The announcement that Arsenal Football Club intends to axe up to 60 jobs just months after winning its first league title in 22 years and posting record revenues is a devastating exposure of the class logic governing modern football. It reveals, with clinical clarity, billionaire ownership's priorities and the ruthless mechanisms through which capital restructures every sphere of social life, including the world’s most popular sport.
On October 14, chief executive Richard Garlick informed
staff that dozens of commercial, administrative and operational workers would
be made redundant. The coaching staff, first‑team performance departments,
academy, Arsenal Foundation, security teams and the women’s football set‑up
were exempt. Instead, the axe falls on the ordinary workers who keep the club
functioning: ticketing staff, retail workers, office administrators, and back‑office
personnel. These are not high‑earning executives or elite athletes. They are
workers on modest wages in one of the world's most expensive cities, facing a
cost‑of‑living crisis that has already pushed millions to the brink.
The timing of the announcement is no coincidence. It clearly
reflects the priorities of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE ), the
American conglomerate that owns Arsenal. The club has just completed one of the
most successful seasons in its modern history, recording record revenues of
£691 million for 2024/25 and an overall loss of just £1.4 million, effectively
breaking even. A week before the redundancies were announced, manager Mikel
Arteta signed a new contract reportedly worth £20 million a year, making him
the Premier League’s highest-paid coach. Over the summer, Arsenal spent £150
million on Christos Tzolis, Bruno Guimarães and Ezri Konsa.
The club’s wage bill through May 2025 was £346.8
million. Even if all 60 workers earned £50,000—a generous assumption—the total
savings would be around £3 million: less than 1% of the wage bill and
a fraction of a single star player’s annual salary. The cuts are not
financially necessary; they are a political and class decision.
The Consultants’ Axe: Manufactured Inevitability
The redundancies did not emerge organically from the club’s
internal operations. Arsenal hired management consultants from Boston
Consulting Group (BCG) to review operations and identify “efficiencies.” BCG is
a global firm whose interventions in corporations and governments routinely end
in job losses. Its presence is a warning sign in any workplace. It provides
owners with a veneer of technocratic legitimacy: the cuts are not the owners’
decision; they are the result of an “audit,” a “review,” a “recommendation.”
This is a familiar tactic. In 2020, during the pandemic,
Arsenal made 55 staff redundant, including Jerry Quy, the long-serving employee
who played the club mascot Gunnersaurus, even after first-team players took a
12.5 per cent pay cut on the understanding that staff jobs would be protected.
The pandemic is long over, revenues have soared, and the club is richer than
ever. Yet the same owners are wielding the same axe.
The statutory “consultation” process now under way is a
legal formality. It gives management a procedural framework to implement
decisions already made. It does not give workers a veto. It does not provide
democratic control. It manages dissent and absorbs anger.
Football Under Capital: A System of Extraction
Arsenal is not an isolated case. Under Sir Jim Ratcliffe,
Manchester United has cut hundreds of jobs in successive rounds of
restructuring. Workers were told the club was facing ruin, even as vast sums
continued to flow into transfers and stadium plans. Across the Premier League,
revenues from broadcasting rights, sponsorship deals and ticket prices, which
increasingly price working-class fans out of the grounds, continue to climb.
Yet the workers who sell the shirts, staff the offices, maintain the stadiums
and keep the clubs functioning are treated as expendable.
A draft “State of the Game” report from the new Independent
Football Regulator found that 94 per cent of clubs in England’s top five
divisions lost money last season, despite combined revenues of around £9
billion. Clubs spend this money on transfer fees, star salaries, and servicing debt. Rising player-asset values enrich owners, while ordinary staff bear
the risk. “Losses” on paper sit alongside billion-pound valuations. The
British state-established regulator does not challenge this arrangement.
Its purpose is to stabilise it.
Football is now fully integrated into the global financial
system. Clubs are treated as assets whose value is measured not by their social
role or community significance, but by their ability to generate revenue
streams, attract global sponsorships, and appreciate. Billionaire owners do not
view clubs as institutions rooted in working‑class communities. They see them as vehicles for accumulating capital.
The Class Logic of Arsenal’s Cuts
Arsenal’s operating costs have risen sharply from £148
million to £201 million, and wages continue to climb. The club has posted
losses for seven consecutive years, despite record revenues. Ownership is using
this to justify restructuring. But the cuts target only the lowest‑paid
workers, not the structural drivers of cost.
The logic is simple: invest heavily in the asset (the
squad), and ruthlessly cut the labour that doesn't directly generate market
value. The workers being made redundant do not increase the club’s valuation.
They do not attract global sponsorships. They do not produce highlight reels or
social media engagement. They are therefore expendable.
This is capital's logic in every industry. It has driven mass layoffs across technology firms, media companies, logistics giants, and public services. It has produced record profits for
corporations and record hardship for workers. Football is not immune. It is a
microcosm of capitalism's broader crisis.
The Anger of Supporters and Its Limits
Many supporters reacted with anger. On fan sites, many
pointed out that a single top player earns in a week what several of the
threatened workers earn in a year. Others asked whether the consultants’ fees
cost more than the jobs being cut. The anger is justified. But it cannot be
channelled into appeals to the “Arsenal family” or to the goodwill of
billionaires.
KSE’s purpose is not to run a community institution. Its
purpose is to increase the value of a global sports asset alongside the Kroenke
family’s other franchises. It is not accountable to supporters. It is not
accountable to workers. It is accountable only to capital.
What Is Needed: Independent Organisation and Democratic
Control
The 60 Arsenal workers should
not have to fight this alone or rely on a management-controlled consultation process. They need their own independent rank-and-file committee: a
democratic body, free from management and trade union bureaucracy, and able to
organise collective resistance. The committee should demand: No job cuts. Full
pay for all workers. Publication of the BCG report, consultant contracts and
ownership finances. Solidarity from matchday staff, stewards, supporters and
workers at other clubs facing similar cuts.
Players, staff, and millions of working people who pay for
tickets, subscriptions, and merchandise produce football's wealth through their
labour. As long as billionaires own the sport and run it for profit, every
record revenue figure will be followed by another round of “efficiencies” for
those at the bottom.
Defending these jobs is part of a broader struggle: to take
football and the economy out of the hands of the financial oligarchy and put
them under democratic control. Arsenal’s redundancies are not an isolated
event. They are a symptom of a system that prioritises profit over people,
valuation over community, and capital over labour.
