Arsenal close to agreeing shirtsleeve sponsor

Money, amirite? It

- Makes the world go round
- Is the root of all evil
- Can’t buy happiness
- Is a terrible master, but an excellent servant

And so on. And, as we all know, the Premier League is awash with money. TV money, ticket money, concessions money, merchandise money, sponsorship money...the beat just goes on and on. As Arsenal fans, we also know that the last category there, sponsorship money, is an area where Arsenal have typically fallen short of their contemporaries in the upper reaches of the table. Manchester United, famously, have an astounding number of “partners”, to use the corporate-speak, everything from the typical official car, airline, and entertainment industry partners all the way to having an official mattress and pillow partner (yes, really).

And while no team can really expect to live at that level of sponsorship, Arsenal’s relatively small cupboard of sponsors does leave the club at somewhat of a disadvantage when it comes to spending power.

The Premier League has always been fairly restrictive about shirt sponsorships, until this season mandating that there be only the one main one on the front (in addition to a manufacturer logo and club crest, which are of course advertisements). This season, though, clubs are now allowed to have a small sponsor logo on their shirtsleeve.

That logo can be no bigger than 100 square centimeters, which is slightly bigger than a business card, and can only be on the left sleeve. If reports are to be believed, Arsenal will be the 10th Premier League team to have a sleeve sponsor, although Chelsea’s is basically another one of Yokohama’s lines of business, so I’m not sure whether they earn money from that, and if so, how much it is relative to the other teams with sleeve deals.

Arsenal’s deal will reportedly be with a “Subscription Video On Demand” service, so, like, Netflix/Hulu/Amazon etc. Which makes me think the ad should just basically be a rectangle with an 80% filled in line in it that says BUFFERING..., but that’s probably why I’m not a marketing genius. Or, if it’s Amazon, just a picture of the big ol’ Amazon spheres.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve just sort of shrugged off the addition of an extra shirt sponsor - I mean, we all accept that there’s a big fat logo plastered on the front, so once that happens, everything else is on the table, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t believe that the Premier League will go the route of, say, Liga MX, that allows a seemingly unlimited number of advertisements to adorn a kit, much less will they want to court enough advertising on shirts that we get to NASCAR levels of absurdity.

So, long story short: money good. Advertising small. Yay money!