Every few years this topic re-appears…
“Mbappe will pay for himself with shirt sales”. No he won’t.
(Editor note: This blog was pre-written before it was announced that Mbappe was joining Real Madrid. Keenos is currently in Cairo visiting Elneny’s pyramids).
Arsenal have a kit manufacturing with Adidas that was recently extended until 2030. The new deal was reportedly worth £60million a year.
This is essentially a licensing and manufacturing deal which allows Adidas to make and sell football kits with Arsenal’s trademarked logos. Arsenal receive £60m from Adidas each year, and Adidas make their money back based on global sales from all outlets.
Arsenal back no additional revenue from global sales. The only additional revenue they make above the initial £60m is from shirts sold via Arsenal’s own retail outlets – the Armoury, the online shop, etc. When it comes to shirt sales, Arsenal’s revenue is no different to Sports Direct.
Retailers (including Arsenal), will purchase shirts of Adidas, and then sell them on to the customer. The profit they make is between what they buy and sell out. Arsenal make no money off sales from Sports Direct, Adidas or any other retailer. A quick summary:
Arsenal earn £60m a year in the manufacturing and licensing contract.
Adidas make their money from the difference between manufacture cost and what they sell to retailers.
Retailers (including Arsenal), make their money based off what they have bought from Adidas for, and what they sell to the consumer.
In theory, Arsenal could “make the cost of Mbappe back from shirt sales”. But we would need to sell approximately an additional 3 million shirts from our own outlets.
In 2022/23, we reportedly sold 850,000 shirts. The top selling football shirt globally was Liverpool with 1.8m. That makes it quite clear and obvious that we are not going to sell an additional 3m shirts with Mbappe.
An important factor is “additional”.
If little Stevie was going to get an Arsenal shirt with Saka 7 on his back, and then opted for Mbappe 14, this would not be an additional sale as Stevie’s dad was buying his boy a shirt regardless. It would not matter if we sold 500,000 Mbappe shirts if our total sold did not increase.
And remember, the additional 3m shirts would have to be sold only by us. No additional buyers going to Adidas or Soccer Scene. Taking this into account, there would probably have to be over 5.5m Arsenal shirts sold globally to take into account additional sales from other outlets.
So to pay for Mbappe through shirt sales, there would need to be in excess of 5.5m Arsenal shirt sales globally. That is more than 3 times the next best selling team.
Not going to happen. Learn before you comment. Transfer fees (or wages) do not get paid through shirt sales.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 