Gazidis’ £1m bonus despite Euro flop
MISSING out on Champions League football this season has cost Arsenal around £50million yet the club’s chief executive Ivan Gazidis has still been awarded a near £1m bonus.
Arsenal’s financial report for 2016-17 shows Gazidis receiving a package of £2.618m, including a whopping £919,000 bonus, that consolidated his position in the top three best-paid club administrators in the Premier League.
His salary is similar to the previous year’s, although Arsenal have suffered the serious setback of not playing in Europe’s premier club competition for the first time in 20 years and no major commercial deals were signed by the club.
An Arsenal spokesman said: ‘All wage costs including bonuses are decided by the board.’
That is unlikely to satisfy Arsenal shareholders, who are sure to ask questions at the forthcoming AGM about Gazidis being paid so much.
WITH England cricketers under the spotlight for their drinking escapades, it just so happens that the ECB’s most productive recent sponsorship stream has been the booze industry with five official supply deals done for beer, lager, cider, wine and champagne. NOT all England cricketers spend their leisure time on the sauce in Bristol nightclubs. In stark contrast, record run- scorer and former captain Alastair Cook (right) has been shooting grouse in North Yorkshire with ECB president Giles Clarke. Multimillionaire Clarke has bought shooting rights for a grouse moor near Richmond and invited a party of friends, including Cook, for a day’s shooting and put them up at a local hotel. No brawls at 2.35am were reported.
IT IS beyond belief that the beleaguered cycling boss Sir Dave Brailsford could take part in a session at the Leaders Week sports business summit and not have to answer a single question about the drugs scandals that have so tarnished the sport. Some of the scandals concern unresolved issues involving Brailsford’s Team Sky. However, the interviewer was Billy Beane — of Moneyball fame and now involved with Barnsley. Baseball executive Beane was too intent to sing his own and Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ praises to ask a single relevant question.
Amazon primed to bid
THE Premier League are in gridlock over how their overseas TV rights cash should be distributed following a club vote being adjourned at yesterday’s meeting.
But there would have been a collective rubbing of hands if all those in the PL meeting had been at the Leaders Week conference at Stamford Bridge and heard advertising and media mogul Sir Martin Sorrell forecast a bonanza future for major sports rights suppliers.
Sorrell reckons that the Big Seven global digital players — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Chinese giants Alibaba and Tencent — will all be competing for sports content, pushing the value of Premier League TV rights around the globe even higher.
And of the seven, Sorrell reckons Amazon, who are trying to expand their Amazon Prime subscription streaming service in the UK, are the most likely bidders in the forthcoming Premier League tender.
LT has not been unusual for England footballers to drill the ball at the media pack on purpose during training. But to his great credit, Michael Keane made a point of coming into the press room after training yesterday to apologise to a photographer whose camera was accidentally damaged by a stray medicine ball thrown by Keane.
KATE TINSLEY, the new FA independent director, is CEO of the Buildbase Group, who are title sponsors of the FA Vase, thus casting some doubt on how independent she can be. Her appointment was approved by Sport England but she will have to recuse herself from sponsorship discussions.