't count.

However, how many loyal and wealthy fans like Moratti and Craniotti are there?

Since Shao Bo has a memory that transcends the times, he will certainly not give up this advantage.

In memory, Arsenal have incurred huge debts over the years in order to build a new stadium.

In order to avoid tragedies like Lazio and Leeds United, Arsenal made the decision to shrink strategically over the years.

When the team is in huge debts, if it still wants to expand, even without Shao Bo's time travel, Arsenal's board of directors, which is mainly composed of bankers and businessmen, will not do such a stupid thing.

Therefore, in order to ensure that the team can obtain stable income every year, they signed sponsorship contracts with Emirates and Nike respectively for more than ten years.

At the time, this was considered a relatively high sponsorship contract for the Premier League.

It's just that the development of the Premier League is too rapid, so that people did not expect it.In less than ten years, the sponsorship contracts of the entire Premier League have increased in price, but Arsenal has become the team with the lowest sponsorship amount.

The business cooperation they were originally proud of became the laughing stock of the world later.

As a result, with players' value rising and transfer fee records constantly being broken, Arsenal can only be reduced to a madman fighting for the top four, unable to compete for the title.

Shao Bo is naturally unwilling to let the team have such a sad ending again, otherwise what's the point of him crossing over?
At the beginning, Shao Bo took the initiative to assume a debt of [-] million pounds for the team, hoping that the team could be more light and simple.

As for the board of directors adding hundreds of millions of scale-up investment projects later, Shao Bo did not resist and allowed this proposal to pass smoothly.

After all, this is also for the good of the team. He has no reason to refuse. At worst, he should work harder to make money and make the team stronger!

　It’s a million words, I still want to write a little reflection at this point, and it’s almost Chinese New Year, let’s release it together when the time comes.

　　
　　
　
(End of this chapter)