Ivan Gazidis spent 14 years working with the MLS. He began as one of the founding management team and became Deputy Commissioner in 2001.
In January 2009 he became the CEO of Arsenal. This is his first interview outside the official website or the mainstream press and I’d like to thank him for his time and the Arsenal Press Office for their co-operation and for their help in making it happen.
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After being at the MLS for so long how did the move to Arsenal come about? The situation had been vacant for some time after the departure of Keith Edelman, the club were obviously looking for the right person. How did they get in touch with you and was it a lengthy kind of process?
It wasn’t lengthy. Someone at the club had approached me fairly shortly after Keith Edelman left and had said I think this fit would really be a good one. I didn’t really want to get engaged in a lengthy process but if the club was interested then they should approach me. I didn’t think about it again, it was clear their recruitment process was was going ahead, but they came back to me in October and said that they’d done a lot of background research and investigation and they felt that I was going to be a prime candidate for the role. Things moved very Exclusive: Ivan Gazidis Arseblog interviewquickly after that.
Was it something you had to think about a lot? Obviously you were well settled in the US, you were Deputy Commissioner of the MLS. Did the fact it was a club as big as Arsenal sway you?
You know, I’d had some approaches from within the English game before but it was interesting, the moment that Arsenal told me they were seious about my appointment, I didn’t think about it twice. I’d always been an admirer of Arsenal. From the states I’d looked at the way the club was run and of course what Arsene Wenger had done on the pitch so there was an immediate emotional decision that I knew was exactly the right one for me.
You arrived in January and it was a strange time. Results hadn’t been good, the team was struggling, there was pressure because of the lack of trophies, and then you had the complicated boardroom situation. Was it a real baptism of fire to have to come in and deal with all those things straight away?
I think one of the advantages I had was that I was coming in from the outside so I wasn’t in the fray. So while it was certainly important that I understood what the fans were feeling I think it helped me to have a sense of perspective. Although the team had gone through some difficult patches on the pitch it clearly was a good young squad that was still developing and getting better month by month – and still had the potential to have a really good season ahead of it.
I think that perspective was useful in approaching the January transfer window with discipline as opposed to abandon.
Obviously the boardroom situation is one that interests a lot of fans because for years Arsenal had the same owners, the same directors, it was very traditional. Over the last few years though things have changed quite considerably. The relationships between some of the shareholders are delicate, to say the least, and you’re the guy in the middle now, having to be the glue that holds it all together. How is dealing with that on a day to day basis and longer term do you think we’re going to see a more settled ownership situation at the club?
Well I think the club has had a very clear and consistent philosophy since before even Stan Kroenke or Alisher Usmanov came into the picture – which is that the club is bigger than any single owner. The club has always been proud of its independence, not for its own sake but in order to preserve stability. Arsenal is not dependent on any particular owner so there can be changes at the ownership level without that having a dramatic effect on the fundamentals of the club.
And I think you’ve seen in recent years a number of clubs who didn’t adhere to those principles have unfortunately found themselves in significant trouble. So while there’ll always be a lot of focus on what happens at the ownership level I do believe this model that the club has adopted, of self-sustainability, gives it an inherent stability that would be impacted if it were to be dependent on any one shareholder.
Are you confident that Arsenal’s self-sustainable model can marry the necessity to manage our debts and pay off the stadium with creating a team that’s challenging for important trophies every season?
I believe it can. We’ve certainly embarked on a course that sees us building our own team rather than buying it but I think Arsene has done that very effectively. We’ve got a young squad that the world’s best teams are very interested in. A player’s value is determined not only by what you spend on him in the transfer market, but also by how good he is, how many other clubs are interested him and what he’s able to achieve on the pitch.
I think the club is in a very promising position. We made the last four of the Champions League and there are many teams, including some doing the buying, who would have loved to have been in that position. So while we were disappointed at the end of the year this is a young team that’s going to improve year by year and with a few additions can be very competitive.
Given the club is self-sustainable and it’s reliant on the income it generates from season tickets, commercial deals, match day income, merchandising etc – is the club mindful of the fact that things are tight for a lot of people financially at the moment? There are many people who are trying to lease out their season ticket for a year because they simply can’t afford to maintain it themselves. Is that the something the club has to be aware of despite having to try and maximise its income?
Of course we have to be very aware of that. And it’s not just a question of what the club can do, it’s a question of what the club should do. There’s no question in my mind, coming to this as a business man, that the club could have raised ticket prices this year. Absolutely no question. And we would have generated more revenue had we done that.
But we’ve got a 120 year relationship with our fans and it was very important to us that we acknowledged the fact that although the club continues to be strong a lot of our fans are affected by the economic realities of the country. We took a decision, for four out of the last five seasons, to freeze ticket prices. We took other decisions, including the opt-out service for cup matches and the ticket exchange program.
It’s a long term relationship between club and fan. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the club actually is the fans, so it would be extremely foolish of us to ignore the realities and not to listen to and be aware of the issues that are affecting our fanbase.
In terms of the commercial deals that we have in place – the deals with Nike and Emirates were vital for the new stadium project but some years down the line maybe don’t represent the best possible value. Is this something the club can revisit or do we have to accept that the deals served their particular purpose at that time?
I think there’s no question that the partnerships with Nike and Emirates were fundamental for the construction of the stadium and those are strong, long-term relationships. It’s always easy to second guess deals but they give us, as a club, stability, and effectively a guaranteed return.
But what I do believe is that if we’re looking to develop our value we have to embark on a medium to long-term project of better articulating the values that the club represents. I don’t think we have developed our brand as much as we could do, either domestically or internationally, and ultimately if you do that effectively the revenues come off the back of that.
I do believe that Arsenal represents some things that are quite special, particulary in the modern world of football. We need to preserve those whilst articulating them to a wider public.
Is that something that you’re working on at the moment?
It is something that I’m spending a lot of time thinking about. I’m also looking to supplement our management team capabilities so that we can better develop that message and the Arsenal brand.
Moving to football, it’s summertime and fans are looking under every internet based rock they can find for news of transfers. Does the big spending at Madrid have an impact on the way we do our business? They spend £80m on Ronaldo and that becomes the benchmark for player prices. So a guy has a pre and post Ronaldo price. Is that just something we have to cope with?
Clearly transfer fees going up and salaries going up affects the marketplace. I would say this – no clubs have unlimited resources. I know it seems like it at times, and they may act like it for a period of time, but at some point every club has limited resources. We are acting in a way that acknowledges that behind a very, very solid business model.
So yes, big spending has an effect on the market but it’s difficult to fully assess that effect until some period of time has passed. Big spending doesn’t guaranteee on-field success. It’s certainly a relevant factor but it’s one of many relevant factors. Understandably the media doesn’t really focus on the others because they’re less exciting, less immediate, less newsworthy, but there are a huge number of factors that make a team successful on the field.
There’s a lot more to this business than simply the amount of money you pay to other clubs to get the early release of their talented players.
There’s a perception amongst fans that we don’t go about our transfer business as efficiently as we might. Is that something you can address?
I can’t really comment on how it’s been in the past, I can only speak about my approach. I have fourteen years of experience dealing in player transfer markets in the MLS and negotiating player contracts. I have a very good working relationship with Arsene and this off-season we’ve made sure, although it’s not such a big news story, that we are tying down our talented young players who are in demand from other clubs for the long-term, as well as supplemeting the squad if the manager believes there’s someone special who can add something.
We did that in January with Arshavin, we’ve done it again with Thomas Vermaelen, but fundamentally we believe in the squad that Arsene has been developing. I certainly acknowledge this is a big year for us. And it’s a big year for those players. We talk about potential but at some point potential needs to deliver.
Having said that we’ve been very active since the end of the season, secured some key contracts and have positioned ourselves well for next season.
We all know Arsenal is very closed when it comes to discussing transfer business. All the same I know my readers would not forgive me if I didn’t ask. Now, you can tell me, or not tell me, and I think I know which one you’ll go with, can you hint at whether we going to see more players arrive and if so are those arrivals dependent on other players leaving to raise funds?!
I’m sorry, but I’m going to continue in a rich tradition of obfuscation! It’s not that I wouldn’t want to be open with our fans but it really does affect our ability to successfully deal with player contracts and transfers during the close season.
It creates a dynamic that can be difficult to manage and makes things more challenging to complete, so if everyone will just bear with us it gives us the best chance of success, when we get to the end of the transfer window, if we say as little as possible.
Finally, if we could look to the season ahead. We’ve gone four years without a trophy. I’ve known longer periods than that in my time as an Arsenal fan but the nature of fandom has changed a lot. With internet, blogs, forums etc, every single person has an opinion they can broadcast to the world and that brings about more pressure than it would have done some years ago.
Arsene obviously has the full support of the board but is the pressure really on now for the season ahead to translate the potential in this team into silverware?
At the end of the day it’s not enough for Arsenal to be just competing and reaching the top four. I do believe that it’s a very creditable performance by a group of young players but at the same time I also think that every player in our squad, our manager, and me, has higher ambitions. We need to keep hungry in that way. If we ever felt that coming in the top four was good enough then we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.
Arsene Wenger takes a lot of pressure on himself and he also puts a lot of pressure on himself. I think one of the real assets that club has is that he doesn’t only think short-term. He also thinks about what’s in the medium and long-term interests of the club. And it’s rare in modern football to find someone who is willing to take that position of real responsibility to the club and not necessarily putting themselves first.
Do you mean that, for example, he’s aware of the financial constraints he’s been operating under and hasn’t thrown his toys out of the pram looking for transfer funds?
Not necessarily, what I mean is that he and the club have commited to a course of building our team, understanding that was going to be a process. When he comes under pressure he doesn’t turn around and point fingers at players, he takes all of that on his own shoulders. We’re embarked on a journey that we believe will result in us having a truly world class team, winning trophies over the next five years of Arsenal’s history.
And sometimes along the way we’ve paid the price for having some inexperience on the pitch. But if you look at the way we’re positioned now we’ve got young players who have grown dramatically, even look at the beginning of last season compared to the end. Yes, there were times we didn’t have the fluency we were looking for, but in terms of consistency the second half of the season … you know, I think the first opposition goal I saw, outside the Plymouth and Hull goals in the FA Cup, in my time at Arsenal was when Kieran Gibbs slipped over against Man United.
I don’t think any team in the Premier League lost fewer games than us in 2009. And it was a team that progressed the semi-finals of the Champions League and you don’t do that by luck. That was playing against top class opposition. So there’s tremendous hope and expectation for the future but I do think this year’s going to be a very important one for us. And one where we need to step up and show that after this journey that we’ve been on, that has required some patience, and at times has been frustrating, we’re in a position to deliver for our fans.
We’re all absolutely committed to that cause.
End.
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