Arsenal are now the third-biggest club in the Premier League by financial might after their revenue rose to a record £605m in 2023-2024, a 35 per cent increase on the previous year.
Only Manchester City and Manchester United have higher incomes than Mikel Arteta’s side, who are now the seventh-richest club in the world according to the Deloitte Football Money League 2025 (DFML).
There were significant increases in commercial, broadcast and matchday revenue, largely helped by Champions League football returning to the Emirates.
This is the first time Arsenal have overtaken north London rivals Tottenham in the DFML since 2019, also leapfrogging Liverpool and Chelsea and only trailing Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and Barcelona outside England.
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Read MoreTheir £605m revenue figure is almost double the £310m from 2020-21 and facilitates a rise to a financial standing they have not enjoyed since 2018.
The most significant increase is to broadcast income, rising to £257m from £186m, the result of reaching the Champions League quarter-finals and finishing second in the top flight.
Yet Arsenal’s commercial revenue, which had largely stagnated in recent years, has also reached a record high, as increased sponsorship deals and a revamped executive team paid dividends.
The club overhauled their business team in August 2023, poaching Giulia Mazzia as head of commercial ventures from AC Milan alongside three other experienced names. Andrew Sheridan, formerly a senior figure in Liverpool’s commercial team, also announced last week he is heading to north London.
“Over the last few years Arsenal have gained a little bit of stability in terms of the narrative they’re putting out there – the team, the backroom staff – and now there’s sporting performance,” Kunal Sajdeh, a manager in Deloitte Sports Business Group, tells The i Paper. “That’s all become a perfect storm into positive tailwinds of revenues.
Below, we break what Arsenal’s improved financial outlook means for transfers, ticket prices and stadium expansion plans…
One area which could benefit from this increased revenue is transfers. After a relatively quiet summer, there is a sense 2025 could be an opportunity to upgrade and reinforce in key positions, which will require available cash and headroom within the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
“They’ve got a degree of latitude, and they’ll be able to benefit from that,” football finance expert Kieran Maguire tells The i Paper. “They managed to get their wage bill under control in the past few years. The players on long contracts who weren’t delivering have now gone.
“Arsenal have now got a greater control over their costs. So, yes, they’ve got some capacity to be flexible.
“And given that they’re going to finish in the top three this season in all probability, and they’re going to make more progress in the Champions League, this will be a spectacular year.”
Will ticket prices be cheaper?
Another key area of growth for Arsenal has been matchday revenue. Thanks to Champions League nights at the Emirates, this has reached £129m, up from £100m.
This was the highest such figure among Premier League clubs, just topping Manchester United.
Despite this, Arsenal are exploring options to expand the Emirates’ capacity and have hired consultants to do so, with a potential 20,000-seat increase on the cards.
Despite experts telling The i Paper “there’s no end of challenges” with a potential expansion, the upside is obvious. Matchday revenue is the fastest-growing income stream among elite clubs, and Real Madrid, Barcelona and Lyon have all benefitted from recent renovations or stadium moves.
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Read MoreThe second-biggest stadium in the Premier League at the time of its construction, the Emirates is now fifth and falling as other clubs begin plans of their own.
Maguire explains that expansion makes sense on a lot of fronts, despite a potential cost rising into the hundreds of millions: “They’ve got the London premium. They’ve got an established brand. They can sell out every match.
“It’s really a case of: is it worthwhile from the point of view of the construction costs, which will be fairly astronomic, and when will they get a return on that investment?
“If they’re in the Champions League, they can set ticket prices appropriately. They’re going to sell out. It’s really good from the point of view of sponsors. Those bonuses kick in, and then you get the Uefa bonuses as well.”
How could stadium expansion plans be affected?
In the long-term, expanding capacity by a third to 80,000 could increase matchday revenue by more than a third. This would not be a matter of adding 20,000 general admission seats, according to Sajdeh , rather a chance to sell more and more hospitality and VIP packages.
“I suspect that matchday revenues, if Arsenal were able to elevate capacity, that’s something that they could anchor on,” Sajdeh explains. “There’s an element of what the allocation is within that capacity increase.
“If you think about Real Madrid, Barcelona, and some of the other European teams, a lot of them have been a little bit more careful with how they’ve allocated general admission and some of the premium seat offerings.
“It’s not just additional seats – it could look quite different based on how they allocate that across VIP and general admission. Some of the younger audiences today are quite focused on personal experiences and are willing to pay a premium for that.”
One potential avenue for the club to maximise revenue from would be through Personal Seat Licenses (PSL), a method popular in the NFL and NBA and recently rolled out by Barcelona.
In short, PSLs allow people to buy the rights to a specific seat in a stadium – almost always VIP or hospitality seating – over a long, continuous period of time.
This does not include the price of the season ticket for that seat, but provides first refusal on buying that season ticket for the length of the PSL. To give up the right to the season ticket, you would have to sell the PSL.
In Barcelona’s case, their PSL period is 30 years. They sold 475 PSLs for VIP tickets at the renovated Camp Nou in advance to Middle Eastern investment funds for £85m, just 5.5 per cent of the VIP seating at the new stadium. These investment funds will then sell the season tickets to wealthy individuals or companies for significant mark-ups.
The cost for the 30-year PSL at Barcelona is £5,964 per seat per season, without paying for the season ticket itself. While you can see that this might well catch on among elite clubs, many supporters will probably hope this is not the case.
Here is another example that growth does not tend to benefit “legacy” fans, and that Arsenal supporters should be careful what they wish for with their stadium expansion, despite the potential benefits of increased matchday income.
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