Becoming a Russian Oligarch After Rebirth
Chapter 866 - 834: Encounter with an Old Acquaintance

Chapter 866: Chapter 834: Encounter with an Old Acquaintance

February 15, Saturday, in the Ashburton District of London, the Jaguar Land Rover Stadium.

This massive and brand-new stadium is Arsenal’s newly built home ground and has already been put into use.

Featuring an all-steel structure and covered with transparent glass, the exterior looks simple and fashionable.

The stadium boasts seventy thousand seats, as well as three hundred private boxes, and comes with a full range of facilities.

This new stadium is definitely among the best in all of Europe, not at all inferior to other globally renowned stadiums, such as Old Trafford, Nou Camp, and Bernabeu.

Today is a home game for Arsenal, and roughly an hour before the game started, the stadium was already packed to capacity.

The seventy thousand fans, donning their home team’s red and white attire, were jumping and bouncing in the stands, some singing at the top of their lungs, others yelling themselves hoarse—everyone was venting their passion.

Even now, before the game had begun, the fans were evidently in high spirits...

This also had everything to do with the club’s excellent performance this season.

Right from the start of the league, Arsenal immediately displayed their powerful dominance, finding it hard to meet defeat in the Premier League!

With Henry and Ronaldinho upfront, they were tearing down defenses.

In the midfield, Vieira and Beckham were orchestrating the plays.

And the backline was manned by Nesta and Buffon, unbreakable!

It could be said that with superstars anchoring every line on the field, the team’s overall strength was a notch above the rest of the Premier League teams!

Add to this the bench equipped with numerous capable players for rotation, so half the season had passed, and Arsenal’s performance was outrageously good, directly igniting the fans’ passion.

The enormous home ground was guaranteed a full house every game, a ticket was hard to come by!

According to the report from David Dain, following this trend, just the home match ticket revenue could skyrocket from last year’s thirty million pounds to just over a hundred million pounds!

This was indeed good news for the club’s finances.

It meant that even without continued capital injections from Wang Ye, the direct ticket income, broadcasting revenues, sponsorship fees, and match bonuses alone could reach about two hundred and fifty million pounds a year!

Of course, this amount was based on particularly excellent performance.

For example, winning the league, or at least making the semifinals in the UEFA Champions League...

A team’s performance strongly impacts its income.

Take Arsenal, for instance, currently performing exceptionally well, hence the jam-packed home ground, easy ticket sales revenue, and substantial match bonuses, resulting in annual earnings of two and a half billion pounds.

But what if performance were to decline?

A seventy thousand capacity home ground would probably see only thirty to forty thousand spectators, leaving more than half empty.

That’s still because UK soccer fans are extremely passionate and loyal, otherwise, the numbers would be even lower.

Poor results would greatly reduce various sponsorships, broadcasting revenues, and match bonuses, and the annual revenue might struggle to reach a hundred million pounds...

Subtracting various fixed expenses, such as player and coach salaries, club personnel wages, and stadium maintenance costs, the club could well end up in the red!

It must be said that the hefty investment by Wang Ye after acquiring the club, bringing in so many superstars, especially those who fit in so well with Arsenal, has fundamentally changed the club’s situation, propelling Arsenal into a virtuous cycle.

It also meant saving Wang Ye a considerable sum of money in future investments.

Looking at Mikhail, it became clear.

Chelsea also spent a lot in their first year, but their transformation of the team wasn’t thorough, and their performances were not that impressive.

Consequently, in the following years, Mikhail still had to keep investing money.

There was a joke at the time that whenever the summer transfer window opened, many small and mid-sized clubs would eagerly watch Chelsea because the "Chelsea supermarket" was opening!

Perhaps a star player, who had been acquired for a high price the previous year, would be sold off cheaply after demonstrating insufficient ability or failing to meet the coach’s requirements after just a year...

In those years, Mikhail really did spend an undue amount of money!

...

The game is about to start, and today’s match at Arsenal’s home ground is against their fierce rival, Manchester United. This is a match that’s captured nationwide attention.

Although Arsenal, in this season’s Premier League standings, is already more than a dozen points ahead of Manchester United, with a considerable gap between them.

But there are still numerous highlights in this game!

For instance, the much-anticipated clash between Beckham and Ferguson who fell out with each other—what sparks would fly between the estranged "father and son"?

There’s also the previous encounter, where Arsenal visited Manchester United as the away team. They won by a narrow margin, and at the post-match press conference, Ferguson was very dissatisfied, claiming his team had only lacked a bit of luck.

So this time around, could Manchester United achieve their "revenge"?

Furthermore, if Arsenal could smoothly defeat Manchester United in this match, they could almost declare themselves league champions, as the gap with the second-placed Manchester United in the league would exceed twenty points!

That gap would undoubtedly leave any rival feeling hopeless.

Helen from The Times was already standing at the sideline reporters’ bench, holding a long-lens camera, taking a few casual snaps of the stands without much interest.

She occasionally turned her head to look towards the private boxes above.

She had heard that Mikhail, the owner of Arsenal Club, had come to London!

After the last exclusive interview, Helen wrote several articles about Mikhail, virtually becoming his spokesperson in the UK!