Arsenal supporters criticise £3m payment to Stan Kroenke

Arsenal supporters have reacted furiously to the revelation that the club has paid £3m for the second year running to a US company owned by its American majority shareholder, Stan Kroenke. The payment of exactly £3m to Kroenke Sports and Entertainment LLC, disclosed in the 2014-15 Arsenal accounts, is stated to be for the same reason as the £3m was paid in 2013-14 – “strategic and advisory services”.

Kroenke owns 67.3% of the Arsenal shares, having paid multi-millions of pounds in 2011 to the previous long-term major shareholders, including Nina Bracewell-Smith, whose shares were worth £116m, and Danny Fiszman, for whose stake Kroenke paid £159.5m. Kroenke’s KSE company also owns the Major League Soccer team Colorado Rapids, the Denver Nuggets NBA franchise, the Colorado Avalanche ice hockey team and the Pepsi Center in Denver where it plays, together with other sports and property holdings.

Arsenalthe club’s other major shareholder, the Uzbek-Russian magnate Alisher Usmanov, who owns 30% of Arsenal shares having paid the former director David Dein £75m for his stake, is understood also to be unhappy about the payment. Usmanov is expected to probe further into the justification for the £3m being paid for a second year, and how that figure was arrived at.

The Arsenal chairman, Sir Chips Keswick, last year defended the £3m payment as good value, suggesting it was crucial to the club’s progress, despite confirming to supporter-shareholders at the club’s annual general meeting that there had been no competitive tender before choosing Kroenke’s company for the services. Keswick said that he and another Arsenal director, Lord Harris of Peckham, had personally proposed the payment be made.

“KSE is one of the most respected and successful sports organisations in the United States, operating in the most sophisticated sports business market in the world,” Keswick said then. “They have an extensive and long experience in modern sports management. It is of the utmost importance that, as a club, we use it to our best advantage to ensure we keep progressing. There was no competitive tender for these services as they are directly available to us. We are entirely satisfied the fee was appropriate.”

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